East Midlands Parkway....A failed station?

[LLivery]

I'm sure most of us all know that EM Pkwy is a station which opened in 2009 in Ratcliff-on-Soar, right outside the power station serving the Airport. However the usage is tiny - under 300,000 far less than the 750,000 predicted. Now for a four platform, InterCity station with 3tph South and 4tph North is it right to call it a failed station? Fair its location is terrible but I doubt 300,000 would justify a four platform station with InterCity trains on the ECML or WCML. It seems like a waste of time stopping the Nottingham express HST.

As someone from further down the line in Northants, its quite annoying still only having 2tph from Wellingborough and Kettering when their usage is around the million mark.

 

[Kettledrum]

I'm sure most of us all know that EM Pkwy is a station which opened in 2009 in Ratcliff-on-Soar, right outside the power station serving the Airport. However the usage is tiny - under 300,000 far less than the 750,000 predicted. Now for a four platform, InterCity station with 3tph South and 4tph North is it right to call it a failed station? Fair its location is terrible but I doubt 300,000 would justify a four platform station with InterCity trains on the ECML or WCML. It seems like a waste of time stopping the Nottingham express HST.

As someone from further down the line in Northants, its quite annoying still only having 2tph from Wellingborough and Kettering when their usage is around the million mark.

There's quite a bit of information you're missing from your post.

Most of the time there are only 2 TPH to St Pancras. The trains to St Pancras and returning from St Pancras are quite close together, not spread across the hour, so I'm sure this reduces the attractiveness of the station.

The passenger figures you're quoting exclude the Megabus customers who change at the station. According to the BBC, these increase the usage figures to 480,000 in a 9 month period Jan - Sept 2012. See

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-22880488

This is clearly less then first predicted, but if the TOC wanted to, it could increase passengers by:

- spreading out the departures more (the 2 departures I'm thinking of are xx25 and xx33.
- reduce car parking charges
- better promotion of the station.

here's certainly capacity to expand usage, but I assume the TOC are happy with the status quo.

 

[davetheguard]

Less than predicted, but how often are these predicted figures actually right anyway?

And third of a million journeys is hardly "tiny".......

 

[fishquinn]

I use EMD a fair bit to get to Nottingham on the HST, and I agree there isn't too many people there but it would just cost more to get rid of one of the platforms.

 

[47802]

If you really want to serve an airport properly then you need a proper airport station by the terminal, which should be a warning for those that want to build a parkway station for such as Leeds Bradford rather than actually building a line to the airport.

If I need to go to East Midlands from where I live I would take the Direct coach to the Airport.

 

[swt_passenger]

If you really want to serve an airport properly then you need a proper airport station by the terminal, which should be a warning for those that want to build a parkway station for such as Leeds Bradford rather than actually building a line to the airport.

If I need to go to East Midlands from where I live I would take the Direct coach to the Airport.

But it wasn't ever built as an airport station - this was always clear from the original planning application. This point crops up early in every discussion about EMP.

 

[47802]

But it wasn't ever built as an airport station - this was always clear from the original planning application. This point crops up early in every discussion about EMP.

I understand there is no actual bus service to the Airport and to connect by train you need to go to Derby, Nottingham etc, which I didn't realise until looking it up now, no wonder its a failed station

 

[RichmondCommu]

I use EMD a fair bit to get to Nottingham on the HST, and I agree there isn't too many people there but it would just cost more to get rid of one of the platforms.

But why would you want to get rid of one of the platforms? I don't understand what the benefits would be.

 

[starrymarkb]

I understand there is no actual bus service to the Airport and to connect by train you need to go to Derby, Nottingham etc, which I didn't realise until looking it up now, no wonder its a failed station

A bus was tried. On a good day passengers were in double digits.

There are buses every 20 mins from Derby, Nottingham and Leicester which carry a lot of local traffic as the Airport passengers won't support that level of service alone. The Airport is a big employment centre with the Royal Mail and DHL Airfreight hubs

 

[Mugby]

A bus was tried. On a good day passengers were in double digits.

It wasn't even a full sized bus, it was one of the Transit type mini things.

Then taxi drivers gave up too, they weren't prepared to stand there for long periods with no potential fares. You then had to ring for a taxi and wait for it.

I would certainly agree that the station was over ambitious but it was very much a political thing. Lots of money was poured into it by several parties, the sort of people who would never ever admit that they possibly miscalculated. I think the simple fact is that those concerned are stuck with it as it is. I can't imagine Platforms 1 & 2 being removed or even taken out of use. I also doubt very much that the franchise would be changed to alter the stopping pattern even though there are several trains which generate only single digit passenger numbers.

I've always been of the opinion that platforms on the slow lines only would have been adequate, same as the others, with good connections at Leicester.

 

[edwin_m]

The main market for the Parkway was always expected to be affluent car-borne locals who when going to London would probably drive to Grantham as it's often easier than getting into Nottingham or Loughborough and the trains are quicker too.

I don't think we can pass judgment on the success or otherwise of the station until the A453 is finished. This is the main access road, which has been a total mess due to dualling works for the last three years and before that was very prone to congestion.

 

[tbtc]

I'll save time and repost what I said six months ago when we were last discussing East Midlands Parkway (http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=101145):

This illustrates a problem with a fragmented railway, where the infrastructure is built separate to the operation of trains.

At the moment, the EMT franchise is running a lot of five/seven coach 222s from the East Midlands to London (plus a lower number of HSTs). At the risk of sounding patronising, a five/seven coach 222 clearly doesn't have as many seats as a five/coach 125/225, so there's not a lot of spare seats for EMT to try to fill with "Parkway" passengers.

In a few years time, the MML will hopefully have electric stock comparable in length to 225s/390s on the parallel EMCL/WCML, which means that the successor TOC will have an incentive to stop more services at East Midlands Parkway (both for people heading to London and for people using it as a Park And Ride for Nottingham/Derby/ Leicester)...

...but at the moment there's not a lot of spare seats on the MML, so little incentive for EMT to stop more trains at East Midlands Parkway/ little chance for them to sell more advance tickets to tempt car drivers from the Motorway.

In a few years time, we could be looking at longer trains providing a "turn up and go" frequency from EMP to Nottingham/ Loughborough/ Leicester/ London (with more cheap tickets for longer distance trains).

It'll come good - once there's EMUs able to stop there without as big a time penalty, once the EMT services are long enough to accomodate extra passengers, once the local roads are (finally!) sorted out.

In short, it was built too soon. It also suffers from the problem of being a "brand new" station. If it had been on the site of platforms closed by Big Bad Doctor Beeching then I'm sure we'd all talk about how the four hundred departing passengers per day mean all sorts of social benefits that you can't glean from cold hard statistics alone. However, as a newbuild station, it doesn't have anyone making such defences for romantic reasons

 

[yorksrob]

I don't think you can call it a failed station. Yes, numbers aren't as big as expected but as others have said, 300,000 passengers per annum is still a substantial number.

tcbc misunderstands the point about social benefit. This is greater where travel opportunities are provided to people, particularly those with restricted acces to jobs, education and leisure, where they didn't exist before. As others have pointed out, EMP was designed to improve acces for higher income travellers who already have acces to the railway. So it will have benefits, but a greater proportion will be purely economic rather than social.

 

[Kettledrum]

I don't think you can call it a failed station. Yes, numbers aren't as big as expected but as others have said, 300,000 passengers per annum is still a substantial number.

tcbc misunderstands the point about social benefit. This is greater where travel opportunities are provided to people, particularly those with restricted acces to jobs, education and leisure, where they didn't exist before. As others have pointed out, EMP was designed to improve acces for higher income travellers who already have acces to the railway. So it will have benefits, but a greater proportion will be purely economic rather than social.

The 300,000 figure is WRONG!!!!!!!!!

 

[yorksrob]

The 300,000 figure is WRONG!!!!!!!!!

Oops - I see the other figure is larger, so my view remains unchanged.

 

[Cherry_Picker]

But why would you want to get rid of one of the platforms? I don't understand what the benefits would be.

So OCD people can feel it has the number of platforms it 'deserves' rather than too few or too many, despite the operational practicalities of having them there in the first place. See Nuneaton for another example of this.

 

[edwin_m]

I'm not sure the Megabus figures should really be counted towards the total. They are only there because EMT and Megabus are both part of Stagecoach, and if Stagecoach lost EMT and won East Coast then they'd probably move to somewhere like Newark which has reasonable road access and space on some of the trains. Similarly if the Parkway hadn't been built Megabus would probably have transferred at somewhere like Chesterfield.

 

[Taunton]

I went through here a couple of weeks ago, going up to a business meeting alongside East Midlands airport.

Having no taxis available at such a remote location is just inappropriate for an "Inter-City" service, especially as arriving there at 10.00 on a weekday there must have been half a dozen or more from our train alone who wanted them and had to phone for them - and they didn't come that quickly because there's only one company allowed to pick up there; another who was bringing people in said they had to leave empty. Before we had got away the next St Pancras train came in and more people who wanted taxis came out. If your mobile phone has gone flat on the no-powerpoints HST on the way up, you would be absolutely stuffed, because there's no courtesy phone, just a number on a notice. It's got a staffed ticket office, a staffed buffet, people waiting for taxis - and a very poor taxi provision. I wonder how much the selected company is paying EMT for the sole rights to be there.

Going back in the afternoon I would say that maybe 40-50 passengers boarded.

The service pattern is poor as well, as described above not only are the two trains per hour just 7 minutes apart, but the first one has passengers from Sheffield, Chesterfield and Derby, and in our case this was just a 5-car Meridian, which after Leicester had about a dozen in our coach alone just standing. This train obviously scoops up most of those waiting for London. Right on the block behind is what turns out to be a full-length HST just from Nottingham (I waited at St Pancras to see it arrive), which came in with significantly less passengers.

It's not a convenient station for the airport, although several people were heading there, you can actually see the control tower in the distance but they are separated by not only a convoluted road approach but also by the M1 junction 24, one of the worst congestion points on the road network, which apparently can sometimes take half an hour to get clear of. On our return, having been in a jam for this almost as soon as we passed the airport area, the taxi driver resorted to going through the back streets of Kegworth and country lanes to get to the station.

 

[CockneySparrow]

If you really want to serve an airport properly then you need a proper airport station by the terminal, which should be a warning for those that want to build a parkway station for such as Leeds Bradford rather than actually building a line to the airport.

If I need to go to East Midlands from where I live I would take the Direct coach to the Airport.

Trent Barton run buses 24 hours a day from Nottingham and Derby to the airport, which is more attractive than the train to EMP, hence the failed bus from the station

 

[edwin_m]

Trent Barton run buses 24 hours a day from Nottingham and Derby to the airport, which is more attractive than the train to EMP, hence the failed bus from the station

The Nottingham one also calls at Long Eaton station, and there is another 24hr bus from Leicester and Loughborough although not as convenient for the railway stations. So East Midlands Parkway is actually about the worst station for getting to the airport!

 

[Kettledrum]

I went through here a couple of weeks ago, going up to a business meeting alongside East Midlands airport.

Having no taxis available at such a remote location is just inappropriate for an "Inter-City" service, especially as arriving there at 10.00 on a weekday there must have been half a dozen or more from our train alone who wanted them and had to phone for them - and they didn't come that quickly because there's only one company allowed to pick up there; another who was bringing people in said they had to leave empty. Before we had got away the next St Pancras train came in and more people who wanted taxis came out. If your mobile phone has gone flat on the no-powerpoints HST on the way up, you would be absolutely stuffed, because there's no courtesy phone, just a number on a notice. It's got a staffed ticket office, a staffed buffet, people waiting for taxis - and a very poor taxi provision. I wonder how much the selected company is paying EMT for the sole rights to be there.

Going back in the afternoon I would say that maybe 40-50 passengers boarded.

The service pattern is poor as well, as described above not only are the two trains per hour just 7 minutes apart, but the first one has passengers from Sheffield, Chesterfield and Derby, and in our case this was just a 5-car Meridian, which after Leicester had about a dozen in our coach alone just standing. This train obviously scoops up most of those waiting for London. Right on the block behind is what turns out to be a full-length HST just from Nottingham (I waited at St Pancras to see it arrive), which came in with significantly less passengers.

It's not a convenient station for the airport, although several people were heading there, you can actually see the control tower in the distance but they are separated by not only a convoluted road approach but also by the M1 junction 24, one of the worst congestion points on the road network, which apparently can sometimes take half an hour to get clear of. On our return, having been in a jam for this almost as soon as we passed the airport area, the taxi driver resorted to going through the back streets of Kegworth and country lanes to get to the station.

Just wanted to say I think you're post here is excellent.

I use the station regularly and recognise all of the frustrations you have described.

There are other frustrations too. For example passengers using the car park have to queue to pay using the slow ticket machines and queue to get out of the barriers - often because the driver at the front of the barrier has got confused about how and where they should have paid - and there is no help readily available.

An extra exit barrier, a couple of additional ticket machines, more taxis should be all really easy things for East Midlands Trains to fix.

.... and why on earth schedule only 2 departures to London each hour that are only 7 minutes apart ?????

 

[yorksrob]

From what posters have said, if I were a regular user of the station, It'd definately be worth hanging around for the HST.

 

[ashworth]

I've only used East Midlands Parkway a couple of times because it's easier and cheaper for me to get the bus or tram into Nottingham than drive there to pay the parking charge. Another reason I don't use it is the high fares, in comparison to Nottingham, to anywhere other than destinations towards London.
I wonder if more people would use EMP for leisure journeys if cheaper Day Returns were available as they are from Nottingham. Fares to destinations such as Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds, York, Chester are substantially higher than from Nottingham. Some of these fares are almost double the price from Nottingham because Day Returns are not availab. If I remember correctly I think it even costs more to Birmingham than it does from Nottingham.

 

[brianthegiant]

I'm increasingly thinking what is needed is a 'Transport for Greater Nottingham' which would take over what is currently spread between Highways agency, County Council, City Council and Borough Councils. seems to work well in London. Seems to me to make sense to combine the expertise and resources rather than splitting them between councils - for example you would get say a dedicated Rail officer rather than someone who does Rail, cycling and a few other things which is currently the case.

This body would take more a more complete view of travel in the conurbation as a whole & more likely to push things like EMD as a park & ride station for Nottingham maybe to a lesser degree Derby for people from the south or Leicester from the North).

Governance would need to be split between councils via a committee of councillors unlike London with its elected Mayor.

 

[matchmaker]

Interesting to compare with Alloa. 1 tph. 1 platform. 400,000 passengers per year!

 

[fishquinn]

But why would you want to get rid of one of the platforms? I don't understand what the benefits would be.

There would be none. That is why I put that it would cost more to remove one of the slow line platforms.

 

[Wyvern]

Wondering what will happen when HS2 is built with, presumably, an interchange with existing rail.

If it was at Toton any MML trains would presumably have to reverse, but at Breaston trains from Derby could probably stop.

So does EMP become superfluous? (And then there's Long Eaton station to wonder about)

 

[edwin_m]

Wondering what will happen when HS2 is built with, presumably, an interchange with existing rail.

If it was at Toton any MML trains would presumably have to reverse, but at Breaston trains from Derby could probably stop.

So does EMP become superfluous? (And then there's Long Eaton station to wonder about)

HS2 as currently proposed goes past the Parkway on a viaduct, and various discussions on this forum and elsewhere have suggested it as another alternative site for the East Midlands high speed station.

The problem with HS2 at Toton is that no existing train service passes there, and to provide reasonable links would involve diverting and decelerating a lot of existing trains, or adding new ones which probably wouldn't carry enough people to cover their costs and would might even hit rail capacity problems at Nottingham and Derby even after these stations are remodelled.

I think Long Eaton station would survive whatever happened with HS2, as although it's a way from the centre of Long Eaton it is surrounded by housing and generates good numbers of commuters. However it's an interesting question about whether the Parkway would survive given that the drive-up London market would be more likely to drive to wherever the HS2 station was instead. Its future might depend on what happens to the huge brownfield site of Ratcliffe power station when that closes down.

 

[MarkyT]

If your mobile phone has gone flat on the no-powerpoints HST on the way up, you would be absolutely stuffed, because there's no courtesy phone, just a number on a notice.

Don't they have any of those old fashioned things, oh what are they called, ah that's it . . . . public pay phones?

The taxi system does seem a mess from your descrpition though. EMT are taking a fee from a company to provide a useless service. That can't be in the train company's interest, probably deterring potential rail customers, and possibly their most lucrative business travellers too.

 

[Olaf]

EM Parkway was also proposed in connection with HS2:
http://www.rushcliffe.gov.uk/media/...mber/3deccabinet/Item 10 HS2 consultation.pdf

I don't know the current status, nor if the review of the HS2 stop in the area will look at EM Parkway.

Further into the future, the power station site is expected to become available for redevelopment.

So although patronage is on the low side now, potential changes in the vicinity are inline with the original expectations.