Not with the current track work layout at Foregate St, whose two platforms act practically as two separate bi-directional stations.
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It seems that Worcestershire Parkway is a success...
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gg1
Established Member
Ah okay, thanks.
I knew it effectively operated as a pair of single track stations but wasn't sure if it was possible to switch from the Snow Hill to Cotswold line north of the station, looking at the track layout on google maps it clearly isn't.
edwin_m
Veteran Member
The suggestion a few posts back was that a connection from Parkway to Foregate Street would important, due to the central location of the latter.
PsychoMouse
Member
Does it really make much difference? It's a 6-7 minute walk from Shrub Hill to the centre.
anthony263
Established Member
Should have been stations built at Henwick, Fernhill Heath and near London Road all having a minimum of a hourly service offering cross city journeys
GWVillager
Member
I wouldn’t be opposed to opening Henwick as well. But this development looks to be more than just a dormitory suburb. A (granted, vague) “town centre” and secondary school will ease the pressure on Worcester, and as others have commented, it would be relatively easy to improve rail services to the degree that most journeys into Worcester would be by train.
10,000 new taxpayers? As for capacity, a single 2 coach 172 would be very easy to find, especially once the Hereford line becomes fully 196-operated. A Henwick to WOP service would only need a single unit shuttling back and forth.
Bartsimho
Member
For services would a Oxford-Hereford service work to supplement the London train along the route although the long single track does make this unlikely to be possible. (Oxford, Combe, Finstock, Charlbury, Shipton, Kingham, Moreton-in-Marsh, Honeybourne, Ecesham, Pershore, Worcestershire Parkway, Worcester Shrub Hill, Worcester Foregate Street, Malvern Link, Great Malvern, Colwall, Ledbury, Hereford)
GWVillager
Member
I have created a thread in speculative discussions to explore the possibilities of Henwick, WOP improvements etc., as I do think there is enough to discuss that we ought not hijack this thread!
Doctor Fegg
Established Member
If you're the ghost of Roger Bannister, maybe. It's 1km on the dot from Shrub Hill forecourt to the High Street, so 12 minutes at a steady 3mph.
PsychoMouse
Member
Still plenty close enough to mean than not every train has to stop at both stations.
I don’t disagree with any of this but for context all councils are given a housing allocation (the number of houses they have to approve) by central government which the have to bring forward as part of a local plan. In this case Worcestershire Parkway falls in the Wychavon District Council area, not Worcester City Council area. Wychavon like many other district councils seem to currently favouring small numbers of large developments (often called ‘garden villages’) in their areas, rather than lots of small to mid-size piecemeal developments. Typically in the districts where I’ve seen them proposed they tend to be either on the edge of a neighbouring city boundary and/or close to major transport links, and in this case it’s close to the new Parkway Station, M5 J7 and fairly close to Worcester.
The advantage with this strategy for district councils appears (to me) to be you are only having to bring forward and develop a small number of controversial sites, rather than have to deal with a large number of controversial sites. If Worcestershire County Council who AIUI have responsibility for transport planning, also had responsibility for housing plans, or if housing allocations were weighted differently between cities and districts, or if there was less nimbism, housing proposals may be different, but in this case you have three different authorities which all have completing demands and responsibilities. I’m not saying it’s right (or wrong), it’s just the way the system is currently weighted because of all these issues.
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The Rome2Rio website suggests 14 minute walk : https://www.rome2rio.com/map/Worcester-Foregate-Street/Worcester-Shrub-Hill-Station
My own experience (!) suggests that's about right, and assumes you know the way, including exit from the platform at Shrub Hill, which was not obvious.
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These maps are not exactly helpful; https://assets.nationalrail.co.uk/e...e83205c74f/Worcester_Shrub_Hill__WOS__OTI.pdf
Best of luck to all hopeful Worcester interchangers!
How good is interchange at Worcester Parkway?
GWVillager
Member
It’s rather good. Sheltered and well-signposted, with a lift if needed.
How well do trains connect? w-N, W-S, e-N, e-S, n- w, n-e, s-w, s-e? Are they advertised; guaranteed; held??
The Planner
Veteran Member
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Why would they be guaranteed or held? A Nottingham Cardiff has a 25 minute connection into a Paddington or 55 minute into a Malvern/Hereford bound service. Cardiff Nottingham is 9 minutes into a Paddington or 37 minutes into a Malvern/Hereford.
GWVillager
Member
Forgive me...
The connections aren't terrible, but equally they're not impressive either. Long waits are common, they're not advertised that I know of, and I highly doubt that they're held, given the business of the lines.
It's worth noting that connection times vary throughout the day. RTT now is showing very different times, for example.
Not what the modelling says.
Many people aren't going to Foregate Street and many of these houses will be so far from Parkway they won't want to drive their car to catch a less than hourly train that doesn't go to where they want either.
Northstowe near Cambridge has reached 1,200 occupied homes and there isn't isn't single shop yet.
Invariably these bold promises are made to get through planning with the obvious intent to renegotiate / renege later.
Very unlikely you will even get to 50% despite an improved service. The Parkway site is so big, many of the houses are too distant to be within the non driving catchment and car ownership will be 1 car per adult.
They aren't given a fixed allocation. The relevant development plan covers South Worcestershire, which is Wychavon, Malvern Hills and Worcester.
The plan determined (completely in error unless you think in 2D) that Worcester doesn't have the available land to fulfil its housing needs, making the plan a 'partnership' where the excess houses are dumped elsewhere, at the lowest possible density. 10,000 homes would increase Wychavon by around 15% on its own.
Worcestershire Parkway is indeed less bad than some of the seriously mad, bad and utterly bonkers schemes that emerged from the 'garden village' fad. Quite a few bit the dust when people realised building a suburb of 3,000 homes 10 miles from the nearest secondary school perhaps wasn't a brilliant idea after all.
Local councils are given numbers-there is talk of making them advisory rather mandatory, see: https://committees.parliament.uk/co...ernment is on,housing targets for local plans.
But I absolutely take your point about the joint plan-I didn’t know they were doing this.
Doctor Fegg
Established Member
No coffee, though!
GWVillager
Member
It is a pain, that!
When Worcestershire Parkway opened on 20th February 2020 there was a tenant in negotiations to take the lease of the retail facility. The Covid shutdown four weeks later meant that it didn't go ahead and currently the facility is available so perhaps GWVillager and/or Doctor Fegg might like to take this on so I can get a coffee in the morning.
GWVillager
Member
Where is said retail facility? I can’t picture it.
Doctor Fegg
Established Member
Funnily enough I did chair a (community-owned) deli and cafe in a Cotswold Line town for a couple of years, but once is enough thank you
Just going to quote the following from the New XC Contract thread to avoid dragging that discussion off-topic:
Could that be associated with the fact that usage is exceeding expectations (I'm guessing political pressure is not having much sway by itself)? Are you able to elaborate on the chatter?—I accept that there will be nothing concrete in it of course.
Late to this thread, sorry.
According to a letter in this month’s Modern Railways, the reduced Hereford - London service is causing some people to drive from the environs of Hereford to Worcestershire Parkway to catch the train there. If that’s the case (it‘s plausible) then that wouldn’t have been in th e original forecasts so may explain part of the result.
£3m-£4m Per km. Edinburgh to Glasgow was £4m and that was spent 7-10 years ago, with plenty of inflation since.
According to a letter in this month’s Modern Railways, the reduced Hereford - London service is causing some people to drive from the environs of Hereford to Worcestershire Parkway to catch the train there. If that’s the case (it‘s plausible) then that wouldn’t have been in th e original forecasts so may explain part of the result.
£3m-£4m Per km. Edinburgh to Glasgow was £4m and that was spent 7-10 years ago, with plenty of inflation since.
Techniquest
Veteran Member
To be fair, I can't say I blame anyone driving from the Hereford area to Worcestershire Parkway and getting the train from there. Much higher service level from Parkway for one, and no faffing around with long connection times in Worcester. Whenever I'm connecting onto GWR, it's usually more than 40 minutes if it's all on time, some of the connections heading back are better but not great.
Like this evening, one of my plans for my day off featured heading towards London but the 55 minute connection in Worcester was just ridiculous. Fortunately I soon changed that plan, and am staying put tonight for my own bed!
Don't get me wrong, I'd have used that 55 minutes wisely, but it was incredibly off-putting. Yes I could have gone via Newport, but the connection was not much better and the fare way too expensive.
If I wasn't in a job earning reasonable money, and allowed me some sort of actual life, I'd seriously consider helping to run a small coffee shop at Worcestershire Parkway! It would probably be the first vegan-only coffee shop though, no animal product whatsoever would be sold on the premises. It would work in Manchester, but probably not Worcestershire Parkway
Like this evening, one of my plans for my day off featured heading towards London but the 55 minute connection in Worcester was just ridiculous. Fortunately I soon changed that plan, and am staying put tonight for my own bed!
Don't get me wrong, I'd have used that 55 minutes wisely, but it was incredibly off-putting. Yes I could have gone via Newport, but the connection was not much better and the fare way too expensive.
If I wasn't in a job earning reasonable money, and allowed me some sort of actual life, I'd seriously consider helping to run a small coffee shop at Worcestershire Parkway! It would probably be the first vegan-only coffee shop though, no animal product whatsoever would be sold on the premises. It would work in Manchester, but probably not Worcestershire Parkway
Maybe a handful of people, but the number doing that drive is not going to be that great and unlikely to make any significant difference to the custom at Worcestershire Parkway.
That the station is very busy is far more likely to be down people who previously drove to Warwick Parkway or Birmingham International from the Worcester area but can now rely on finding a parking space at a station serving the city (fun fact, Great Malvern station has more car park spaces than Worcester Shrub Hill), plus the improved journey/connection opportunities Parkway offers generally to Worcestershire and the North Cotswolds, and the inevitable substantial underestimate of custom that all the modelling systems used for rail projects seem to produce time after time. Will the penny ever drop?
And I know, as I've spoken to some on trains, that there are people driving from places like Kidderminster, Stourport and Droitwich to get a train to Oxford or Reading, rather than going via Birmingham, or driving all the way.
The reference was about what people may be doing as a result of the reduced direct early morning services from Hereford to London. And there are no connections in these cases, as WMR did not want to run a super-early train in place of the 04.50, and GWR is still using the path of the former 06.43 from Hereford from Great Malvern into Worcester, as the train now starts there at 07.13.
Outside the peaks, when the any permitted route off-peak fares kick in, then travel between Hereford and London via Newport is a different proposition - assuming TfW actually manages to provide a shiny high-capacity train rather than a two-car Class 15x formation.
LickeyIncliner
Member
As well as the letter in September Modern Railways, there's an articcle (pp78-79) by Ian Baxter of SLC Rail which gives a bit more background to what's been discussed in this thread. It includes the statement that "Half of its [i.e. Worcestershire Parkway's] passenger journeys are wholly new to rail" - though it isn't clear whether that is based on a survey or on forecasting
The Worcestershire County Council employed an independent Market Research company to carry out surveys on Wednesdays and Saturdays. This is being repeated, but to date the results show that Ian's figure is low as currently it is over 60% new to rail. So these are additional to those who in the past may have driven to Warwick Parkway or Birmingham International to catch a train .
The direct early morning services were withdrawn by GWR from Hereford as the on train data showed there were only 8 passengers on the 04.49 and 12 on the 06.43. The letter in Modern Railways about these few passengers driving to Parkway is interesting as the AA route planner says that it is 31.5 miles and will take 56 minutes.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
I think the problem here is that you have two hourly services - one running roughly N-S and one running roughly E-W, where passengers may reasonably want to connect in any of the four combinations (N-E, N-W, S-E, S-W). It's plainly impossible to construct a timetable in which all of those connections in both directions are reasonably timed (unless all four trains heading in the four different directions turn up at the same time every hour and then spend 5 minutes waiting for each other). If we want all interchanges to have decent connections, then the only likely way to achieve that is to make all the services more frequent (which sadly we don't have the infrastructure to do)
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