Could any of the existing car parks be extended or turned into multi-storey to add more capacity? Or could improvements to local buses (including integrated ticketing) encourage/enable some people to use bus+train instead of driving to the station?
I have already said there is no room for expansion due to adjacent properties. Hornbeam Park station car park is the only one that could be expanded but not owned by Network Rail as it is owned by Hornbeam Park business park.
As an aside, Hornbeam Park station was my idea that I pushed with Harrogate BC in 1986. They finally adopted it and opened it 10 years later with the help of Counncillor Douglas Crowther for £4million. I called it Hookstone Halt.
If you look at the current car parks, I would say no. They are small as it is and a deck on top would be too costly and unsightly in such rural position. When the ramp is added, that would take up most of the ground floor parking space defeating the object of a deck.
The trouble with bus park and ride is that the Ripon to Leeds via A61 is the congestion in Harrogate to reach P&R outside Leeds where congestion can take 60 minutes to get into Leeds
Hornbeam Park would be your biggest contender for taking an existing surface car park up a few levels but it isn’t the biggest. I’m not sure how popular building on the Harrogate bound side of the line would be. Alternatively, purchasing Victoria car park next to Harrogate station and pushing it upwards would be an option.
The problem for these options is that this is North Yorkshire and supporting residents who are trying to escape and take their economic activity elsewhere causes grinding teeth. Work at both Harrogate and Hornbeam Park puts vehicles on the already busy A61 route through Harrogate town centre.
The options on the table are in West Yorkshire.
Temple Green bus based Park and Ride sits two junctions down from Garforth. It’s ready, open six days a week and has plenty of space for expansion
There’s also land opposite the Grammar School at Leeds on the A61 for a north Leeds bus based Park and Ride. This option is south enough for some drivers to use the Beckwithshaw route round Harrogate rather than push through the centre of Harrogate.
The Leeds-Bradford Airport Parkway includes an option to build a car park accessed off Scotland Lane. My problem with it is that it pushes more traffic from Pool which I understand has been an air pollution black spot.
A car park on the Harrogate bound Hornbeam Park platform is a no no. It would mean felling a copse of mature beech trees.
Parking at the proposed Airport Parkway is again not suitable. Land is too far from the station for a car park. It is the highest part of Leeds and subject to wintery weather on a very sloping hillside.
The station is in a very deep cutting with stone walling each side and the south portal of Bramhope tunnel that is adjacent. Both have a preservation order on them
That does nothing to answer the problem that
"Commuters from north of Harrogate can no longer park at Harrogate, Hornbeam Park, Pannal, Weeton and Horsforth as their car parks are full very early in the day with no room to expand them", as quoted in my post – quite the opposite, there is clearly more demand from those stations in North Yorkshire into Leeds than the current infrastructure can sustain, so if anything the fares are too low...
Definitely not. You obviously do not live in Harrogate. The Commons Transport Select Committee stated in their 2020 report that fares should not be used to regulate passenger flows on busy routes.
Surely its the car park infrastructure that's inadequate (from your posts,) rather than the rail infrastructure ?
This would presumably be alleviated by people being able to travel from their local station, rather than railheading !
The 2005 JMP study showed that half the commuters from Ripon to Harrogate and Leeds could convert to rail if Ripon was connected to the system. This would be 188,000 annually. With others this would total 0.73million users. This was similar to Skipton at 0.74min 2005. Skipton users to-day is well over a million. So could Ripon have been to-day. That is enough to reinstate Ripon-Harrogate even at to-days costs of £350million. A lot could transfer to rail from Ripon not needing car parks between Harrogate and Leeds.
Temple Green is not going to be appealing to people coming from the north side of Leeds if they've got to drive all the way round to the south-east side, and with buses only running every 20 minutes it's not a convenient service.
Whether it's near GSAL, or possibly the site of the works compound where the new ring road ends near Shadwell, a Park & Ride site serving the northern catchment would be a good thing. Agreed that pushing more traffic through Pool and the dreadful Dyneley Arms junction is not the way to go though, the roads there are badly congested and wouldn't cope with the extra traffic.
Exactly
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