Sprinter107
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I'm local to the area and remember Warwick Parkway being built, but never remember Bromsgrove being in the equation, or mentioned at the time.
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Most failed/disappointing new stations/reopenings - and why?
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edwin_m
Veteran Member
I didn't think of Warwick Parkway. This looks to be a similar situation to East Midlands, with a TOC looking to grab custom from competitors on parallel routes. Is it considered successful? I notice there are few parking spaces at the central Warwick station but plenty at Leamington.
xotGD
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Best of luck with your campaign to promote the station. I used to use it to get to Newcastle back when there was previously a decent service, and the usage then was usually very low.
Slightly off-topic (OK, very off-topic) but waiting for the first unit of the day from Carlisle to arrive, when along it comes being dragged by a Class 25 was my highlight in using Dunston!
I agree. Let's say we apply an optimism bias to the number. 200%? That means we're looking at twice as many people using Mcards or Daysaver tickets, Rangers and Rovers and other tickets not recorded.
We should probably exclude completely people who travel ticketlessly, as is the accepted methodology. They're not contributing anything to the upkeep of the station.
I think it is very optimistic to claim there's anything more than twice the number of people using the station on tickets not included within the figures. Let's also not forget that as Northern usually chose not to provide a service for Streethouse on the many strike days, there will have been a hit.
That gives us a number of potentially 65,000 annual users. Instead of 60 daily users there might be 120. That still puts it so far down the list as to be nearly irrelevant. What is more the estimates of station usage actually are adjusted to reflect the number of actual users according to surveys and supplementary data, and do not simply go by the number of tickets sold. This means the uplift from Mcard users is unlikely to be as large as I've suggested.
Sprinter107
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I think Warwick Parkway has been successful. The car park there always seems well used.
61653 HTAFC
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I was in no way suggesting a 200% increase, just that passengers using those tickets won't be recorded as accurately as those buying point-to-point tickets. Fare dodgers I agree are another matter, though increased revenue protection would help matters. If half of those people start paying and the other half stop using the service, that's still an improvement.
I agree that figures for Streethouse don't look great, and it deserves a place in this thread. Similarly Berry Brow [BBW] with 29,466 in 17/18 suffers from being on a route that doesn't serve Leeds (as Streethouse was until recently) and thus suffered more during the strikes.
Tomos y Tanc
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Thanks for the explanation. I get what you're saying now!
It is quite surprising that revised forcasts weren't made when the service detination was changed. If memory serves, the change was made for technical rather than policy reasons, something to do with signalling at Newport, I think. The change has produced a service that is incredibly useful for the upper Ebbw valley but has done little to ease congestion around Newport which was one of the aims of the original plan.
oglord
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It was done for political reasons. There was then, and is now, no reason trains cannot run to Newport High Street. As you alluded, one of the justifications for reopening the line was to provide an economic boost to the city after the closure of the heavy end of the Spencer steelworks in 2001. Instead what we get is a service that whisks suburban Newport passengers 12 miles to the west, creating a economic disbenefit to the city.
nat67
Established Member
I think Market Harborough now looks a shambles since they rebuilt the station. And why on earth the new southbound platform still cannot accommodate an 8 coach HST is utterly stupid. There is hardly any benches and not very wide for all those people who can't stand behind the yellow line. There is no real canopies apart from the old station building.
Depends how much is new demand to rail, and how much is abstracted from Coventry, Birmingham International etc.
(Probably, on balance, has been a net positive). Particularly as access to/parking at Warwick (town)/Leamington isn't strsightforward.
Indeed. I think this has been exacerbated by the opening of Pye Corner station, which did not coincide with the introduction of through services to Newport station. These have been long promised and ought be delivered as a matter of priority. They will still benefit the upper valley significantly, by reducing the journey time for people to travel between the town of Ebbw Vale and Bristol, Birmingham, London, Manchester etc.
Regardless of all of this though, while I agree with your point of view, I do not think that any of the stations on this line deserve their place in this thread.
Sprinter107
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There never seems to be that many people using Stratford upon Avon Parkway. Even at the busiest time, there are just a handful of passengers.
I doubt anyone is expecting vast numbers of people to be connecting between the two routes at Worcestershire Parkway in the first place. Its key function will be to give access to London trains at a station with lots of car parking spaces (unlike Shrub Hill and Foregate Street) and to some of the XC services which all bypass the city at the moment.
Lack of car parking spaces at Worcester stations is often cited by people who have been driving all the way from Worcester to Warwick Parkway to get a train to London, rather than use the GWR service, so I can well imagine people are also driving across from Bromsgrove to save themselves the need to change in Birmingham. When Warwick opened, Chiltern placed plenty of adverts in the local newspapers in the east of Worcestershire, which seems to me to be a fairly big clue as to how far they hoped the catchment area would reach.
In what way is a station with 101,000 passengers a year failed?
If more trains called, then it would do better for sure, but it is not at all centrally located when it comes to serving Tewkesbury, so that will always limit footfall, whatever the frequency of the service. Equally, the location of Cheltenham Spa station does the railway no favours when it comes to encouraging commuting by rail into the town from Ashchurch (or anywhere else).
Plenty of people thought the forecast of 140,000 passengers for year one was wildly optimistic - due to the limitations of the road network in Stratford, people living in much of the town who want to get a train to Birmingham cannot reach the Parkway without having to go through the town centre or round the houses, so they just stick to using the town station.
Growth has been steady but not spectacular and the 2018-19 figure may well top 100,000. Assuming the major housing development at Long Marston airfield goes ahead, along with the associated Stratford western link road, then passenger numbers are likely to grow at a rate of knots.
Sprinter107
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You can very often stop at Stratford upon Avon Parkway and nobody joins, and nobody alights.
You could say the same about plenty of other stations for large parts of the day - near me there are two that can have anything up to 50 people waiting to join morning peak trains and then no one at all boarding trains later in the day.
What helps Stratford is at least being a common site with the bus Park & Ride, so sharing the car park costs.
Problem I guess is that if you're going to drive and park at Stratford Parkway, you may as well drive closer to Birmingham, park there, and get a cheaper fare and a more frequent service.
Altnabreac
Established Member
Falls of Cruachan is one of my favourite stations but if you’re looking for least passengers per year since reopening (in 1988) then it’s probably the winner.
I would imagine if you're not based in Stratford-upon-Avon itself, and if cental Birmingham is your destination, you would be more likely to choose Warwick Parkway than Stratford Parkway. Whitlocks End is also an option for frequent service with plenty of car parking space, but a further drive and less well connected to the major road network.
Parking at Stratford Parkway costs £4 per day until 9am and £2 after that time. Warwick Parkway, being a Chiltern station, costs an eye-watering £9 until 10am and £6 after that. I don't think anyone anywhere near Stratford who wants to go to Birmingham will be bothering to burn more fuel to go to Warwick and then pay those parking fees, plus a slightly higher train fare as well.
I'd allow about 30 minutes to drive to Whitlocks End from the Stratford area. Not sure it's worth it, even for the free parking space and the 20-minute train journey, when the fastest trains into Birmingham from Stratford Parkway take around 45 minutes via Solihull, or 50 minutes via Shirley.
It should also be noted that the opening of Stratford Parkway has not had a negative effect on the use of the town station, which might have been expected as traffic in the town centre can make getting there hard work. Indeed footfall has actually increased slightly over the period since the opening of Parkway, from 986,000 in 2013-14 to top 1 million in 2017-17 and 2017-18.
Similarly, Wilmcote, just to the north, which has no proper car parking, has also seen its custom grow from 20,000 to 24,000 over that period.
So the 92,000+ people using Stratford-upon-Avon Parkway in 2017-18 were in effect all extra traffic for the railway. Hardly a failure or a disappointment.
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gg1
Established Member
The catchment area of Warwick Parkway even extends into the southern outskirts of Birmingham. I used to live in Rednal and regularly drove to Warwick Parkway to travel to London, total travel time was virtually the same as the alternative of driving to Northfield and changing at New Street for a Virgin Service. A work colleague who lives in Wythall does exactly the same.
61653 HTAFC
Veteran Member
There's a number of factors which play into how well a new station will do, and why some fare better than others despite being on what might appear to be a level playing field.
High usage of PTE tickets can lead to estimated usage being slightly off, and a poor timetable can also affect usage (Low Moor being only hourly for example). Competition from buses can also have an impact, Low Moor being served by the frequent 268 service into Bradford will reduce demand outside of the peaks.
Additionally, if a new station is opened as the first/last stop outside of a major destination, it may have artificially inflated usage: as the "pay when challenged" brigade will often say they boarded at Kirkstall Forge when in fact they boarded at Shipley. This also applies when comparing a new station on a given route to those long-established stops on the same route.
Example: Berry Brow, opened in 1989, seems at first glance to have significantly lower usage than the stations either side (29,466 at BBW compared with 52,050 at Honley and 42,524 at Lockwood), but Lockwood being the last stop before Huddersfield will probably be artificially boosted by the aforementioned Pay When Challenged crowd. Additionally the line at the very Northern section is not particularly direct, with Berry Brow station being significantly closer to town by road than by rail.
High usage of PTE tickets can lead to estimated usage being slightly off, and a poor timetable can also affect usage (Low Moor being only hourly for example). Competition from buses can also have an impact, Low Moor being served by the frequent 268 service into Bradford will reduce demand outside of the peaks.
Additionally, if a new station is opened as the first/last stop outside of a major destination, it may have artificially inflated usage: as the "pay when challenged" brigade will often say they boarded at Kirkstall Forge when in fact they boarded at Shipley. This also applies when comparing a new station on a given route to those long-established stops on the same route.
Example: Berry Brow, opened in 1989, seems at first glance to have significantly lower usage than the stations either side (29,466 at BBW compared with 52,050 at Honley and 42,524 at Lockwood), but Lockwood being the last stop before Huddersfield will probably be artificially boosted by the aforementioned Pay When Challenged crowd. Additionally the line at the very Northern section is not particularly direct, with Berry Brow station being significantly closer to town by road than by rail.
Esker-pades
Established Member
Tesside Airport (mentioned upthread) may well beat Cruachan. I agree that it's a brilliant little station though.
RichmondCommu
Established Member
As recently (ish) opened station how does Willington fare?
Altnabreac
Established Member
On current numbers yes but I think Teeside did have busier times in the past.
Cruachan has always been quiet (but very useful for the few who do use it). I’ve been both to visit the power station and to climb the Cruachan Horseshoe.
Much better than Peartree!
RichmondCommu
Established Member
Well yes but then Peartree was reopened some years before Willington. And there's a lot more money in Willington / Repton / Hilton than the suburbs surrounding Peartree so you would expect it to be a better performing station.
Birmingham International is a very successful parkway. It drags people to it from a wide swathe of the W Mids, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and even Staffs. And it has a secondary role serving the NEC and airport.
RichmondCommu
Established Member
Though probably let down to a certain extent by the M42
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