Worcestershire Parkway station progress

[squizzler]

It makes perfect sense to have an Intercity service from WOP to New Street to help reduce congestion on the M5 etc.

Here is a flyer sent to all the households in the catchment area. The third bulletpoint is telling: the north south route is described as the Cardiff to Nottingham line. The absence of the word "Birmingham" altogether from the flyer (save for a small label on the map) makes it abundantly clear that they do not want to market this station as a Birmingham park-and-ride.

 

[The Planner]

Completely disagree. XC services are the only ones going through those two platforms.
It makes perfect sense to have an Intercity service from WOP to New Street to help reduce congestion on the M5 etc.
If the trains can't cope with the demand, the fault lies with not increasing the capacity of the rolling stock to meet the rising demand.
Hopefully transfers of Virgin Voyagers and EMR Meridians will help with this in the future.

And like I previously said, it doesn't currently make it possible to timetable.

 

[S-Bahn]

Here is a flyer sent to all the households in the catchment area. The third bulletpoint is telling: the north south route is described as the Cardiff to Nottingham line. The absence of the word "Birmingham" altogether from the flyer (save for a small label on the map) makes it abundantly clear that they do not want to market this station as a Birmingham park-and-ride.

View attachment 74611View attachment 74612

That's a GWR produced flyer to advertise their services towards London. They don't run any services to Birmingham and are unlikely to unless something like the Camp Hill to Moor Street project goes ahead.

 

[S-Bahn]

And like I previously said, it doesn't currently make it possible to timetable.

It's def something to consider for the future though!

 

[edwin_m]

Like I said and you've all ignored, the non-car alternative here is to walk or cycle to one of the city centre stations, not to the Parkway. Free parking just encourages people to drive to the Parkway instead. So there needs to be some incentive to discourage people from doing that when they have an alternative.

Agreed some people don't have that alternative because they live somewhere rural. But if they want to maintain that lifestyle they should make some recompense for the environmental consequences.

 

[PshP]

Just to Add a couple of points
The local development plan Includes a 5-10 thousand dwelling garden village or town at Parkway.
As far as parking is concerned the charge to pay the development cost is fair enough what is a problem is that instead of running the car park themselves and getting the loan paid off the county council have allowed the railways to take over and outsource to APCOA a German private company. So it will take longer to pay off the development costs. My local county councilor had no answer to this.

 

[Noddy]

The new station is a considerable distance from the suburbs of Worcester. Using a google search for a random suburban street in East Worcester to the station is a journey of around 5 miles, with a walk time of 1.5 hours, 25 min cycle or 5-10 mins by car.

A Google street-view of the roads from Worcester to POW also show they are unsuitable for commuters walking/cyclists (no street lighting, lack of pavements). We're taking country B roads here.

Also given the nature of the UK's climate, walking or cycling anything more that than a few mins in the cold and wet (and dark) is a non-starter.

I know there are a lot of people who cycle to places like Bristol Temple Meads, but that's quite different.

If they had built a dedicated illuminated cycle path from the outskirts of town to the station, then maybe!

They should offer free parking and charging for electric vehicles. Imagine 20 years from now all the cars parked up and being charged by renewable energy whilst the Worcester residents are travelling and working in their offices in Birmingham etc. Fancy that.

There is virtually no local population even in cycling radius. The projected modal share was always about 95% private car, 2% taxi and the rest because they had to somehow fiddle the figures to justify putting on a token bus.

I'm guessing you don't live anywhere near the station, nor have ever visited the area, nor have even read the Worcestershire County Council web page about the station... because that's not the case at all.

You wouldn't cycle along the "country B road" (the B4084) to get to Worcestershire Parkway. You would cycle along the signposted route which follows minor roads and traffic-free paths, entering the station on a specially provided traffic-free link from Woodbury Lane.

For example, from St Peters, you would follow the traffic-free paths; cross the bypass on a brand new £3m cycling bridge (opened earlier this year); follow the very lightly trafficked Brockhill Lane; then continue along the fairly quiet Church Lane (which includes a newly designated cycle lane along one section) to Woodbury Lane. You'd then take the new path into the back entrance of the station. All of this is signposted both as NCN 45/442 or as an explicit connecting route to the station.

Total distance, taking the Tesco in St Peters as a convenient reference point, is 2.5 miles.

https://cycle.travel/map?to=52.1561,-2.1606&from=52.1716,-2.2046



2.5 miles is well within cycling radius. There is plenty of research out there showing that sub-3 miles attracts a large number of potential cyclists and sub-5/6 miles still has significant modal share.

Cycling enthusiasts might ride there, but the much larger number of non-cycling commuters are going to use their cars.

I suggest you get on the phone to Transport for London double-quick, then, and tell them that only "cycling enthusiasts" will ride 2.5 miles. Your insight could just have saved TfL the millions of pounds every year it's spending on cycling!

And maybe it's not too late for Worcestershire County Council to get a £3m refund on that bridge? One careful owner.

Whilst cycling might be a viable part of the commute in cities like London or Bristol, its not going to play a major role in a commute from Worcestershire Parkway to New Street.

S-Bahn (and others) I’m not sure how much (or any) local knowledge you have (and I’m aware others have responded to some of your points) but:

1) St Peters (the closest area of Worcester to Parkway) already has a good set of very well used cycle paths
2) the new bridge over the southern link road from said network in St Peters (and beyond) is already open but not showing on Google or the other web mapping services. This gives a false impression of how long it would take from anywhere in SE Worcester.
3) the new bridge means you don’t have to cycle along busy roads
4) Parkway was designed and built with an entrance specifically for foot and cycle access on the western side of the station (off Woodbury Lane). This access point isn’t showing up on web mapping services yet.
5) There is major development of over 2000 new homes (Worcester south) between St Peters, Norton and Kempsey. The entirety of this development will be less that 4 miles from Parkway. Access to Parkway will be a big selling point for these houses. Even out of shape 4 miles is 30 min. Fit or on an ebike you could easily do it in less than 15. For houses on the Parkway side of the development it will be even less.

While car will probably always be the primary method of getting to the station I suspect bikes will play a significant role. It will be interesting to see how the Strava heatmap looks in the next year or two.

 

[jimm]

I'd argue that parking at stations, particularly Parkway stations, should be free whereever possible, although a nominal charge isn't likely to deter commuters, although its still a tax.

£1000 a year for WOP is pretty steep. I'd expect a meet and greet and valet service for that additional premium!

You can argue what you like - the fact of the matter is that policy decisions have been made to charge for various reasons, such as paying back loans used to fund the construction of Worcestershire Parkway and Bromsgrove stations - which would otherwise have to be paid for out of, er, taxation.

As I pointed out on Sunday - post 871, top of page 30 - by comparison with the two other key Parkway stations in the region targeting travel to London - Warwick and Birmingham International - it is a sight less steep.

The 'taxes' don't seem to be too much of a deterrent to use of Worcestershire Parkway - someone I spoke to today said the car park was about a third full yesterday and again today, so that's 150+ cars from a standing start and someone else I met had traveled there on the X50 bus.

 

[PartyOperator]

Had a particularly fun ride on a two-car 170 out of New Street this afternoon. They're usually busy, but this was terrible. Several people commented that it was worse than usual. Lots got out at Worcestershire Parkway. Perhaps they'll be put off by the experience, but the usual Worcester trains aren't much better so maybe not.

 

[Upton]

Made a visit to Worcestershire Parkway today arriving from Birmingham and departing to Oxford. I was there for about fifty minutes in the early afternoon. Here are my observations.

The first thing that struck me was the car park looked well patronised. I would say at least a hundred cars were parked there. There looked to be at least ten electric car charging points available but no cars using them!

I saw a couple of buses come and go whilst I was there, but there were no passengers for them.

The station itself is bright and airy though there seem to be a lot of steps for the size of the station.

I had a chat with one of the guys in the ticket office and he said that they are going to put some chairs in the “waiting area” soon. Also in the next few weeks a food/coffee outlet is going to be put in the same area.

There were a few people coming and going whilst I was there, but I would describe it as a “quiet station” at the moment. Still it’s early days and it will take time to build up passenger numbers.

 

[Llanigraham]

£1000 a year for WOP is pretty steep. I'd expect a meet and greet and valet service for that additional premium!

It's cheaper than the charge at the NCP car park opposite Worcester Cathedral!

 

[Noddy]

Made a visit to Worcestershire Parkway today arriving from Birmingham and departing to Oxford. I was there for about fifty minutes in the early afternoon. Here are my observations.

The first thing that struck me was the car park looked well patronised. I would say at least a hundred cars were parked there. There looked to be at least ten electric car charging points available but no cars using them!

I saw a couple of buses come and go whilst I was there, but there were no passengers for them.

The station itself is bright and airy though there seem to be a lot of steps for the size of the station.

I had a chat with one of the guys in the ticket office and he said that they are going to put some chairs in the “waiting area” soon. Also in the next few weeks a food/coffee outlet is going to be put in the same area.

There were a few people coming and going whilst I was there, but I would describe it as a “quiet station” at the moment. Still it’s early days and it will take time to build up passenger numbers.

I suspect early afternoon isn’t the best time to be there for a station likely to be used mainly by commuters! Perhaps in future, with more services providing better connections across the different lines, it will become more of an interchange station but at the moment it’ll be the rush hours when we see how busy it will be.

 

[ExpressTrain]

I caught the 1430 Birmingham New St to Cardiff service last Friday and was surprised when the conductor came on the PA and announced the stops as University, Cheltenham Spa, Gloucester, etc... missing out Worcestershire Parkway. I was only headed to University so wasn’t an issue, but I was curious to see why this particular train doesn’t stop at WOP.

Looking into it further I find that the timetable PDF shows the train is due to stop there, but this is not shown on national rail enquires, or CrossCountry’s app. Realtime Trains says it’s an unadvertised stop. Has someone forgotten to add the stop to this service?

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/C74612/2020-02-28/detailed

 

[VT 390]

I caught the 1430 Birmingham New St to Cardiff service last Friday and was surprised when the conductor came on the PA and announced the stops as University, Cheltenham Spa, Gloucester, etc... missing out Worcestershire Parkway. I was only headed to University so wasn’t an issue, but I was curious to see why this particular train doesn’t stop at WOP.

Looking into it further I find that the timetable PDF shows the train is due to stop there, but this is not shown on national rail enquires, or CrossCountry’s app. Realtime Trains says it’s an unadvertised stop. Has someone forgotten to add the stop to this service?

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/C74612/2020-02-28/detailed

I don't see why it would need to stop at all at Parkway if it was not for passengers to use it and if it is not for use it is a strange gap to have in the middle of the day.

 

[2T57]

I don't see why it would need to stop at all at Parkway if it was not for passengers to use it and if it is not for use it is a strange gap to have in the middle of the day.

The service is shown on RTT calling at Worcestershire Parkway from the start of the new timetable on 18 May
https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/C86804/2020-05-18/detailed

 

[VT 390]

The service is shown on RTT calling at Worcestershire Parkway from the start of the new timetable on 18 May
https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/C86804/2020-05-18/detailed

Thanks, is there any reason why it is not calling here at the moment?

 

[HST274]

I got the first train to worcestershire parkway and I noticed they hadn't added it to the ticket machine. Does anyone know if they Have fixed this yet?

 

[Mag_seven]

I got the first train to worcestershire parkway and I noticed they hadn't added it to the ticket machine. Does anyone know if they Have fixed this yet?

From which station?

 

[Envoy]

Worcestershire Parkway does not show up on raileurope.co.uk booking site. They have no e-mail contact & no phone number.

 

[HST274]

From which station?

I left from foregate but I also checked in colwall and it doesn't show up

 

[PshP]

I caught the 1430 Birmingham New St to Cardiff service last Friday and was surprised when the conductor came on the PA and announced the stops as University, Cheltenham Spa, Gloucester, etc... missing out Worcestershire Parkway. I was only headed to University so wasn’t an issue, but I was curious to see why this particular train doesn’t stop at WOP.

Looking into it further I find that the timetable PDF shows the train is due to stop there, but this is not shown on national rail enquires, or CrossCountry’s app. Realtime Trains says it’s an unadvertised stop. Has someone forgotten to add the stop to this service?

https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/C74612/2020-02-28/detailed

This was due to the train being still shown as a non passenger call in the electronic version of the working timetable.
I contacted Cross Country and they have now rectified things so the train shows in journey planners correctly.

 

[ExpressTrain]

This was due to the train being still shown as a non passenger call in the electronic version of the working timetable.
I contacted Cross Country and they have now rectified things so the train shows in journey planners correctly.

Thanks for the update. Good to see it is showing correctly now you have been in touch with them.

 

[Quakers Yard]

Here is a flyer sent to all the households in the catchment area. The third bulletpoint is telling: the north south route is described as the Cardiff to Nottingham line. The absence of the word "Birmingham" altogether from the flyer (save for a small label on the map) makes it abundantly clear that they do not want to market this station as a Birmingham park-and-ride.

View attachment 74611View attachment 74612

Glaring error in the leaflet...M4?