Expensive station car parks...

[Mcr Warrior]

Any particularly eye-watering examples of railway station car parking tariffs?

Some to start off with...

Carlisle station £12 (Daily rate Mon-Fri)

(N.B. Similar rates at Oxenholme and Crewe and other Avanti managed stations)

Haywards Heath £9.20 (Mon-Fri)

Manchester Piccadilly £15 (10 hours Mon-Fri)

Manningtree £9 (Day rate if arriving before 10 a.m. Mon-Fri)

Warwick Parkway £9 (Daily rate Mon-Fri).

Must be some even more expensive car parks than the above!

 

[J-P_L]

The “Peak” rate before 9:30am M-F at York and Newcastle is £17 (they have reduced the off peak and weekend to £5 as that used to be higher before the pandemic)

 

[ExRes]

St Pancras are advertising from £6.20 for 20 minutes, 6 to 12 hours is £27

I'm surprised how 'cheap' Three Bridges is, only £7 daily mon to fri

 

[CyrusWuff]

Any particularly eye-watering examples of railway station car parking tariffs?

Warwick Parkway £9 (Daily rate Mon-Fri).

Must be some even more expensive car parks than the above!

Not really a defence, but Warwick Parkway is priced to be competitive compared to Coventry (£12 per day).

For comparison, Warwick itself is £5.50 all day, and at the lower end of the scale in Chilternland Aylesbury Vale Parkway is £3.00 all day, and Oxford Parkway is £2.00 for up to 11 hours and £4.00 for up to 24 hours.

 

[py_megapixel]

£15 for 10 hours in a city centre location isn't hugely unreasonable IMHO. £1.50 per hour.

 

[Mintona]

Yeah Manchester Piccadilly seems quite reasonable considering the location.

 

[BluePenguin]

St Pancras are advertising from £6.20 for 20 minutes, 6 to 12 hours is £27

I'm surprised how 'cheap' Three Bridges is, only £7 daily mon to fri

Since when did St Pancras have a car park? I have only ever noticed the taxis parked outside

 

[swt_passenger]

Reading £21 for 12 hours. £25 for 24 hours.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

£15 for 10 hours in a city centre location isn't hugely unreasonable IMHO. £1.50 per hour.

Yeah Manchester Piccadilly seems quite reasonable considering the location.

Don't park there on the short stay by mistake! That'd be more like £175 for ten hours!

Once put an old (by one week) short stay ticket into the tariff machine at Manchester Piccadilly. The amount supposedly due was well into four figures!

 

[NoRoute]

Expensive by comparison:
East Midlands Parkway - £8 per day
Clifton Tram Park and ride, a minute or two further along down the A453 - free.

The return train ticket is around £5, while an all-day tram ticket is around £4, which you can then use to get around the city. I wonder why passenger numbers at East Midlands were lower than forecast?

 

[Merle Haggard]

Northampton (LNwR) - £12 all day. On the website it has the curious note 'this is NOT a park and ride car park'
Wellingborough (EMR) a snip at only £10.
These are pre-10.00 hrs prices.

 

[MissPWay]

I guess we should all have our personal property stored for free for ten hours then?

Bikes: absolutely, we should encourage that. Free parking for electric cars also.

But the same as town centres, I don’t expect other people / companies to pay to store my private property for me for free.

This is a similar line of thinking to the people who park over other peoples drives/on double yellows “because there was nowhere else.”

 

[Dave91131]

I'm not sure what it is at present, but Peterborough was £13 for up to 24 hours Mon-Fri pre-Covid.

 

[Mojo]

I’ve always thought Reading station was particularly expensive at £21 for up to 12 Hours; on Weekends it’s “only” £12.50 for 24 Hours.

 

[py_megapixel]

I guess we should all have our personal property stored for free for ten hours then?
Bikes: absolutely, we should encourage that. Free parking for electric cars also.
But the same as town centres, I don’t expect other people / companies to pay to store my private property for me for free.

I'd say you're spot-on with that point.

If you go to an average town centre car park - even at a busy time - it will be clear that, had everyone who had arrived in all of the cars parked there come on a bike instead, all of the bikes could fit in just a few of the parking spaces, if they were appropriately fitted out.

For the record, I don't think bicycle parking should be free just because they're bicycles. Rather, it's more that car parking is already so cheap - most town centres seem to charge about £1 an hour. With the appropriate racking I reckon you could easily fit about 8 bicycles into a single car parking space. So you'd be charging barely over 12p per hour - hardly worth even bothering charging for, especially when you consider how much less noise, pollution and damage to the road surface bicycles create.

 

[ChrisC]

Expensive by comparison:
East Midlands Parkway - £8 per day
Clifton Tram Park and ride, a minute or two further along down the A453 - free.

The return train ticket is around £5, while an all-day tram ticket is around £4, which you can then use to get around the city. I wonder why passenger numbers at East Midlands were lower than forecast?

The only time I would ever consider using it is for day trip to London. Definitely wouldn’t use EMP if travelling north. There are no Off Peak Day Returns available to popular destinations like Leeds, Manchester, York, Chester etc which can result in fares being almost double those from Nottingham or Derby.

I now mainly use Alfreton for journeys to the north as it’s just £5 to park (£2.50 Off Peak). Also fares from Alfreton are often much lower than from Nottingham. Newark Northgate and Chesterfield are also expensive at £12, but that’s what you have to pay, even at a smaller town for local journeys, if it’s on a main inter city line.

 

[edwin_m]

Expensive by comparison:
East Midlands Parkway - £8 per day
Clifton Tram Park and ride, a minute or two further along down the A453 - free.

The return train ticket is around £5, while an all-day tram ticket is around £4, which you can then use to get around the city. I wonder why passenger numbers at East Midlands were lower than forecast?

That's because they serve different purposes. Clifton is for people to travel into Nottingham, where people would otherwise drive all the way, reducing traffic on busy roads into the city. EM Parkway is principally for travel to London, for which most people (at least if going to the centre) wouldn't consider driving. Even if the parking was free I doubt many people would use Parkway to travel into Nottingham, given the irregular train service.

 

[ExRes]

Since when did St Pancras have a car park? I have only ever noticed the taxis parked outside

Certainly since the new extension, I know because I had a staff pass until I left at the end of 2010 (I wonder if they still exist?) which allowed me to park free of charge

 

[MissPWay]

Certainly since the new extension, I know because I had a staff pass until I left at the end of 2010 (I wonder if they still exist?) which allowed me to park free of charge

I think most Pancras based drivers (certainly EMR) live in Bedford or nearer Brighton and get Thameslink in.

Rather them than me. Not that they’re particularly over-worked at that depot....

 

[ExRes]

Free parking for electric cars also.

I rather worry about people calling for free everything for electric cars, free car tax = no Government income, free car parking = nobody is going to build or run car parks, you get nothing for nothing in this world

 

[MissPWay]

I rather worry about people calling for free everything for electric cars, free car tax = no Government income, free car parking = nobody is going to build or run car parks, you get nothing for nothing in this world

I take your point. But I think they should be initially encouraged. Along the lines of no tax until 2025 kind of thing, speed up the uptake.

 

[Wallsendmag]

I rather worry about people calling for free everything for electric cars, free car tax = no Government income, free car parking = nobody is going to build or run car parks, you get nothing for nothing in this world

Not to mention the damage to the environment during their construction is far worse than your average petrol engined car.

 

[Davester50]

I take your point. But I think they should be initially encouraged. Along the lines of no tax until 2025 kind of thing, speed up the uptake.

The initial cost coming down would do more to speed uptake.
For my car, the £20 a year vehicle tax is nothing. The 8K initial cost difference between petrol and electric is a bit more.
You'll fit nearly two of my city cars in to the space of one Tesla. Subsidised parking for people who can afford expensive cars? Hmmm.

 

[Trackman]

Don't park there on the short stay by mistake! That'd be more like £175 for ten hours!

I've done the 10 minute dash a few times for the sake of saving £3.

 

[NoRoute]

I guess we should all have our personal property stored for free for ten hours then?

Bikes: absolutely, we should encourage that. Free parking for electric cars also.

But the same as town centres, I don’t expect other people / companies to pay to store my private property for me for free.

Businesses offer free parking as a way to attract customers, providing the parking costs some money and every business could charge if it wanted to, but most realise that the immediate benefit of the extra parking income is outweighed by the lost income from all those customers who no longer visit, deterred by the parking charges, which is why they either provide it for free or at minimal cost or linked to you making a purchase.

Businesses are free to do as they choose and so are customers, who respond to parking charges by factoring it in when deciding whether or not to visit the business. Which is partly why our town and city centres which tend to be difficult and expensive to visit are slowly decaying while out of town shops and shopping centres with plentiful free parking have been booming. When you make it expensive to visit a business people do the logical thing, they stop visiting it and the business folds.

This is a similar line of thinking to the people who park over other peoples drives/on double yellows “because there was nowhere else.”

No it's completely different, it's a reflection of people's dislike of expensive parking costs and them factoring it into their decision making, where they tend to avoid them if they can by going elsewhere. It's better to avoid the parking charges and recover the costs through other means.

 

[py_megapixel]

No it's completely different, it's a reflection of people's dislike of expensive parking costs and them factoring it into their decision making, where they tend to avoid them if they can by going elsewhere. It's better to avoid the parking charges and recover the costs through other means.

The problem is there aren't really any "other means" which don't involve also penalising non-drivers.

 

[NoRoute]

The problem is there aren't really any "other means" which don't involve also penalising non-drivers.

Providing a car park is hardly penalising non-drivers, almost every other business you visit does the same thing so very much the norm. I'd agree for city centres where land is at a high premium and expensive and all parking is chargeable, but for stations in less dense areas, parkway stations it's not so much of an issue.

 

[185143]

Yeah Manchester Piccadilly seems quite reasonable considering the location.

Apart from the fact that there's a large Council run car park off Sheffield Street (round the corner from the entrance to the official station car park for those who don't know) for £3.80 per 24 hours. It was £3.50 for a good few years.

The station car park drops to £7 at weekends for the record.

 

[Mojo]

Businesses offer free parking as a way to attract customers, providing the parking costs some money and every business could charge if it wanted to, but most realise that the immediate benefit of the extra parking income is outweighed by the lost income from all those customers who no longer visit, deterred by the parking charges, which is why they either provide it for free or at minimal cost or linked to you making a purchase.

I completely agree. The "last mile" problem in passenger transportation, as it is often termed, can really make or break the viability for the end user of rail transport. If I think for instance of a train journey from Bristol Parkway to London that I do often. The train journey itself is quite fast (~1 Hr 15 Min) which is faster than driving; however to get to the station would involve leaving about an hour to take a bus which completely defeats the purpose, so I might as well drive the whole way. Alternatively, if parking were a bit more reasonably priced I might be tempted to drive 10 Min to the station.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

The station car park drops to £7 at weekends for the record.

Reductions are almost invariably the case at most other station car park locations at the weekend, can't think of too many places where it's more at the weekend than during the morning in a normal working week.