Transport hub to be created at Moreton-in-Marsh station

[43096]

43096, the mask slipped in the end, didn't it? Revealing that at the root of it, yet again, is your near-pathological dislike of First Group and all its works. People in Moreton-in-Marsh are just grateful that, after waiting 20 years and through umpteen failed schemes, a concrete step has been taken to help address the problems with car parking in the town centre and at the station and to make some other improvements while they are at it.

No mask to slip old bean. I detest First as a company.

Perhaps you'll be similarly honest and admit that you think the sun shines out of their corporate backside? Not holding my breath though.

 

[class ep-09]

10 March 2012 - so nine years ago, and even then it wasn't THAT far between the bus and the train!

View attachment 92901
Image shows HST (car 43186 leading) with a Pulham's Travel coach at the bus stop maybe 20 yards away. (my photo)

That HST stopped “short” big time . Has it been reported yet ? ))

 

[Oxfordblues]

I cycled to Moreton-in-Marsh recently and was surprised to find the Co-op by the station had a rack for just 3 bikes. Considering that over half their customers probably live in the town or within a 10-minute bike ride, it's depressing that nearly everyone chooses to drive. Safer cycling infrastructure might help wean the town's car-dependency victims off their ingrained habits.

 

[Railwaysceptic]

I cycled to Moreton-in-Marsh recently and was surprised to find the Co-op by the station had a rack for just 3 bikes. Considering that over half their customers probably live in the town or within a 10-minute bike ride, it's depressing that nearly everyone chooses to drive. Safer cycling infrastructure might help wean the town's car-dependency victims off their ingrained habits.

Most people who visit a shop come out with stuff to take home. The boot of a car facilitates this.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

I cycled to Moreton-in-Marsh recently and was surprised to find the Co-op by the station had a rack for just 3 bikes. Considering that over half their customers probably live in the town or within a 10-minute bike ride, it's depressing that nearly everyone chooses to drive. Safer cycling infrastructure might help wean the town's car-dependency victims off their ingrained habits.

Cotswold District is strangely poorly supplied for bike parking. I have never found a single cycle rack in Stow-on-the-Wold, although its historic town square is one big car park. Moreton isn't much better and (as you say) the Warners Budgens Co-op has always been particularly poor. There's not much in Bourton-on-the-Water either. Given the vast upsurge in cycling in the Cotswolds over the past few years, they're missing a trick.

 

[jimm]

Sounds like a good initiative.

I hope some thought is given to cycle access to the station as well as cycle parking. The (fairly recently introduced) one-way system along Station Road and New Road is a bit of a disincentive to accessing the station by bike, and should really have a cycle contraflow.

I believe GCC have been looking at permitting cycle access on the footpath across Blenheim Farm (i.e. the fields to the east of the railway), which would be very welcome. Better still if the path along the side of the Co-op/Royal Mail depot could be widened, though this would involve some landtake from RM.


Just as a footnote, there is some subsidy going towards rural buses in Oxfordshire once again: partly DfT grants that OCC have successfully bid for, partly S106. (I'm not sure whether OCC is also contributing out of its own coffers or not.) We successfully got some of this for the X9... and then the pandemic hit.

Cycle contraflows could be a possibility, but removing on-street parking spaces to make room may not be a popular idea, even with new off-street capacity. The narrowest part of New Road, by the junction with the High Street, is just about wide enough for a bus/coach, or the articulated lorries that move Network Rail plant around to and from the track access point at the station when there is engineering work locally. I wouldn't fancy being on a bike and meeting those sorts of large vehicles coming the other way, or with their back ends swinging out when turning into the High Street.

Even if you could widen the path between the Co-op and station - a non-starter with the size of some of the lorries delivering to the Co-op, which need every inch of space to manoeuvre - the path is a tight blind curve, due to the high wall on one side that can't be removed/lowered to improve sightlines. Encouraging cyclists to ride round it would just scare off pedestrians.

Not sure spending other people's money amounts to much of a U-turn on buses by OCC. Do they have a plan for what happens when the grants and section 106 money run out?

I cycled to Moreton-in-Marsh recently and was surprised to find the Co-op by the station had a rack for just 3 bikes. Considering that over half their customers probably live in the town or within a 10-minute bike ride, it's depressing that nearly everyone chooses to drive. Safer cycling infrastructure might help wean the town's car-dependency victims off their ingrained habits.

What makes you think the cars all belong to people living in the town? It is right next to the A429, so there is plenty of passing trade, and while a few of the nearby villages have a small community shop, others have no shops at all, so the odds are they are going to drive to one in Moreton-in-Marsh or other towns close by, just as people drive in to catch trains.

A lot of locals walk to the shops unless they are planning to buy a trolley load of stuff. Pretty much all the housing is within 15 minutes' walk of the High Street, the station or the Co-op - and not much more to the Aldi at the southern end of the town, come to that. And as cycling in or around Moreton-in-Marsh involves mixing it with cars, vans and lorries on the A44 or A429 at some stage, due to the lack of alternative/off-road routes, walking is a better bet much of the day.

The acquisition of the RBL site offers an opportunity to look at a range of transport and parking issues in the round at long last, but the town is still stuck with the legacies of the past - the remains of a medieval burgage town street layout, with a few later alterations, and British Rail's decision to sell the old coal yard and Stratford & Moreton Tramway depot site now occupied by the Co-op supermarket, which would have been the perfect place for a transport hub and car parking.

 

[jimm]

A little more information from Moreton-in-Marsh Town Council's website

In the second phase, more parking spaces and provision for improved public transport will be delivered.

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www.moretoninmarshtowncouncil.co.uk