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

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jimm

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GWR and the town council in Moreton-in-Marsh have jointly purchased the town's disused Royal British Legion Club for £1.1m to use the site for an 'integrated transport hub' and extra car and cycle parking spaces.

It is in the angle of the northern end of the station car park and the approach road.

Apparently the rules were changed last year to allow TOCs to acquire land in this sort of joint deal and this is the first one that GWR has been involved with - and may be the first anywhere in the country.

CLPG website article - http://clpg.org.uk/blog/moreton-in-marsh-station-transport-hub-deal/
A transport hub is to be built next to Moreton-in-Marsh station after Great Western Railway (GWR) and Moreton-in-Marsh Town Council jointly purchased the town’s disused Royal British Legion Club.

The deal will also pave the way for the provision of 50 new car parking spaces and 50 cycle parking spaces, to help meet demand from rail passengers, shoppers and visitors to the town.
GWR press release - https://gwr-newsroom.prgloo.com/news/land-purchased-for-new-transport-hub-at-moreton-in-marsh
Plans are in place to bring the site into use in phases to create an integrated transport hub on the site, delivering low carbon, high quality transport options, helping to alleviate congestion in the Town making it easier to visit and use the High Street.
 
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Llandudno

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GWR and the town council in Moreton-in-Marsh have jointly purchased the town's disused Royal British Legion Club for £1.1m to use the site for an 'integrated transport hub' and extra car and cycle parking spaces.

It is in the angle of the northern end of the station car park and the approach road.

Apparently the rules were changed last year to allow TOCs to acquire land in this sort of joint deal and this is the first one that GWR has been involved with - and may be the first anywhere in the country.

CLPG website article - http://clpg.org.uk/blog/moreton-in-marsh-station-transport-hub-deal/

GWR press release - https://gwr-newsroom.prgloo.com/news/land-purchased-for-new-transport-hub-at-moreton-in-marsh
Will the ‘integrated transport hub’ be served by buses..?
 

jimm

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Four bus routes already serve the station, as the CLPG article says, but the only bus infrastructure is a small open-fronted shelter in the car park - and while there is a real time bus info screen at the station, it is in the booking hall, so not easy to find/see at times when the station is unstaffed. Hopefully, there will be a better set-up for bus passengers, adjacent to the station entrance, once the hub scheme is complete.

The operators do their best to make connections with the trains - mainly services to/from the Oxford and Paddington direction - and some are pretty good, but at other times they miss by a matter of minutes or by miles, which isn't great when we're talking about rural bus routes that aren't that frequent to begin with.
 
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davetheguard

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This sounds like good news all round: an improvement in the already quite good rail/bus integration at the station (I can remember back in the very early '90s when no buses actually served the station, you had to walk to the nearby main street to catch one); and I'm sure the extra car park spaces will be more than welcome too!
 

philthetube

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So do GWR end up owning part of this ir will it belong to the franchise owner, and if so will GWR be paid for it if they lose the franchise?
 

Envoy

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When I checked 2 years ago, the bus links to the surrounding area were not that good. You would think that some sort of circular service could be offered to the nearby attractive villages for tourists which could double up as being useful for locals. The main street in MIM has attractive buildings but cars are everywhere - not helped by having a main road through the town.
 

43096

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What a load of PR twaddle “Integrated transport hub” is. It’s just some more car parking spaces and some bike racks.
 

DarloRich

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What a load of PR twaddle “Integrated transport hub” is. It’s just some more car parking spaces and some bike racks.

Beat me to it! They are building an extended car park with some bike racks and a few charging points.
 

jimm

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So do GWR end up owning part of this ir will it belong to the franchise owner, and if so will GWR be paid for it if they lose the franchise?
Given that GWR has been a direct award for years, not a franchise, and DfT sign-off will presumably have been needed for this deal to go ahead, then it would seem fair to assume that the GWR share will be treated as an asset held on behalf of the rail industry, so could transfer to a future operator or go on Network Rail's books in the future.

When I checked 2 years ago, the bus links to the surrounding area were not that good. You would think that some sort of circular service could be offered to the nearby attractive villages for tourists which could double up as being useful for locals. The main street in MIM has attractive buildings but cars are everywhere - not helped by having a main road through the town.
The bus services could be more frequent, provision of information could be better - still no timetables at the station for the No 51, six months after it was introduced - but Gloucestershire and Warwickshire do still provide some funding, unlike Oxfordshire, which axed any support for rural buses several years ago (the bus link at Kingham station is also supported by Gloucestershire, while much of the rest of West Oxfordshire is a bus-free zone).

I've no idea what sort of circular route you have in mind, as there's no obvious one to take. Never mind that once you are off the main roads in much of the area, a standard-sized single-decker can fill the entire road, so not exactly ideal.

A lot of tourists want to get to and from Stratford, Cheltenham and Bourton-on-the-Water, so are covered by the existing services, as are most of the larger villages nearby, and assorted community minibus routes - operated by The Villager http://www.villagerbus.co.uk and Hedgehog http://hedgehogbus.org - fill in many of the gaps through the smaller villages, albeit only on certain days each week, particularly Tuesdays when it is Moreton market day.

What a load of PR twaddle “Integrated transport hub” is. It’s just some more car parking spaces and some bike racks.

Beat me to it! They are building an extended car park with some bike racks and a few charging points.
Have either of you actually seen any detailed plans for this site? Which would be surprising, when the locals haven't so far.

And could you enlighten us as to why GWR's press release talks about phases of development of the site, with the car parking and cycle facilities forming phase 1, if that's all there's going to be? Or why, to quote GWR
  • Planning applications will be needed for each phase of development.
Which suggests there might just be more to it than tarmac, white lines and a big bike rack.
 

DB

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Have either of you actually seen any detailed plans for this site? Which would be surprising, when the locals haven't so far.

And could you enlighten us as to why GWR's press release talks about phases of development of the site, with the car parking and cycle facilities forming phase 1, if that's all there's going to be? Or why, to quote GWR

Which suggests there might just be more to it than tarmac, white lines and a big bike rack.

Well, what else might be needed? Seems unlikely that some sort of staffed railway / bus station woul be needed for what is a small town.
 

DarloRich

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And could you enlighten us as to why GWR's press release talks about phases of development of the site, with the car parking and cycle facilities forming phase 1, if that's all there's going to be? Or why, to quote GWR


Great -I will look forward to he Moreton in the marsh intergalactic space sport then...........................
 

jfowkes

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It hate it when people use "integrated transport" to mean "all the stuff is in the same place", rather than the actually useful meaning of joined-up service provision, timetabling and ticketing.
 

BayPaul

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It hate it when people use "integrated transport" to mean "all the stuff is in the same place", rather than the actually useful meaning of joined-up service provision, timetabling and ticketing.
It does at least mean that if and when the government ever actually starts putting policies in place to provide this, it is a lot easier to achieve and minimal infrastructural work is needed. I agree with you completely that proper integrated transport is needed, but getting bus / train / bike all in the same place is a useful baby step on the route.
 

TheSel

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

1616432256325.png
Image shows HST (car 43186 leading) with a Pulham's Travel coach at the bus stop maybe 20 yards away. (my photo)
 

Peter C

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I've been to Moreton many times but never really paid attention to the area surrounding the car park, or the station itself. One of my main issues with Kingham station is that the buses and trains don't seem to connect all that well, or all that often - at least in my experience. Having something at Moreton which could be a stepping-stone towards better integration will be brilliant if it works, but I'd have to see an artist's impression to understand what the work will entail as despite the detail of the two links upthread, I can't easily visualise what's going to happen :)

-Peter
 

Envoy

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Given that GWR has been a direct award for years, not a franchise, and DfT sign-off will presumably have been needed for this deal to go ahead, then it would seem fair to assume that the GWR share will be treated as an asset held on behalf of the rail industry, so could transfer to a future operator or go on Network Rail's books in the future.


The bus services could be more frequent, provision of information could be better - still no timetables at the station for the No 51, six months after it was introduced - but Gloucestershire and Warwickshire do still provide some funding, unlike Oxfordshire, which axed any support for rural buses several years ago (the bus link at Kingham station is also supported by Gloucestershire, while much of the rest of West Oxfordshire is a bus-free zone).

I've no idea what sort of circular route you have in mind, as there's no obvious one to take. Never mind that once you are off the main roads in much of the area, a standard-sized single-decker can fill the entire road, so not exactly ideal.

I would have thought the following route would be viable for both locals and attracting locals:>
Cheltenham Railway Station (at present, the buses from villages only go to downtown Cheltenham meaning that people must either walk the mile to the station or take a bus with a different company - how dumb is that with all the trains that call at Cheltenham?
Anyway - Cheltenham Railway Station > town > Andoversford > Northleach > Lower Slaughter > Bourton-on-the-Water > Stow-on-theHill > Maugersbury > MIM (to match with trains so a little dwell time) > Bourton-on-the-Hill > Chipping Campden (which could do with its own station) > Hidcote Manor > Mickleton (connects with a bus to Stratford-upon-Avon) > Weston-sub-Edge > Broadway > Toddington (for Steam Railway & Stanway Manor) > Winchcombe > Cheltenham town > Cheltenham Railway Station.

I would brand the above service ‘Cotswold Explorer” and GWR, Cross Country & Transport for Wales could market travel to the stations at Cheltenham & MIM with tickets that include hop on hop off on the above buses. GWR could even allow travel to/from MIM and or Cheltenham with the above ticket to help attract tourists. As things stand, for tourists wishing to travel around the attractive villages in this area and stay an hour or so, it is virtually impossible. Car is the only option and many foreigners are scared stiff about driving on the wrong side of the road let alone on country roads. Local bus timetables are complicated and often involve different companies and then you get all this stuff about this bus does not operate on school days as it is being used to transport kids. (Most schools have their own mini buses - why not use them and hire in a mini bus if they are needed for field trips etc.)?

So that connects all the main villages to 2 railway main line stations and I would have such a route running clockwise and anti-clockwise ideally at hourly intervals. We probably have local bus operators who don’t even check the train schedules plus 2 useless County Councils who won’t come up with viable support because this area borders two counties.
 
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Grumpy Git

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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)
If that bus is only 20 yards from the train (for a passenger to walk), I need you to sell me my next fitted carpet. ;)
 

43096

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Have either of you actually seen any detailed plans for this site? Which would be surprising, when the locals haven't so far.

And could you enlighten us as to why GWR's press release talks about phases of development of the site, with the car parking and cycle facilities forming phase 1, if that's all there's going to be? Or why, to quote GWR

Which suggests there might just be more to it than tarmac, white lines and a big bike rack.
Because they want to make it sound more grand that it is. It may just be phase one, but then again future phases may not happen, particularly as they seem to be reticent to say what they are!

Perhaps we can look forward to:
Phase 2 - somewhere to park your space hopper;
Phase 3 - a small lay-by with a "Taxi" sign;
Phase 4 - a metal pole being put up with a sign carrying the words "Bus Stop" on it.

Each to be accompanied by a gushing press release and "jimm" fawning over how wonderful GWR are.
 

Peter C

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Phase 2 - somewhere to park your space hopper;
Oh please - the people of Moreton are much more advanced than space hoppers. They've got those little plastic children's cars to go around in ;)

-Peter
 

david1212

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I would have thought the following route would be viable for both locals and attracting locals:>
Cheltenham Railway Station (at present, the buses from villages only go to downtown Cheltenham meaning that people must either walk the mile to the station or take a bus with a different company - how dumb is that with all the trains that call at Cheltenham?
Anyway - Cheltenham Railway Station > town > Andoversford > Northleach > Lower Slaughter > Bourton-on-the-Water > Stow-on-theHill > Maugersbury > MIM (to match with trains so a little dwell time) > Bourton-on-the-Hill > Chipping Campden (which could do with its own station) > Hidcote Manor > Mickleton (connects with a bus to Stratford-upon-Avon) > Weston-sub-Edge > Broadway > Toddington (for Steam Railway & Stanway Manor) > Winchcombe > Cheltenham town > Cheltenham Railway Station.

I would brand the above service ‘Cotswold Explorer” and GWR, Cross Country & Transport for Wales could market travel to the stations at Cheltenham & MIM with tickets that include hop on hop off on the above buses. GWR could even allow travel to/from MIM and or Cheltenham with the above ticket to help attract tourists. As things stand, for tourists wishing to travel around the attractive villages in this area and stay an hour or so, it is virtually impossible. Car is the only option and many foreigners are scared stiff about driving on the wrong side of the road let alone on country roads. Local bus timetables are complicated and often involve different companies and then you get all this stuff about this bus does not operate on school days as it is being used to transport kids. (Most schools have their own mini buses - why not use them and hire in a mini bus if they are needed for field trips etc.)?

So that connects all the main villages to 2 railway main line stations and I would have such a route running clockwise and anti-clockwise ideally at hourly intervals. We probably have local bus operators who don’t even check the train schedules plus 2 useless County Councils who won’t come up with viable support because this area borders two counties.

My concern with this is how long would that bus circuit take? Would potential passengers decide the time was too long? There has to be enough slack to be reliable so running hourly in both directions how many buses would be needed? The vehicles need to be a decent specification too.

Pre-covid was there a regular service Moreton-in-Marsh - Stow-on-the-Wold - Bourton-on-the-Water that kept to the main road to minimise the time?

Another tourist link to make a circular route would be for the above to be part of Moreton-in-Marsh - Cirencester - Swindon.
 

jimm

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Great -I will look forward to he Moreton in the marsh intergalactic space sport then...........................

Because they want to make it sound more grand that it is. It may just be phase one, but then again future phases may not happen, particularly as they seem to be reticent to say what they are!

Perhaps we can look forward to:
Phase 2 - somewhere to park your space hopper;
Phase 3 - a small lay-by with a "Taxi" sign;
Phase 4 - a metal pole being put up with a sign carrying the words "Bus Stop" on it.

Each to be accompanied by a gushing press release and "jimm" fawning over how wonderful GWR are.

My, my, what wits you are. No idea what the point of your interventions in the thread is supposed to be - a bit of good news for the railway and a small town and this is your contribution. What on earth is a 'space sport'...?

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.

I would have thought the following route would be viable for both locals and attracting locals:>
Cheltenham Railway Station (at present, the buses from villages only go to downtown Cheltenham meaning that people must either walk the mile to the station or take a bus with a different company - how dumb is that with all the trains that call at Cheltenham?
Anyway - Cheltenham Railway Station > town > Andoversford > Northleach > Lower Slaughter > Bourton-on-the-Water > Stow-on-theHill > Maugersbury > MIM (to match with trains so a little dwell time) > Bourton-on-the-Hill > Chipping Campden (which could do with its own station) > Hidcote Manor > Mickleton (connects with a bus to Stratford-upon-Avon) > Weston-sub-Edge > Broadway > Toddington (for Steam Railway & Stanway Manor) > Winchcombe > Cheltenham town > Cheltenham Railway Station.

I would brand the above service ‘Cotswold Explorer” and GWR, Cross Country & Transport for Wales could market travel to the stations at Cheltenham & MIM with tickets that include hop on hop off on the above buses. GWR could even allow travel to/from MIM and or Cheltenham with the above ticket to help attract tourists. As things stand, for tourists wishing to travel around the attractive villages in this area and stay an hour or so, it is virtually impossible. Car is the only option and many foreigners are scared stiff about driving on the wrong side of the road let alone on country roads. Local bus timetables are complicated and often involve different companies and then you get all this stuff about this bus does not operate on school days as it is being used to transport kids. (Most schools have their own mini buses - why not use them and hire in a mini bus if they are needed for field trips etc.)?

So that connects all the main villages to 2 railway main line stations and I would have such a route running clockwise and anti-clockwise ideally at hourly intervals. We probably have local bus operators who don’t even check the train schedules plus 2 useless County Councils who won’t come up with viable support because this area borders two counties.

This is like one of the 'let's link up various rail services, just because we can' threads - meet a tractor or lorry or two along the way on narrow lanes and the timetable would fall to bits.
The 801 does not exactly run at warp speed now - with detours off the main road into Stow, Bourton-on-the-Water and Andoversford - send it on yet more and extend the journey times to and from Cheltenham and you would do a pretty thorough job of driving off most of the local passengers. There simply is not enough custom out there to justify running both an 801 and a magical mystery tour. The last effort locally to explicitly serve tourists - the X55 Bath-Cirencester-Stratford service - lasted just a couple of summers at the end of the 1990s.
The 801 ran to and from Cheltenham Spa station for a short time. The number of passengers was so low that it was cut back to operate to and from the town centre again. Most rail-borne tourists travel from/to London and Moreton-in-Marsh is the obvious station to use - and strongly recommended by Japanese travel guides, hence the Japanese direction signs around the station put up 10 years ago.
The number of passengers on the 801 getting on and off at Northleach when most services ran that way was so low that it recently reverted to all but a couple of journeys running direct between Bourton-on-the-Water and Andoversford to get people to and from Cheltenham faster.
Good luck with trying to get anything bigger than a minibus through Lower Slaughter or Maugersbury. Not sure why you think a bus should go to the latter every hour - the 802 to Kingham station sticks like glue to the main road from Stow-on-the-Wold, suggesting there is no demand. Hardly surprising when about 150 people live there and tourists have this habit of sticking to the hotspots like Borton-on-the-Water.
The timetables are hardly that complicated, and the only alterations involving school journeys on the routes serving Moreton station mean some minor timing changes on school or non-school days. Overseas tourists, notably the Japanese, have never had any problems getting to the key places they want to go on the existing routes.
The bus operators do check the rail timetables, though the GWR timetable change in December 2019 caused some issues, as a result of the Paddington departure time of Cotswold services shifting from xx.20 to xx.50, and the bus timetables also have to reflect other needs, such as work/college related arrival and departure times in Cheltenham.
The No 51 service launched last September was basically built around the rail timetable. That route is funded by Warwickshire across its boundary into Gloucestershire, while the 1 & 2 are jointly supported by Gloucestershire and Warwickshire, after separate Moreton-Chipping Campden and Stratford-Chipping Campden routes were combined more than 20 years ago.
The site of Chipping Campden station is about a mile and a half from the town centre and the high school, so not the most attractive proposition for reopening, never mind the price tag.
 
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Doctor Fegg

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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.

The bus services could be more frequent, provision of information could be better - still no timetables at the station for the No 51, six months after it was introduced - but Gloucestershire and Warwickshire do still provide some funding, unlike Oxfordshire, which axed any support for rural buses several years ago (the bus link at Kingham station is also supported by Gloucestershire, while much of the rest of West Oxfordshire is a bus-free zone).
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.
 

davetheguard

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It hate it when people use "integrated transport" to mean "all the stuff is in the same place", rather than the actually useful meaning of joined-up service provision, timetabling and ticketing.
I don't really care what it's called as long as rail & bus work together to their -and our- mutual benefit.
 
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