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Most failed/disappointing new stations/reopenings - and why?

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70014IronDuke

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Taken from this thread
https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...l-ones-were-closed.189667/page-3#post-4174577

Ivybridge. The old station (1848-1959) was at the North edge of the town, but at least right in the centre on the East-West axis.

The new station (1994) is on the Eastern edge of the town, and quite inconveniently sited. The main reason it was built here is they were intending it to be used for park-and-ride and so wanted more straightforward access from the A38. This never took off, evidenced by the large and perpetually empty car park which today is mainly used by driving instructors and skateboarding teens.

Is Ivybridge the most disappointing station reopening of the past 50 years? Is it the poor service, poor marketing in the early days, or was the traffic just not there?
It got 66,500 passengers in 2013-4, and just 56,900 in 2017-2018. I'm not sure - does anything but local trains stop there today? Modern GWR don't seem too keen on it.

Which others haven't worked out - and why?

Many cite East Midlands Parkway as a "white elephant" - but even those same posters admit the service is poor and not really conducive to luring M1 drivers out of their cars.

Going back a bit further (and a bit more modest) Wigston South (reopened 1986 according to Wiki - I thought it was much earlier) I thought it was in the seems to have shone for awhile and then faded, again, not helped I suspect by XC trains seemingly reluctant to stop there.

One good point compared to modern openings-reopenings, both Ivybrdge and South Wigston were 'cheap' - at £380k and £135k respectively - prices which wouldn't get you a fifth BCR review these days. (Prices on the stations' Wiki pages)
 
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chefchenko

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Edinburgh gateway seems to get poor usage dosent it ? And I’m really interested to see how the Worcester parkway takes off !
 

Peter C

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Worcester Parkway I think will be popular.
But aren't XC only calling slow services at Worcestershire Parkway? Surely that won't help much with connections. One might as well drive! But that's for discussion in the WOP thread.

-Peter
 

alangla

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SAK (Stirling, Alloa, Kincardine) is a bit of a white elephant these days sadly. Opened 2005, pretty much abandoned east of Alloa since Longannet closed in 2015. The electrification of the western part & passenger numbers from Alloa tell a different story, but shortsightedness in not making passive provision for doubling mean the service isn’t likely to get much better.
 
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Jorge Da Silva

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But aren't XC only calling slow services at Worcestershire Parkway? Surely that won't help much with connections. One might as well drive! But that's for discussion in the WOP thread.

-Peter

Yes but I would argue WOP would provide a convient interchange between XC slows and GWR and I think it is cheaper I heard. What about some reopenings which failed to meet there target of usage.
 

tbtc

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I'd recommend page iv of this document: https://assets.publishing.service.g..._data/file/3932/demand-forecasting-report.pdf << it's interesting/ sobering reading (compared to some of the happy clappy stuff on here).

If you ignore Alloa (which was re-opened as the price paid for putting freight through there, to take freight off the Forth Bridge, so wasn't built because of an amazing business case - it was always going to be opened so the research beforehand was minimal - the report shows that it went much higher than expected passenger numbers because little attention was paid to predict those numbers accurately)...

... and Ebbw Vale (which was opened on the basis of an hourly service to the relatively struggling Newport... but was instead given an hourly service to the relatively thriving capital of Cardiff... with the subsequent closure of the steel works meaning more people had to leave Ebbw Vale to get work)...

...then the benchmark for passenger numbers generally looks realistic compared to what happened. I don't know why the Edinburgh forecasters were too optimistic for Newcraighall but not optimistic enough for Edinburgh Park (maybe they dampened expectations for Edinburgh Park after Newcraighall didn't live up to its predicted numbers?), but the stats show that it's a bit of a guessing game with around as many successes as failures.

Of course, enthusiasts being enthusiasts, it's easy to focus on only the over-performing ones and conveniently ignore the others - it'd be interesting to debate why the Borders link underestimated Galashiels demand but overestimated the Midlothian demand (Lothian Buses have reduced their frequencies, so it's not as if the bus routes have been over performing).

I say all of this to defend the processes - of course you're going to get some wrong and some right - it might take a decade to get a station built, during which time the economy will be up and down a bit and there could be thousands of new houses built or a local factory closed - but the guesswork is "over" around as often as its "under" - the process seems to work. But I'd be interested in seeing a more modern set of figures!

Many cite East Midlands Parkway as a "white elephant" - but even those same posters admit the service is poor and not really conducive to luring M1 drivers out of their cars

East Midlands Parkway [EMD] was built far too early, but such is the disconnect between infrastructure and operating trains on the modern railway - if they'd waited until EMR were recasting the timetable with 10 coach AT300s then you could justify stopping four long distance high speed services per hour there, providing a great "turn up and go" frequency for Nottingham/ Derby/ Leicester commuters and for northern motorists being able to get a London train. That could have been transformational.

Instead, they imposed it on an EMT franchise that didn't have sufficient seats for existing passengers and could only stop a couple of LDHS services there per hour. Given that the LDHS frequency is half hourly for both Nottingham and Derby(Sheffield) that meant doing one of each (would have been politically bad to provide no service to Derby or no service to Nottingham)... so that means a 15/45 minute frequency for Leicester/London (which isn't attractive) and just hourly for Derby/Nottingham (plus the slow Ivanhoe Sprinter) - not enough to tempt drivers out of their cars.

Same goes for Low Moor outside Bradford - opened when there was little scope to stop much there, rather than waiting for a re-cast. Worcestershire Parkway feels like it'l be similar - opened in a rush when there's no scope for stopping the Bristol services there (and therefore only a minimal frequency into Birmingham).

IMHO you can get away with an infrequent service (e.g. hourly gaps) if it's a residential station, because people will walk there or drive locally. But it's really unattractive for a Parkway station since anyone driving down the Motorway won't be able to time their arrival to suit a train (e.g. if EMD had a good frequency then you might attract a motorist from Oxfordshire to use it to get the train into Nottingham, or a motorist from the Peak District to get the train into London - but the M1 is stressful enough without having to time your journey perfectly for a wait of forty five minutes or more).

Edinburgh gateway seems to get poor usage dosent it ?

I think that Edinburgh Gateway was a station that had to be built for political reasons - giving passengers from Fife/beyond a link to Edinburgh Airport and the booming area around the Gyle/ Edinburgh Park - that's a big political "sell" - regardless of whether there's sufficient demand. I used it last summer - was the only person at the tram stop and train platforms other than ScotRail staff (during the middle of the "Fringe", so Edinburgh was heaving) but it's the kind of station that may come good in five/ten years time as western Edinburgh expands. Too early to write it off.
 
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Bertie the bus

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Lostock Hall has never been very busy. Currently about 120 passenger journeys (60 passengers) per day for 38 services. It has always been billed as a park and ride station which is a complete joke. Until about a couple of years ago the car park was just waste ground and often had various bits of Network Rail equipment dumped in it. Even now it is fully tarmaced there are only about a dozen spaces but normally only about 5 cars in it, if that.
 

edwin_m

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EMP was built far too early, but such is the disconnect between infrastructure and operating trains on the modern railway - if they'd waited until EMR were recasting the timetable with 10 coach AT300s then you could justify stopping four long distance high speed services per hour there, providing a great "turn up and go" frequency for Nottingham/ Derby/ Leicester commuters and for northern motorists being able to get a London train. That could have been transformational.

Instead, they imposed it on an EMT franchise that didn't have sufficient seats for existing passengers and could only stop a couple of LDHS services there per hour. Given that the LDHS frequency is half hourly for both Nottingham and Derby(Sheffield) that meant doing one of each (would have been politically bad to provide no service to Derby or no service to Nottingham)... so that means a 15/45 minute frequency for Leicester/London (which isn't attractive) and just hourly for Derby/Nottingham (plus the slow Ivanhoe Sprinter) - not enough to tempt drivers out of their cars.
I completely disagree with this.

The original National Express franchise was actively promoting and developing the Parkway, but for various reasons it didn't get built until EMT had taken over. The fastest London service that stops in the current timetable is a HST, which usually has plenty of capacity. This will no longer be the case when many of the AT300 services will only be 5-car. And it's not good transport policy to encourage people to drive long distances on the motorway when the could have got trains from closer to home (and the ECML is so much faster than the MML that most people from further north on the M1 will go there instead in any case).
 

xotGD

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Dunston: The service got reduced to a token level due to lack of use. More trains now, so hopefully more passengers are using it.
 

70014IronDuke

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Dunston: The service got reduced to a token level due to lack of use. More trains now, so hopefully more passengers are using it.

Hmmmm. According to the Wiki page, quoting ORR figures, usage of Dunston has risen over five-fold since the vastly enhanced TT was introduced in Dec 2013 - from c 2,300 to 13,000 per annum.

So that looks, on the surface, quite impressive. However, when you consider that's only 36 passengers a day, and the current service is 42* trains each weekday, alas, it means not a few trains must stop and open their doors to merely ventilate the air. Let's hope the numbers do improve to justify such a good service.
* I only counted once on RTT. Apols for any errors.
 

Polarbear

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Sinfin Central & Sinfin North were two stations opened in the mid 1970's that did appallingly badly. I know Sinfin North was located in the middle of an industrial area south of Derby & had no public access, and Sinfin Central was (at the time though things may have changed) not particularly close to any residential areas.

The failure of this short branch certainly seemed to put BR off opening much else for a few years.
 

thin_richmond

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R.e Edinburgh Gateway, big plans afoot in terms of development between it and the airport. Tie that development in with the (hopeful) building of the Almond chord then that station will take on a whole new dimension.
 

Tomos y Tanc

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... and Ebbw Vale (which was opened on the basis of an hourly service to the relatively struggling Newport... but was instead given an hourly service to the relatively thriving capital of Cardiff... with the subsequent closure of the steel works meaning more people had to leave Ebbw Vale to get work)...

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. As the report notes, the SRA estimated usage at Ebbw Vale Parkway as 45,000 passengers, compared to the 2008/9 actual demand of 252,000. Surely this suggests the people you call "happy clappies on this forum" were right about the level of demand and the "sober" professionals were wrong.

As it happens, since Ebbw Vale Town opened passenger numbers at Parkway have dropped off a cliff.

The Ebbw line is interesting in terms of demand though. Generally people from the northern end of the valley want to travel to Cardiff while people at the southern end in places like Risca and Rogerston would find a service to Newport useful. Luckily, the Ebbw Fach line remains in situ and there are long term plans for an Abertillery - Newport service to compliment the Ebbw Vale - Cardiff ones.
 

tbtc

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I completely disagree with this.

The original National Express franchise was actively promoting and developing the Parkway, but for various reasons it didn't get built until EMT had taken over. The fastest London service that stops in the current timetable is a HST, which usually has plenty of capacity. This will no longer be the case when many of the AT300 services will only be 5-car. And it's not good transport policy to encourage people to drive long distances on the motorway when the could have got trains from closer to home (and the ECML is so much faster than the MML that most people from further north on the M1 will go there instead in any case).

Okay, I guess we have different perspective on this as you are a Nottingham passenger whilst I'm a Sheffield one - the four/five coach 222s I've been on (that stop at EMP) haven't much spare capacity - with a uniform fleet and generally more standard class seats than the current trains through Leicester, there's more scope to stop more services there - at the moment the lopsided frequency to Leicester/London and the poor frequency to Derby/Nottingham mean any motorist would have to be prepared to put up with some very long waits if they want to risk catching a train (and, given the unreliability of the M1, I wouldn't take that risk - e.g. compared to the frequency of a tram at somewhere like Phoenix Park).

As for the environmental desirability of P&R, that's maybe a subject for a whole other thread, but there's no equivalent P&R on the ECML or WCML so a P&R with lots of spaces on the MML could be a very busy station (which is why I feel that it's current level of service is holding it back, unlike some other struggling stations).

I can see parallels with Worcestershire Parkway though - if there was scope for the Bristol services to stop there then there'd be a good enough frequency for Birmingham services and for southbound connections too. But an hourly service on the Birmingham - Cheltenham corridor (and just a short Turbostar at that) means it's going to struggle for now.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. As the report notes, the SRA estimated usage at Ebbw Vale Parkway as 45,000 passengers, compared to the 2008/9 actual demand of 252,000. Surely this suggests the people you call "happy clappies on this forum" were right about the level of demand and the "sober" professionals were wrong

My point being that the demand forecast was based on a whole different service (to the one that ran - i.e. to a smaller and less economically active destination, rather than the eventual service to Cardiff), and that the demand forecast was done before the steel work closure (so before larger numbers of Ebbw Vale people need to travel outside the town to find work), both of which mean that the forecast figures were always going to be pretty meaningless... yet Ebbw Vale is always trotted out as a justification for why we should ignore forecasts (in the way that politicians used to use the "unexpected" 1992 election result to dismiss any unfavourable opinion polls after then).

Ebbw Vale has clearly done well, but it's success isn't a reason to dismiss the forecasts (especially from posters who are trying to excuse the poor case for their own pet project).

Whilst we obviously live in a country where many people have "had too much of experts", the figures generally show that the forecasts are fairly reasonable - it's just that people focus a lot on the outliers (which is why you see people suggesting that passenger numbers always beat forecasts).
 
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I live in Dunston. Around 10,000 people live within walking distance (1 mile) of our Station.
Of the 14 stations on our line only Hexham, Prudhoe & Blaydon also have this number of residents nearby.
Therefore in the medium term it should justify this level of sevices.
As a user 2 or3 times a week I know that patronage is higher than the official figure.
We in the Tyne Valley Rail Users Group are promoting it, but with very limited resources.
Our Group officers press Northern to do more.
 

Starmill

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I submit Streethouse. The current station was opened in 1992, and is languishing at 21,000 annual passengers. Fewer than 60 users per day on average.

A Sunday service was introduced in 2017, although it remains two-hourly. Through services to Leeds were introduced on weekdays in 2018. It remains to be seen if this will improve the station's fortunes.
 

tbtc

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I live in Dunston. Around 10,000 people live within walking distance (1 mile) of our Station

Dunston is a tricky one - there's clearly a bit population there - there's no central "Gateshead" station on NR lines (so a large population east of the Metro Centre/ west of Heworth, with no other heavy rail station) - it looks great on paper, but the frequent bus services and the relatively short journey time make an hourly train service unattractive - it's a little like Darnall in Sheffield - a station that probably needs the "kill or cure" approach - either give it the "turn up and go" frequency it needs to compete with buses or give up - and I don't know what the answer is.

I'd back more stops at Dunston (e.g. if you had sped up the Hexham/Carlisle services by running non-stop to the Metro Centre but introduced a fairly frequent Blaydon - Metro Centre - Dunston - Newcastle service for local trade), but the hourly service is "neither nowt nor summat" (as they say down here).

Expecting passengers to wait for an hourly service on a journey that only takes six minutes (when there are frequent services from Newcastle towards the Metro Centre and Stanley etc)... it\s just not attractive as things stand.
 

Starmill

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Dunston is a tricky one - there's clearly a bit population there - there's no central "Gateshead" station on NR lines (so a large population east of the Metro Centre/ west of Heworth, with no other heavy rail station) - it looks great on paper, but the frequent bus services and the relatively short journey time make an hourly train service unattractive - it's a little like Darnall in Sheffield - a station that probably needs the "kill or cure" approach - either give it the "turn up and go" frequency it needs to compete with buses or give up - and I don't know what the answer is.

I'd back more stops at Dunston (e.g. if you had sped up the Hexham/Carlisle services by running non-stop to the Metro Centre but introduced a fairly frequent Blaydon - Metro Centre - Dunston - Newcastle service for local trade), but the hourly service is "neither nowt nor summat" (as they say down here).

Expecting passengers to wait for an hourly service on a journey that only takes six minutes (when there are frequent services from Newcastle towards the Metro Centre and Stanley etc)... it\s just not attractive as things stand.
I am fairly sure that Dunston and Darnall have very little or no future as stations for passengers travelling to Newcastle and Sheffield respectively. Navigation Road is similar with respect to Manchester.

They might have a use for people going the other way, though. For example people going from that part of Sheffield to Gainsborough might be fine with hourly services, and the same for passengers from that part of Gateshead going to Hexham. Navigation Road seems mainly to attract people travelling to Northwich, Knutsford or Chester - or people travelling on long-distance trains by changing at Stockport. Nearby Manors station seems to do this effectively, attracting some Morpeth commuters. I doubt there's any future for any of these stations in the short-distance city centre commuter market. Ashburys station in Greater Manchester seems similar, with the ancillary function of being an interchange (if a horribly unpleasant one) and serving the nearby Rail Operating Centre.

I leave it as an open question for the reader to decide how many people want to travel from somewhere near Darnall station to Worksop, or somewhere near Dunston station to Hexham.
 

Parallel

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The Swanline stations (Baglan, Briton Ferry, Skewen and Llansamlet) all opened in around 1994, and all have fairly poor station usage figures. That said, they also have an absolutely diabolical service of 1tp2h for most of the day, considering they are between Cardiff and Swansea. Train is usually only 1 or 2 carriages long and sometimes formed of a 142!
 

61653 HTAFC

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I submit Streethouse. The current station was opened in 1992, and is languishing at 21,000 annual passengers. Fewer than 60 users per day on average.

A Sunday service was introduced in 2017, although it remains two-hourly. Through services to Leeds were introduced on weekdays in 2018. It remains to be seen if this will improve the station's fortunes.
Like many PTE stations I suspect those figures are a significant underestimation. There's likely to be many users in the morning peak using MCards and not being recorded in the figures for that station. Probably just as many off-peak who won't buy a ticket unless challenged.
 

edwin_m

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Okay, I guess we have different perspective on this as you are a Nottingham passenger whilst I'm a Sheffield one - the four/five coach 222s I've been on (that stop at EMP) haven't much spare capacity - with a uniform fleet and generally more standard class seats than the current trains through Leicester, there's more scope to stop more services there - at the moment the lopsided frequency to Leicester/London and the poor frequency to Derby/Nottingham mean any motorist would have to be prepared to put up with some very long waits if they want to risk catching a train (and, given the unreliability of the M1, I wouldn't take that risk - e.g. compared to the frequency of a tram at somewhere like Phoenix Park).

As for the environmental desirability of P&R, that's maybe a subject for a whole other thread, but there's no equivalent P&R on the ECML or WCML so a P&R with lots of spaces on the MML could be a very busy station (which is why I feel that it's current level of service is holding it back, unlike some other struggling stations).
There have been various proposals since privatization for Parkway stations at the fringes of cities, usually driven by TOCs looking for some Anytime and parking revenue from affluent business people heading to London. Of these only East Midlands has actually been built, and has fallen short of expectations.

I think part of the reason is that the target market tends to be on peak-time trains that depart early enough for traffic congestion not to be a problem, so they can drive to whatever railhead is most convenient with reasonable confidence that they will catch their train. As you say this wouldn't be true for a longer journey particularly as it would be getting into peak travel time, so might as well stay on the motorway and possibly park somewhere on the edge of London where there is a frequent suburban or Tube service. For people living near EM Parkway the relative slowness of the train service makes it more likely they will drive to Grantham (I know people on the southern edge of Nottingham tend to do this).

The only one of these that's been successful was the original one at Bristol. This also acts as an important interchange between the XC and GW routes, and (these days at least) has a lot of housing around it, so medium-distance park and ride isn't its only market.
 

Jorge Da Silva

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There have been various proposals since privatization for Parkway stations at the fringes of cities, usually driven by TOCs looking for some Anytime and parking revenue from affluent business people heading to London. Of these only East Midlands has actually been built, and has fallen short of expectations.

I think part of the reason is that the target market tends to be on peak-time trains that depart early enough for traffic congestion not to be a problem, so they can drive to whatever railhead is most convenient with reasonable confidence that they will catch their train. As you say this wouldn't be true for a longer journey particularly as it would be getting into peak travel time, so might as well stay on the motorway and possibly park somewhere on the edge of London where there is a frequent suburban or Tube service. For people living near EM Parkway the relative slowness of the train service makes it more likely they will drive to Grantham (I know people on the southern edge of Nottingham tend to do this).

The only one of these that's been successful was the original one at Bristol. This also acts as an important interchange between the XC and GW routes, and (these days at least) has a lot of housing around it, so medium-distance park and ride isn't its only market.

ONLY East Midlands???? Heard of Warwick Parkway there to serve Bromsgrove (no service to London) and Kenilworth (no station, at the time of being built).
 

Old Yard Dog

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Teesside Airport station was opened in 1971 but is a mile away from the eponymous airport. Only one train a week now stops there.
 
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