Least successful new stations

[William3000]

It had 343,000 passengers in 2019/20. Is that really a disaster?

For the scale of the station and with intercity services it’s very poor.

 

[Glenn1969]

What's the feeling about the recently-opened Worcestershire Parkway and Warrington West?

Worcestershire Parkway had 25,478 passengers and 63,915 interchanges in 2019/20. But that was in a few weeks after opening and then the pandemic hit

 

[daodao]

Fishguard and Goodwick

Any additional passenger traffic that was established following the re-opening of the station in 2012 will have been killed off by reducing the service to 2 trains per day (those that connect with the Irish boat service). It is also only useful for longer-distance journeys as it not possible to travel direct to the nearest main town of Haverfordwest.

 

[Ianno87]

Fishguard and Goodwick

Bow Street

Any additional passenger traffic that was established following the re-opening of the station in 2012 will have been killed off by reducing the service to 2 trains per day (those that connect with the Irish boat service).

It's an awfully long way to send a train for the benefit of one relatively small community

 

[DannyMich2018]

Bermuda Park near Nuneaton has never been observed busy no doubt people prefer Nuneaton which is very close and better facilities.

 

[Nova1]

Kenilworth.

Has had a fair amount of entries and exits recorded, but isn't that useful if you live in Kenilworth. Leamington Spa is a short ride by car, or by bus, which offers good connections to London and Birmingham. It's useful going towards Coventry, but if you've got your own car it's much more convenient to drive to Coventry station. Not to mention WMR have been providing it with a horrible service...

 

[ChrisC]

East Midlands Parkway surely a prime candidate here? There are towns on the EML without stations, yet we built one in the middle of nowhere instead.

East Midlands Parkway does have a potentially very wide catchment area with good road connections but in many ways there’s never been much incentive to use it.

I don’t think crowds of people would suddenly flock to use it but there are improvements which could be made to make it a little more attractive. It’s never going to be used as a Park and Ride Station for leisure and shopping trips to Nottingham, Leicester or Derby because of the car park charge on top of fairly high train fares. The fares for leisure journeys for day trips to the north are often twice the price of those from Nottingham or Derby because there are no Off Peak Day Returns to Sheffield, Manchester or Leeds. Unbelievably even the fare to Birmingham is higher than it is from Nottingham. I can’t understand why the cheaper fares available from Nottingham and Derby have not been made available from EMP especially when many of the fares from Nottingham are valid via EMP anyway.

 

[The Planner]

Kenilworth.

Has had a fair amount of entries and exits recorded, but isn't that useful if you live in Kenilworth. Leamington Spa is a short ride by car, or by bus, which offers good connections to London and Birmingham. It's useful going towards Coventry, but if you've got your own car it's much more convenient to drive to Coventry station. Not to mention WMR have been providing it with a horrible service...

Would have thought Tile Hill was the easier to get to.

 

[nw1]

To be fair it was built as an interchange station with the Trafford park line extension in mind.

Why Pomona incidentally? Related to the California town?

 

[LowLevel]

Tyseley Warwick Road. Can't be used now due to being blocked by the ORR for some reason I believe; stand to be corrected. Never reached its full potential.

It's in regular use for charters.

I'll add Willington to the list - the failure to reopen the Ivanhoe line proper to passenger services has left it a big disadvantage service wise.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

A few on light rail:
-Pomona (Metrolink) ditto

Do a lot of supporters use it on match days?

On the Eccles (Metrolink) line, I would say that more supporters probably use the Exchange Quay tram stop, rather than Pomona, as it's a slightly shorter walk from there to the Manchester United FC stadium.

 

[Rail Ranger]

Why Pomona incidentally? Related to the California town?

The stop is located near the former Pomona Docks. The area is also referred to as Pomona Island (between the Manchester Ship Canal and the Bridgewater Canal).

 

[erk]

The stop is located near the former Pomona Docks. The area is also referred to as Pomona Island (between the Manchester Ship Canal and the Bridgewater Canal).

And I believe the Pomona Docks were so named because they served the apple trade.

 

[Rail Ranger]

The Pomona Docks were built on the site of the Pomona Palace pleasure grounds.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Manchester's Pomona pre-dates the California one (1875), but both are named after the Roman god of fruit.
The area was Manchester's Royal Botanical Gardens from 1828, and was then developed as Pomona "pleasure gardens" before being acquired for Manchester's Ship Canal docks.

It might have been called Throstle Nest, after the nearby Bridgewater Canal bridge and former lock into the River Irwell.
The CLC and BR had large signal boxes nearby carrying this name, until the closure of Manchester Central station and the line towards Stockport (which is mostly now part of Metrolink).

 

[24Grange]

Into the future maybe ? Okehampton ? up a steep hill from town - 2 hourly service to start.

 

[The exile]

I'd recommend page twenty of this document >> https://assets.publishing.service.g..._data/file/3932/demand-forecasting-report.pdf

The benchmarks for most stations seem fairly realistic (in that broadly half are below par, half are above expectations)

Imperial Wharf, Chandlers Ford, Liverpool South Parkway, Newcraighall, Merryton, Aylesbury Vale are on the "naughty list", but that's to be expected given that not everything is going to meet its benchmark - however much some people may want to focus only on Ebbw Vale (which was approved based on lower numbers of demand but then the steel works closed and significantly more people needed to leave Ebbw Vale for work each morning, compared to having a local steelworks that employed huge numbers - I'm not knocking Ebbw Vale - it's clearly a success - but I do get tired when people bring up it's significantly above expectations numbers to suggest that there's a problems with the methodology for other projects - one outlier for specific reasons isn't indicative of a problem with the BCR criteria)

Of course some stations get the green light regardless of any business case - e.g. we didn't open the line to Tweedbank because of amazing passenger expectations, we built it because of good old fashioned political hor

Someone from somewhere like Rotherham/ Mansfield/ Matlock might be attracted to drive to a station….

The numbers aren't brilliant but it feels indicative that a station with hundreds of thousands of passengers per annum is regularly brought up as a failure on here whilst a station with a hundred passengers per annum will be defended as providing a vital social service giving unquantifiable public benefits

Doubt that an InterCity Parkway-type station will ever gain many “brownie points” on the social benefits scale. An existing station in a low income, low local employment, low car ownership areA almost certainly does - even if only for a relatively small number of people.

Doubt a parkway station where a measure of success is in its attracting people to drive long distances to it from places that already have train services is going to score very highly on environmental brownie points either!

 

[xotGD]

Dunston. Was never busy when I used to use it. At one point it dropped to a token service. More trains now, but don't most people still catch the bus to Newcastle or the Metro Centre?

 

[Tomos y Tanc]

However much some people may want to focus only on Ebbw Vale (which was approved based on lower numbers of demand but then the steel works closed and significantly more people needed to leave Ebbw Vale for work each morning, compared to having a local steelworks that employed huge numbers - I'm not knocking Ebbw Vale - it's clearly a success - but I do get tired when people bring up it's significantly above expectations numbers to suggest that there's a problems with the methodology for other projects - one outlier for specific reasons isn't indicative of a problem with the BCR criteria)

I'm not sure I get your point here. Ebbw Vale steelworks stopped employing 'huge numbers' in the 1970s. It's true that a rump tinplate works employing a fraction of the workforce lingered on until 2002, but even that had gone years before the eronious BCR forecast was made.

I'm not saying the methodology is generally wrong but the closure of the steelworks doesn't cut the mustard when it comes to explaining how wrong the Ebbw Vale forecasts were.

 

[Roast Veg]

East Midlands Parkway was extremely useful when my train failed to call at Loughborough...

 

[snowball]

When the Borders line (re)opened the stations nearer Edinburgh were said to be doing badly. How are they getting on?

 

[Gathursty]

I agree that Fishguard is a long way down a branch but it is more deserving than say the hourly Orrell* - Kirkby service (until Merseyrail open their wallets and build through to Skelmersdale)

*Orrell is where most people get off/on, beyond is pretty much fresh air.

 

[bramling]

One that doesn’t seem to have been mentioned on here is the intermediate local stations between Bridgend and Swansea. I’m not sure if they’ve picked up a bit over the last couple of decades, but certainly this scheme was regarded as comparatively unsuccessful in the early days.

 

[DorkingMain]

Basically a convenient turnback for the "North Northamptonshire semi-fast" service.

With the added benefit of sticking a half-hourly Luton Airport express on the southern end of it.

 

[daodao]

One that doesn’t seem to have been mentioned on here is the intermediate local stations between Bridgend and Swansea. I’m not sure if they’ve picked up a bit over the last couple of decades, but certainly this scheme was regarded as comparatively unsuccessful in the early days.

Pyle has reasonable usage (126k pa in 2019/20), possibly as it acts as a railhead for Porthcawl and has a few more weekday services and a Sunday service, compared to the other 4 re-opened stations on the Swanline route. These other 4 stations each have low patronage (50k pa in 2019/20); a basic 2 hourly service is not attractive to potential passengers.

 

[dk1]

One that doesn’t seem to have been mentioned on here is the intermediate local stations between Bridgend and Swansea. I’m not sure if they’ve picked up a bit over the last couple of decades, but certainly this scheme was regarded as comparatively unsuccessful in the early days.

Swanline was a disaster back in the day.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

The Corby theme park idea was Wonderworld" ......

 

[nw1]

Manchester's Pomona pre-dates the California one (1875), but both are named after the Roman god of fruit.
The area was Manchester's Royal Botanical Gardens from 1828, and was then developed as Pomona "pleasure gardens" before being acquired for Manchester's Ship Canal docks.).

Ah ok, a rare case where I had heard of the overseas usage before the British one. Denver is another example, though hardly surprising as the US one is a large city and the British one, a small village.

 

[Paula hewson]

Worcestershire Parkway had 25,478 passengers and 63,915 interchanges in 2019/20. But that was in a few weeks after opening and then the pandemic hit

If they continue to charge £6 more for peak day return to New Street than Shrub Hill it will always be underused. Especially as free on street parking at WSH.

 

[Mat17]

Does Kirkstall Forge get many passengers? There doesn't seem to be much there.