What a stupid decision that was. I don;t agree with converting heavy rail to light rail.
Great if you want to travel locally, rubbish if you want to travel further afield.
Surely the Thames Travel X2 would be extended to turn there instead of Wantage marketplace to increase the frequency of bus routes to the station. Or the X2 could be merged with the 67,extended to Swindon at the Faringdon end and have a half-hourly frequency the whole way Swindon-Wallingford. It would be very profitable as a station and the feeder bus service because ,as you said, it would save people having to drive all the way to Didcot and/or Swindon for commuting further afield. Reopening Steventon could have a similar purpose for Harwell Campus.A bit late but I'm very familiar with the plan - it came up as an issue in a council by-election there last year. I suspect it will happen eventually due to the rapid population growth (especially in Grove). However the new station would have patching issues and is inconvenient for Wantage in particular - the old station was called Wantage Road as you often found for stations a long way out of town. The town used to have a tramway for the connection between the centre and station, but now there is just a half hourly bus. Presumably though much of its use would be drivers from Faringdon, Shrivenham, and the like, who currently use Swindon or Didcot.
Surely the Thames Travel X2 would be extended to turn there instead of Wantage marketplace to increase the frequency of bus routes to the station. Or the X2 could be merged with the 67,extended to Swindon at the Faringdon end and have a half-hourly frequency the whole way Swindon-Wallingford. It would be very profitable as a station and the feeder bus service because ,as you said, it would save people having to drive all the way to Didcot and/or Swindon for commuting further afield. Reopening Steventon could have a similar purpose for Harwell Campus.
Newcastle-under-Lyme. I know it's near Stoke, but it's still a town of 70k+ people with zero rail transport.
Fleetwood,Lancashire has the tram to Blackpool but many blame the loss of the BR service on the towns decline.And working near there I can see that this causes a massive image problem.
Basically if a town doesn't have a railway station it's as if it doesn't exist.
Fleetwood,Lancashire has the tram to Blackpool but many blame the loss of the BR service on the towns decline.
... Shutting a railway station as a new town gets going is daft, ... .
Oldham mumps had a 15 minute frequency throughout the day. Trains continued throughout the north of Manchester not just Victoria.There is now a tram every 6 minutes from Oldham town centre to Manchester, where connections can be made to heavy rail services. This compares with the previous heavy rail service from the poorly sited Mumps station to M/c Victoria only, every 30 minutes.
Conversion of heavy rail to light rail is an excellent way to reduce costs, improve frequency and increase penetration of urban centres. Other heavy rail lines in the M/c area should be converted to light rail, in particular the lines to Glossop/Hadfield and Marple Rose Hill via Bredbury.
Fleetwood is quite big isnt it?What are the largest Towns in the UK that have no Railway Station?
Well, then - Port Stanley? That would be a timetabling challenge across time zones.Pushing my luck, and the definition of the UK to breaking point.....
Gibraltar
Newcastle-under-Lyme. I know it's near Stoke, but it's still a town of 70k+ people with zero rail transport.
Well, then - Port Stanley? That would be a timetabling challenge across time zones.
I always feel a bit sorry for those whose services were lost at the tail end of the Beeching cuts (say 1968 onwards), because a high proportion of these were really stupid e.g. Fleetwood, Colne-Skipton, Hunstanton, Grimsby-Louth-Firsby
Cirencester, 20k but nearest main station is Stroud and Kemble. Can even get a hourly bus to Cheltenham and Swindon although both take good 50 minutes.
Are you calling the various planning deparments that worked on Milton Keynes, along with Mrs Barbara Castle, 'daft'? (Plans for MK were announced before Oxford - Bletchley-Cambridge was set for closure - entirely - on Dec 31, 1967. Bletchley-Bedford only survived by a freak accident.)
Well, it's a bit daft to remove public transport facilities to a place which is going to be developed from a small town into a big one, especially when it is a useful railway line connecting several important places. There's a lack here of what's these days called 'joined-up thinking'. Proposing to close the Oxford to Cambridge line after planning for the new town development of Milton Keynes really does show badly coordinated official policy. Having a big new town on that line would have helped develop it, by putting on it a fourth major town, and one with an interchange with the West Coast Main Line to boot.
The problem with these threads is that people don't define the terms at the outset.
The station in the town of Newcastle-u-L closed. But how to define the "town" ?
There is however a railway station within the Borough of Newcastle which is still open.
Though many people would struggle to realise it's in the borough.
The station in the town of Newcastle-u-L closed.
There is however a railway station within the Borough of Newcastle which is still open.