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Worcestershire Parkway station progress

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jayah

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Shocking, 40-odd-year-old rolling stock gets sent for scrap...

Said franchise was not long ago refurbishing said rolling stock. Is there anyone out there who doesn't think they are short?

If we can afford to scrap perfectly good trains, someone should be solving these problems.
 
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Starmill

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If WOP is served by an amazing bus/tram network then your point might have validity and in that event people would leave the car at home anyway as the parking tax is there as a deterrent, not a significant source of revenue.
I made this point, but was shot down.
 

Starmill

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Happy with the pricing. 9 quid return from Sutton/New street to Parkway and then another 8 quid to Cheltenham so all in all 10 quid saving with splitting rather than the ridiculous 27 quid for 40 minute journey that was the only real alternative before (don't have time to go via Worcester and even that is 20 quid).
Indeed!

On the other hand, £4.60 single into Worcester Shrub Hill from this station is more than £1 a mile. I can't see that having any takers.
 

jayah

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Driving and parking has negative impacts on the environment and society, which are reasonable to charge for. The charges are advertised so are not sneaky.
If the powers that be really believed that, they wouldn't be building car parks in fields miles from anywhere.

Planning, housing and infrastructure is now beholden to the model of the outer suburbs, out of town shopping, out of town public services, car parks and parkways.
 

jayah

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Indeed!

On the other hand, £4.60 single into Worcester Shrub Hill from this station is more than £1 a mile. I can't see that having any takers.
With a train service to Worcester every hour and no settlement of any note for 10 miles in any direction, except Worcester itself, they would have to pay £4.60 before seeing much uptake.
 

jayah

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The presence of free parking might encourage people to drive there when the could have walked, cycled or taken the bus or a taxi either to the Parkway itself or to one of the other Worcester stations. So as far as I'm concerned a modest charge is entirely reasonable.
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.
 

jayah

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25 minutes is perhaps getting close to the limit for consideration for a daily bike trip by most non enthusiasts, but eminently doable (and done by Londoners all the time). You suggest in an earlier post that motorists will supersede petrol with electric motors, but for bike riders electric assist bikes are already a mainstream reality, and are a game changer for commuters. You can pick one up from local firm gTech cheap as chips.

I foresee the station becoming a key multimodal transport hub in due course, just like Bristol Parkway has become.

Bristol Parkway is surrounded by dense housing suburbs and close to major employers of national scale, as well as a large shopping centre.

Tiverton or East Midlands would be more realistic.
 

221129

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If we can afford to scrap perfectly good trains, someone should be solving these problems.
What perfectly good trains? The sets that have been sent for scrap are the worst examples. The Mk3s have taken years longer than planned to refurbish because of their poor condition.
 

edwin_m

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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.
But someone in that random suburban street might choose the 5-10min drive to Parkway rather than walk or cycle to Shrub Hill or Foregate Street, therefore driving 10 car miles some of which is in a built-up area. The parking charge levels the playing field somewhat.
 

jayah

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What perfectly good trains? The sets that have been sent for scrap are the worst examples. The Mk3s have taken years longer than planned to refurbish because of their poor condition.
If you want to declare mk3s not to your taste fine, but there needs to be an alternative other than continue muddling through. They are far better than much other stock that will be around for years to come.
 

Doctor Fegg

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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.

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

There is virtually no local population even in cycling radius.

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.
 

pdeaves

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If you want to declare mk3s not to your taste fine, but there needs to be an alternative other than continue muddling through. They are far better than much other stock that will be around for years to come.
Make sure you understand the difference between whether or not the train is nice for users and whether the train is physically worn out.
 

S-Bahn

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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.
 

Doctor Fegg

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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.
 

jimm

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1. The point of a public transport system is to efficiently move people and that includes tax paying commuters and the unemployed, students, etc.

Well if you think trying to squeeze yet more people on to an already full and standing Voyager is efficient - when it is more likely to put them off using a train ever again - good luck with that. What would be efficient would be to increase the frequency of the GWR Bristol-Worcester service, which would improve matters considerably in terms of services south of Worcester.

2. There is pent up demand for fast connections between Worcester & Birmingham and WOP is the obvious way of resolving that. By your logic, Intercity express services should skip places like Bedford and Guildford as they can be served by local stoppers to London. "Intercity" doesn't just mean uber-long journeys from Bristol to Newcastle or express trains out of London.

I don't know how fast you think XC's services currently are through the Birmingham suburbs where they share track with all sorts of other services - something that is not going to change.

A more obvious thing to do is to put more coaches on the existing WMR services from Malvern, Foregate Street and Shrub Hill and increase the frequency as well - new trains are already being built and the Moor Street plan is intended to help increase the frequency, though extra and better infrastructure will also be needed all the way from Bromsgrove to Hereford.

3. The XC 170's from Cardiff to Nottingham meet the criteria for "Intercity", despite also (like the Voyagers) suffering from a lack of capacity to meet demand. I hope in the longer term the XC franchise upgrade to an 80x model IET that has a diesel performance better than the Voyagers/Meridians.

No they don't - as for new stock, we will just have to wait and see.

4. There are lots of ways to fund things. Railway infrastructure such as a station is an ultra-long term investment and the capital costs can be recovered without "punitively taxing" the users via parking charges.
Taxing someone to park at a parkway station is counter-intuitive. It either causes them not to use the station (so rail revenue is not maximised), or they take the hit and they have £1000 less disposable income to spend in the local economy on goods and services.

The point of a parkway station is to encourage people to drive the relatively short distance to the station and get on the train, as opposed to contributing to congestion on motorways.

Charging for the parking is a tax pure and simple.

Well I'm afraid that the government did not see things that way and gave a small bit of the money needed as a grant and told the county council to borrow the rest of it - which will be repaid using the car park fees.

There are plenty of rather successful Parkway stations - and in other cases there are usually clear reasons why they did not live up to expectations.

Said franchise was not long ago refurbishing said rolling stock. Is there anyone out there who doesn't think they are short?

If we can afford to scrap perfectly good trains, someone should be solving these problems.

As noted above, they are not perfectly good trains - they are showing their age, to put it mildly. Not long ago? It was 12 years ago and the XC franchise was then due to end in March 2016, presumably with the expectation that the HSTs would be replaced not long after that.

Bristol Parkway is surrounded by dense housing suburbs and close to major employers of national scale, as well as a large shopping centre.

Tiverton or East Midlands would be more realistic.

What would be more realistic is you actually bothering to check things before posting - do you think that the area in the vicinity of Bristol Parkway was anything like as heavily built up in 1971 as it is now? The answer to that is no.
 

S-Bahn

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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.

London is a different story, and even then the cyclists are still massively outnumbered by non - cyclists.

Ask the commuters at Canning Town who had the run in with ER what they think about donning the lycra and cycling into the city.
 

Doctor Fegg

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Oh I see. Tired tropes about Lycra is the level of discussion we're having here. Jolly good.
 

S-Bahn

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Oh I see. Tired tropes about Lycra is the level of discussion we're having here. Jolly good.
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.
 

squizzler

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Oh I see. Tired tropes about Lycra is the level of discussion we're having here. Jolly good.
I agree it's pretty lame, and denies the real world existence of ebikes in large and still growing numbers. It seems strange to argue that bike travel is a minority if you are then going to talk about free charging points for what is truly a negligible number of keen and well heeled motorists who possess such things.
 
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S-Bahn

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I agree it's pretty lame, and denies the real world existence of ebikes in large and still growing numbers. It seems strange to argue that bike travel is a minority if you are then going to talk about free charging points for what is truly a negligible number of keen and well heeled motorists who possess such things.

As a proud weekend cyclist I believe I have the right to say such things about cycling attire. 8-).

Anyway, the point is its a parkway station with 500 parking spaces. In time, the petrols and diesels will be replaced by electric cars. Cycling to the station won't be that popular. Just look at Bromsgrove.

Also WMR seem to charge a lot less to park at their stations and offer discounts for low emmisions and electric vehicles.

Its only £290 for an annual parking season ticket at Coleshill Parkway. o_O
 

Kite159

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As a proud weekend cyclist I believe I have the right to say such things about cycling attire. 8-).

Anyway, the point is its a parkway station with 500 parking spaces. In time, the petrols and diesels will be replaced by electric cars. Cycling to the station won't be that popular. Just look at Bromsgrove.

Also WMR seem to charge a lot less to park at their stations and offer discounts for low emmisions and electric vehicles.

Its only £290 for an annual parking season ticket at Coleshill Parkway. o_O

Didn't Coleshill used to be free parking until a few months ago?
 

S-Bahn

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Didn't Coleshill used to be free parking until a few months ago?

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!
 
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squizzler

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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!
That view typifies a view I have come to think of as 'car-munism', an apparent view amongst much of the motoring community that the rules of private property stop when behind the steering wheel. Anyone who owns a parking space and forever finds themselves chasing away other motorists who have decided that your private property is fair game for depositing their motorcars will be all too familiar with this mindset.

So yes, the property owner is quite entitled to charge as much as the market will bear. And this will be higher for a station serving trips to London, Cardiff and places than it would be for a suburban halt in a Birmingham's urban railway. Higher value journeys = higher value parking.

I think that Parkway should be discouraged at any rate as a park and ride to Birmingham. My brother lives in Droitwich and in addition to the railway service there is a bus going to Birmingham via Bromsgrove. Bromsgrove is a better railhead for park and ride to Birmingham, and as a hub for the regional bus network, because it provides onwards trains at a turn-up-and-go frequency.
 

Kite159

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Yes. Think it's only 3 quid daily so still good value compared to many of the mainline stations.

Although what isn't so good value is the cost of the fare into Birmingham.

--------

Bromsgrove will be a better park & ride site for Birmingham, as like you mentioned squizzler it has a "turn up and go" frequency of 3 stoppers an hour plus normally 1 fast, the advantage is that the stoppers start there so where it might take longer compared to the fast, you will be sure of a seat. Rather than squeezing into a vestibule of a 153 or 170
 

S-Bahn

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That view typifies a view I have come to think of as 'car-munism', an apparent view amongst much of the motoring community that the rules of private property stop when behind the steering wheel. Anyone who owns a parking space and forever finds themselves chasing away other motorists who have decided that your private property is fair game for depositing their motorcars will be all too familiar with this mindset.

I don't see the correlation with the car park at a Parkway station, where the car park is an incentive to encourage train travel.
 

S-Bahn

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I think that Parkway should be discouraged at any rate as a park and ride to Birmingham. My brother lives in Droitwich and in addition to the railway service there is a bus going to Birmingham via Bromsgrove. Bromsgrove is a better railhead for park and ride to Birmingham, and as a hub for the regional bus network, because it provides onwards trains at a turn-up-and-go frequency.

XC WOP to New Street - 31 mins.
Bromsgrove to New Street 26-32 mins depending on service.

Your suggestion would require driving up the M5 and then through Bromsgrove to get the the station. That's an additional 25 mins (based on Google at 1pm), prob 45 mins in morning rush hour.

It would be far simpler for the Worcester locals to stay off the M5 and drive the short distance to WOP.
 

squizzler

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XC WOP to New Street - 31 mins.
Bromsgrove to New Street 26-32 mins depending on service.

Your suggestion would require driving up the M5 and then through Bromsgrove to get the the station. That's an additional 25 mins (based on Google at 1pm), prob 45 mins in morning rush hour.
It would be better to provide a dissentive to people hopping on and off the XC service like it were their local metro. It is supposed to be a long distance operator and one of the miseries reported by XC users is that of high passenger churn of commuters along its route. Let's not add more to that.
 

S-Bahn

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It would be better to provide a dissentive to people hopping on and off the XC service like it were their local metro. It is supposed to be a long distance operator and one of the miseries reported by XC users is that of high passenger churn of commuters along its route. Let's not add more to that.

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.
 
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