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Worcestershire Parkway station progress

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Class172

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You may think you have "explained the commuting thing". That's your opinion. But if i was in Worcester and there was the option of driving to a nice parkway without having to battle through the city's less than fab roads - which I am sadly familiar with, thanks - to get to Shrub Hill, or be dropped off at Foregate Street, then what do you think I would do?
Well that depends on which direction you are coming from but as any local knows the Western Bypass is chocka at peak times and getting across the river bridge is just as bad. So you might do what a lot or people do from the Warndon area and drive to Droitwich and clog up the local roads there as an alternative! Or of course persevere and use the City centre stations.

You may well be familiar with Worcester's roads, however unless you live in the city or commute to it every day, you cannot give an accurate description on what goes on. You will find that it is uncommon to see someone dropped off at Foregate St., but at Shrub Hill it is a far more common occurrence. Foregate serves the city centre almost entirely, whist Shrub Hill is used more so by residents on the eastern/northern side of the city. I admit that those on the western side of the river have no access to a station (which is why I advocate building a small station at Henwick) – either way, if they wanted to drive to another station, be it Parkway/Droitwich/Warwick etc., they still have to negociate the A4440 (Southern By-pass) which suffers from congestion all day.

Moggie is correct that people from Warndon, Fernhill Heath and Claines will drive to Droitwich, where there is also minimal parking, but shortens their commute by a good 20 mins. A similar story can be said for Hartlebury: a fair proportion of commuters drive to Droitwich (more services) rather than use the station near them.

Yes, the bypass is busy - and building this station will only add to the traffic on it - but lots of people in the south, east and north of the city will simply head straight out there the instant Parkway opens, as will others from further afield, whatever the road conditions, so they can avoid going anywhere near the city centre.

Building Worcester Parkway would not have much (if any) impact on the traffic using the Worcester by-passes. Since new people who use the station will have previously used the same roads to get to the M5 and drive to their respective destinations. The A4440 between Whittington (A44) and Ketch (A38) roundabouts is now being dualled so that will help any situation that may arise. Very few people drive through Worcester anyhow, and the station is next to roads they already use.


It's irrelevant to the main purpose of the new station which IS to provide an intercity connection to the North / South West axis from AND to Worcestershire. Incidentally I'm sure many people do drive to Warwick Parkway from 'Worcestershire' which of course includes places like Droitwich and Bromsgrove using the convenience of the M5/M42.
I'm not necessarily saying it is irrelevant, but I would agree, Worcestershire Parkway is also for connections onto the XC line north/south. People do drive from Droitwich Spa and Bromsgrove to Warwick Parkway, since the towns are well connected to the motorway, but these people are travelling to London only, and not destinations such as Manchester, Bristol, Leeds etc. Building the new station would reduce the attraction of driving to Warwick, so there would likely be an increase on people using the London services, which is no bad thing.


Well go to Leamington Spa in the morning peak and see how good the current Chiltern and LM services are at deterring Birmingham commuters from cramming on to already-full XC trains - they're not.

The situation in Worcester is not exactly the same – whereas Leamington has all the trains direct, getting an XC train at Worcester would require a change, whilst the LM services are still direct. As I've said before, you can adjust the pricing of tickets on respective routes to discourage Parkway-New St. commuting; it's not as if XC don't do that already...
 
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Unixman

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Building Worcester Parkway would not have much (if any) impact on the traffic using the Worcester by-passes. Since new people who use the station will have previously used the same roads to get to the M5 and drive to their respective destinations. The A4440 between Whittington (A44) and Ketch (A38) roundabouts is now being dualled so that will help any situation that may arise. Very few people drive through Worcester anyhow, and the station is next to roads they already use.


.

It might easily cause a major impact on the traffic. The key bottleneck of the southern link road ( Carrington Bridge) is not being dualled and if there is any increase of traffic due to people attempting to get to the station from the west side of the river then there could be problems.
 

Class172

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It might easily cause a major impact on the traffic. The key bottleneck of the southern link road ( Carrington Bridge) is not being dualled and if there is any increase of traffic due to people attempting to get to the station from the west side of the river then there could be problems.
If those people previously used the car to get to the destinations, they would have to use the same route in order to reach the M5. But yes, if they previously didn't drive anywhere, there would be additional traffic.
 

Unixman

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If those people previously used the car to get to the destinations, they would have to use the same route in order to reach the M5. But yes, if they previously didn't drive anywhere, there would be additional traffic.

The station could generate considerable extra traffic as people switch their commuting patterns from using the city centre stations to Parkway. This could include extra traffic coming from Malvern.

The whole point of the new station is that it is a "Parkway" .....
 
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anthony263

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Shrub Hill station is certainly well used by workers during the peaks travelling to Worcester Royal Hospital. I should know this considering I drive the 31/31B Henwick Park - City Centre - Royal Hospital service on a very regular basis and have to suffer the terrible congestion through the city Centre.

Dont forget traffic in Worcester is in my opinion going to get owrse once the two park and ride services are gone come September. However Worcester Parkway if it is served by regular services into Worcester would certainly helpe take take a lot of traffic off the roads which should help things around Whittington.
 

jimm

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Shrub Hill station is certainly well used by workers during the peaks travelling to Worcester Royal Hospital. I should know this considering I drive the 31/31B Henwick Park - City Centre - Royal Hospital service on a very regular basis and have to suffer the terrible congestion through the city Centre.

Dont forget traffic in Worcester is in my opinion going to get owrse once the two park and ride services are gone come September. However Worcester Parkway if it is served by regular services into Worcester would certainly helpe take take a lot of traffic off the roads which should help things around Whittington.

And "if it is served by regular services into Worcester" is the nub of the matter.

Unless the broader capacity and operating issues around Worcester and on the Cotswold Line to Evesham are dealt with, so you can provide frequent train links between Parkway, the city and elsewhere in the county, then people will just use cars to reach it.

Just plonking this station down before those issues are dealt with and XC gets extra stock to handle demand from Worcestershire is going to be a recipe for problems.
 
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deltic08

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And "if it is served by regular services into Worcester" is the nub of the matter.

Unless the broader capacity and operating issues around Worcester and on the Cotswold Line to Evesham are dealt with, so you can provide frequent train links between Parkway, the city and elsewhere in the county, then people will just use cars to reach it.

Just plonking this station down before those issues are dealt with and XC gets extra stock to handle demand from Worcestershire is going to be a recipe for problems.

Just electrify and extend Cross City line services from Bromsgrove to a bay platform at Parkway. There is plenty of room on the site. Extra stock for XC is then not a problem.
 

The Planner

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They will have to wait a very long time for that, even if they did it off the back of a wider electrification scheme then Worcestershire would have to cough up for the rest of it. Would also make all the work at Bromsgrove a bit redundant too.
 

jimm

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Just electrify and extend Cross City line services from Bromsgrove to a bay platform at Parkway. There is plenty of room on the site. Extra stock for XC is then not a problem.

You just don't get it, do you?

The entire Worcester area is an operating nightmare, worn-out signalling - a failure at Shrub Hill at about 6am on Monday decimated services in all directions for the rest of the morning - and single-line bi-di working through Foregate Street and over the river, so an ever-present risk of equipment failure, plus inflexible working, with limited capacity, on an antique track layout which no-one in their right mind would waste money installing overhead wiring on without a total rebuild, plus new signals. And does Shrub Hill have a viable future once Parkway opens anyway?

There is an excellent explanation of the current set-up here http://www.roscalen.com/signals/Worcester/index.htm

CrossCity services make lots of stops, whereas XC ones don't. So which train would you use, the one that makes lots of stops and even goes back into Worcester first, then all the way round via Droitwich, or the one that goes straight to New Street or calls Bromsgrove and University only en route? And your 'solution' would do nothing for people wanting to go towards Cheltenham, Gloucester, Bristol and Cardiff or beyond on packed XC trains.
 

DarloRich

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And your 'solution' would do nothing for people wanting to go towards Cheltenham, Gloucester, Bristol and Cardiff or beyond on packed XC trains.

But none of that matters to the my station must have a better serviceists. There is a complete inability to even acknowledge a bigger picture. Facts mean nothing!

Coin is what will decide if extra trains stop at this station. Nothing else.
 

Unixman

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And "if it is served by regular services into Worcester" is the nub of the matter.

Unless the broader capacity and operating issues around Worcester and on the Cotswold Line to Evesham are dealt with, so you can provide frequent train links between Parkway, the city and elsewhere in the county, then people will just use cars to reach it.

Just plonking this station down before those issues are dealt with and XC gets extra stock to handle demand from Worcestershire is going to be a recipe for problems.

Given that 500 car parking spaces will be built, I strongly expect that the traffic situation around Whittington ( an already horrible junction ) will just get worse.
 

jimm

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But none of that matters to the my station must have a better serviceists. There is a complete inability to even acknowledge a bigger picture. Facts mean nothing!

Coin is what will decide if extra trains stop at this station. Nothing else.

Don't forget politics - this station is a political project, driven by the county council and the county's Tory MPs.

That said, the council used to be keen on a Malvern-Worcester-Evesham shuttle concept, precisely to - in combination with Cotswold Line trains - give a decent service frequency between the city and the Parkway, but in their desperation to be seen to be doing something over the past couple of years, that idea and tackling the broader issues of modernising Worcestersire's railways and providing trains with adequate capacity to serve the Parkway have just been booted into touch by the council - although the rail industry knows full well they haven't gone away, hence the continued lack of enthusiasm from that quarter.
 

davetheguard

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When new stations are in the pipeline, I also find myself pleased at the prospect of further railway expansion: serving new markets and population; bringing choice of travel mode to a few more thousand people stuck in "road only" mode, with all the congestion, pollution, and delays that can involve.

However, for the first time ever with a new station, I have no enthusiasm for this Worcester Parkway development at all:

1. It will slow down Cotswold Line trains even further;
2. As jimm says, XC don't have the capacity at present to carry the extra passengers;
3. And the "killer concern" for me - it will threaten the future of Shrub Hill; a station that, while not central, is at least actually in Worcester!

This is a sticking plaster on a broken limb. This will not solve Worcester's many rail infrastructure problems. And it won't even improve rail access from the city to Bristol & South Wales unless you've got a car to get out to Parkway.

In short, it is wasting already scant funds, on a "solution" that won't solve anything.
 

Unixman

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The obvious thing to do to that railway is to electrify it all the way from Bristol through to the ECML. This becomes even more important with the upgrade of the GWR main line to S Wales and it seems that it is one of the few remaining strategic routes ( yes I am well aware that there are plenty of long distance routes that are no electrified - Chilterns for eg - which is why I said "strategic") that there are no plans ( as far as I know anyway ) to be electrified. I suspect that it will happen one day but I am not holding my breath.
 
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I suspect Bristol Derby will end up in CP6, Chilterns quite possibly too.

One could argue that the lack of any new DMU's being built in the near future, plus by the time CP6 finishes the 15x will be getting on a bit could see the electrification of all of the major routes radiating out from Brimingham to Bristol, Derby, the Chiltern Mainline and Snow Hill routes to Worcester via Kidderminster and Stratford upon Avon, plus extending electrification from Wolverhampton to Shrewsbury. This would free lots of relatively young DMU's to replace older ones.
 

Class 170101

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To be honest I think Chiltern will be one of the later schemes. The DMUs they have are relatively new and still have plenty of life left in them yet.

However I think getting as far as Plymouth from both Newbury and Birmingham is of more value as far as the wires go at this time.

The HSTs on the London route will be approaching their 50th birthday (if not already there) by the end of CP6 as where as the Chiltern DMUs will be nearer 25 to 30 years old.
 

D6975

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Stopping peak hour commuters using long distance services is simple - don't stop the long distance services there at peak hours.
It's the same situation as Reading commuters packing out Bristol/S Wales/Penzance trains out of Padd. Peak hour TM services used to be first stop Swindon or Chippenham and still ran full and standing out of Pad. Now there's just a few PU only restrictions that get totally ignored. It's been discussed at length on another thread.
 

jimm

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Stopping peak hour commuters using long distance services is simple - don't stop the long distance services there at peak hours.
It's the same situation as Reading commuters packing out Bristol/S Wales/Penzance trains out of Padd. Peak hour TM services used to be first stop Swindon or Chippenham and still ran full and standing out of Pad. Now there's just a few PU only restrictions that get totally ignored. It's been discussed at length on another thread.

Simple, is it? Well given that back up this thread some of the enthusiasts for this scheme - which I would have no concerns about were it part of a comprehensive rail modernisation strategy for Worcestershire, including extra rolling stock on the XC route, rather than the current political vanity project - told us it would improve the connectivity of Worcestershire, I don't think it would go down to well if the county was told 'you can have improved connectivity, but only off-peak and at weekends...'

Without the use of capacity on HSTs, FGW would never be able to shift all the Thames Valley commuters, never mind that there are other reasons for the demise of first stop Swindon trains - that Reading is a major business centre and inward commuting destination in its own right these days and also one of the busiest interchange stations in the country.
 

HowardGWR

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No separate cycle lanes visible (no cycles pictured full stop). Couldn't see how bus pax are dropped off /picked up without getting wet. Looks like a typical car-mad 1980s development.
 

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No separate cycle lanes visible (no cycles pictured full stop). Couldn't see how bus pax are dropped off /picked up without getting wet. Looks like a typical car-mad 1980s development.

There is a bike shed in the artists impression (between the station buildings and the Bristol - Birmingham lines), however unless they build a bike lane into Worcester and towards Pershore anyone using a bike on the B4084 would be risking their life.

The project doesn't seem popular on here but at least they have some vision - e.g. making sure they don't block the second line in case of redoubling. As someone who commutes from Gloucestershire to Worcester I'm supportive at least!
 

Llanigraham

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Isn't there already a cycle route through Norton village?
I'm sure there were signs when I worked in Norton.
 

DynamicSpirit

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No separate cycle lanes visible (no cycles pictured full stop). Couldn't see how bus pax are dropped off /picked up without getting wet. Looks like a typical car-mad 1980s development.

The PDF describing the proposals (http://www.fsb.org.uk/092/assets/worcestershire-parkway-station.pdf) does state:

http://www.fsb.org.uk/092/assets/worcestershire-parkway-station.pdf said:
The station complex will be accessed via a new
roundabout junction on the B4084. The existing
40 mph section will be extended beyond the
junction and a footway/cycleway facility provided.
<snip>
Pedestrian and cycle links will be provided from
Woodbury Lane.

And also:
http://www.fsb.org.uk/092/assets/worcestershire-parkway-station.pdf said:
The access road
splits into two on the approach to the station
building, firstly to allow bus and taxi services to
the front of the building and the second route is
for passengers being dropped off/collected from
cars.

Although it's hard to see any of that on the picture - which also seems to show the bus stops rather a long way from the station building. Perhaps worth querying it - eg. with local councillors - if anyone who lives in the area is concerned.
 

Llanigraham

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The second quote above states Woodbury lane, which confirms the comment I made about the cycle route through Norton village.
 

D6975

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Simple, is it? Well given that back up this thread some of the enthusiasts for this scheme - which I would have no concerns about were it part of a comprehensive rail modernisation strategy for Worcestershire, including extra rolling stock on the XC route, rather than the current political vanity project - told us it would improve the connectivity of Worcestershire, I don't think it would go down to well if the county was told 'you can have improved connectivity, but only off-peak and at weekends...'

Without the use of capacity on HSTs, FGW would never be able to shift all the Thames Valley commuters, never mind that there are other reasons for the demise of first stop Swindon trains - that Reading is a major business centre and inward commuting destination in its own right these days and also one of the busiest interchange stations in the country.

I didn't say anything about not having peak hour services.
I said don't stop long distance services there.
At Peak hours you run (Chelt) - WS Parkway - Brum services with DMUs.
 

Noddy

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The second quote above states Woodbury lane, which confirms the comment I made about the cycle route through Norton village.

Yep I'd missed that - too busy looking at the pretty pictures. If bike access is from Woodbury Lane (presumably through the industrial estate) I think they need to concentrate bike facilities on that side of the station as no one likes to haul their bike across platforms to access storage especially if they have to go back again.

I have to say that with c2500 (c10000 people?) homes being built within a couple of miles, if they develop good bike and footpath links I do think it will be reasonably successful and seen as environmentally friendly. Not to mention it's very close to J7 and could also improve links from Pershore & Evesham into Birmingham. Assuming enough trains stop.
 
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