The record of Parkway stations is not stellar.
For every Bristol Parkway there are several like Alfreton & Mansfield, East Midlands, even Liverpool South, which still do not generate the traffic that was promised in their business case.
Stopping Cardiff-Nottingham feels like a toe in the water for XC. If it works, they can always stop more.
I don't see connections working, any more than they do at Tamworth, at the frequency offered.
Where do they think new traffic for the Cotswold line will come from?
It's easy enough to drive to Shrub Hill or Evesham for existing services.
For Birmingham there will be the new station at Bromsgrove providing 2tph or better.
Perhaps before making statements like
It's easy enough to drive to Shrub Hill or Evesham for existing services
you should do some basic research.
Car parking provision at Shrub Hill is all of 120 spaces, in a city of 100,000 people (parking at Foregate Street, zero). And this is a city with terrible traffic problems in the peaks.
Car parking at Evesham, 70 spaces, which is why, since 2006, FGW has added extra stops at Pershore and Honeybourne to spread the burden in that area, not that provision at either of those places is great either, with efforts to expand Pershore's car park being a long-running nightmare.
This is not to say that Parkway is exactly a stroke of genius either. So sceptical about it have many parties been that this idea has been kicking around since the late 1970s. Even now it's the county council, not the rail industry, that is driving it forward, never mind it will be a traffic magnet of huge proportions and council plans for any related road improvements are theoretical at best.
And while they bang on about wanting faster trains to London, the council doesn't want to accept that an extra stop is going to cost time - or you face up to the next logical step, which is to close Shrub Hill, which is badly located for the city centre, and, other than its small car park, doesn't have much else going for it.
In isolation, the Parkway station makes very little sense.
If it formed part of a package for the whole of Worcestershire, with Worcester area resignalling (including a turnback in the station at Great Malvern) and redoubling to Evesham, allowing Great Malvern or Droitwich/Kidderminster to central Worcester, Parkway and Evesham shuttles to run, overlaid on the Cotswold Line service to give a near turn-up-and-go service between the city centre (and destinations elsewhere in the county) and the Parkway, then it might make sense.
In isolation, I'm afraid it's just a piece of grandstanding by the council, aided and abetted by local MPs, which will do nothing to solve broader transport issues throughout the county, nor that much to improve rail connections. It really doesn't matter what services XC stop there, the trains they operate on any of their routes passing Norton don't have the capacity to handle lots more passengers - and the key rail traffic flow at Worcester, as others have noted, is to/from Birmingham.