My idea: Replace Worcester Foregate with cable car to Shrub Hill

[HowardGWR]

Your post might be in jest but you got me thinking (dangerous, that!) and Bristol struck me as a possible candidate. Many of the same issues of non central station, topography and rivers as Worcester. A quick web search brought up this decade old proposal from Atkins

Clifton isn't the centre of Bristol. Indeed you can get a train connection to it from TM, to be every half hour in the near future, never mind numerous buses and taxis. Arguably, Bristol TM is now the centre - it certainly is in the CBD nowadays. The CBD has moved to surround TM. I don't rule out your idea for Worcester as fantasy, as some have claimed, but the west cross-river station seems a good idea. I am interested in the view that a station is central because it's next to shops. A small provincial city like Worcester is surely not the venue of rail-using comparison shoppers. There is no conurbation size that would justify rapid transit, or local rail, is there?

 

[squizzler]

Many people coming in from the Hereford direction would be highly inconvenienced by that and it would require any Hereford - Birmingham service to reverse at Shrub Hill if it was the only station in central Worcester.

I view an enforced reversal of Hereford - Birmingham services at Shrub Hill is an opportunity rather than a problem. These services go to New Street via Bromsgrove and are favoured by the locals over most Birmingham services that originate in Worcester and go to Snow Hill via the circular Kidderminster route. The inevitable result is that these are very busy north of Worcester. If only train length could be varied to match capacity to demand over the journey.

When the new 195's come in with their modern Dellner couplings it would be very easy to split and join services in a spacious station at Shrub Hill. If the trains are reversing anyway there would be minimal additional time penalty from doubling up units for the Worcester - Birmingham leg.

I am interested in the view that a station is central because it's next to shops. A small provincial city like Worcester is surely not the venue of rail-using comparison shoppers.

I get the impression that shoppers use the station and the city seems to be thriving. Maybe these people prefer somewhere with more character and less crowds than Birmingham. I personally think shoppers would be even less concerned than daily commuters by a five minute sky ride from the shops to a main station, in fact for kids being dragged round by mum it might be the best part of their day out!

 

[Darkinsider]

deleted

 

[MarkyT]

I view an enforced reversal of Hereford - Birmingham services at Shrub Hill is an opportunity rather than a problem. These services go to New Street via Bromsgrove and are favoured by the locals over most Birmingham services that originate in Worcester and go to Snow Hill via the circular Kidderminster route. The inevitable result is that these are very busy north of Worcester. If only train length could be varied to match capacity to demand over the journey.

When the new 195's come in with their modern Dellner couplings it would be very easy to split and join services in a spacious station at Shrub Hill. If the trains are reversing anyway there would be minimal additional time penalty from doubling up units for the Worcester - Birmingham leg.

I get the impression that shoppers use the station and the city seems to be thriving. Maybe these people prefer somewhere with more character and less crowds than Birmingham. I personally think shoppers would be even less concerned than daily commuters by a five minute sky ride from the shops to a main station, in fact for kids being dragged round by mum it might be the best part of their day out!

I quite like your idea of reversing at Shrub Hill, but not at the expense of Foregate Street station. A blank sheet approach to service planning could see regular trains coming in from Hereford with a London and Birmingham portion combined, splitting at Shrub Hill and with the Birmingham portion reversing. That might be a practical way of giving both stations a better service. Couldn't be done with current TOC splits though unless there was a remarkable and unlikely degree of voluntary or enforced cooperation. Imagine that: An hourly GWR 800 arriving from Hereford at Shrub Hill to detach a WM suburban unit.

Notes on station usage. Foregate Street clocked 2.10m users in 2016-17 against Shrub Hill's 0.82m (Source: wikipedia).

 

[birchesgreen]

I don't think a cable car link is viable as it will affect the historic skyline of Worcester, i suggest a circular underground line a la Glasgow instead, stops both sides of the river.

 

[DavidGrain]

In this discussion I have to ask what is Worcester Parkway Station for exactly? To me a parkway station outside a city is for commuters and visitors to park outside the city and continue their journey into the city by public transport. That is why I spoke about the need to know the service pattern envisaged for this station. If it is for visitors and commuters into Worcester then to my mind it is pretty useless if it will get only the Cotswold trains running into Worcester. This makes me think that it is intended for the long distance passengers to London and possibly on the Cross Country services when the new franchise comes into operation.

 

[HowardGWR]

^^^I think that's where you are not correct. I think Parkway stations are for the sons and daughters of white flight, people who moved out of city centres decades ago and now would find it a bind to go into a city centre station to pick up the London /Brum / Oxford train from their bijou properties in the countryside.

 

[swt_passenger]

To me a parkway station outside a city is for commuters and visitors to park outside the city and continue their journey into the city by public transport.

That's definitely not their only purpose. As an example, Southampton Airport Parkway is basically used as a way of getting from the wider area to London and many other destinations without actually having to enter Southampton. I doubt it gets much use at all as a Parkway for Southampton.

 

[MrCub]

Individual taxis for every passenger would be an easier and more sensible idea.

Or just keep things as they are. I've always managed quite well.

 

[takno]

In this discussion I have to ask what is Worcester Parkway Station for exactly? To me a parkway station outside a city is for commuters and visitors to park outside the city and continue their journey into the city by public transport. That is why I spoke about the need to know the service pattern envisaged for this station. If it is for visitors and commuters into Worcester then to my mind it is pretty useless if it will get only the Cotswold trains running into Worcester. This makes me think that it is intended for the long distance passengers to London and possibly on the Cross Country services when the new franchise comes into operation.

It's Worcestershire parkway. It's nothing much to do with Worcester, more a railhead for rural users to get to London and Birmingham. It's probably a waste of time and money even for that, and neither operating company seems very keen, but some people can't see two railways cross without wanting to build a complex expensive station there.

Going back 20-30 years there was an ambition for it to be an easy change from Worcester for trains going south rather than getting the very irregular train to Cheltenham. Since then XC have been fairly clear they aren't stopping any big trains there, and growing traffic means there's more ambition to improve the direct Bristol service instead.

 

[AndrewE]

I don't think a cable car link is viable as it will affect the historic skyline of Worcester, i suggest a circular underground line a la Glasgow instead, stops both sides of the river.

Stick to established technology! If we're doing fantasy - and if the useage and heavy rail track congestion justified it - an underground might be nice to have. However in the meantime I would consider an automated Gatwick-style people-mover shuttle, single track (with a passing loop if needed) supported on pillars stuck into the grass banks on the inside of the existing curve, passengers board and unload off the platform ends of the existing stations. This would have next to no land take, no operator staffing costs, out-of-hours it could run on an as-needed frequency like a pelican crossing control...

 

[takno]

Stick to established technology! If we're doing fantasy - and if the useage and heavy rail track congestion justified it - an underground might be nice to have. However in the meantime I would consider an automated Gatwick-style people-mover shuttle, single track (with a passing loop if needed) supported on pillars stuck into the grass banks on the inside of the existing curve, passengers board and unload off the platform ends of the existing stations. This would have next to no land take, no operator staffing costs, out-of-hours it could run on an as-needed frequency like a pelican crossing control...

I think we gave up too quickly with MagLev. That old bone shaker from Birmingham Airport might even still be in a scrapyard somewhere, so we could use that. I'm a bit concerned that the route has five bridges on it, and is otherwise embankment all the way, and there's nowhere to put a drop-off at the Foregate Street, but there's surely nothing insurmountable there

 

[birchesgreen]

Could it have a short Hyperloop line?

 

[AndrewE]

I think we gave up too quickly with MagLev. That old bone shaker from Birmingham Airport might even still be in a scrapyard somewhere, so we could use that. I'm a bit concerned that the route has five bridges on it, and is otherwise embankment all the way,

If it's on beams supported on piles in the embankment sides then a road bridge is nothing more than a slightly longer span

and there's nowhere to put a drop-off at the Foregate Street but there's surely nothing insurmountable there

which is why I suggested boarding off the platform end into the front (or back) of the vehicles. Whichever station pax get on at [at the back for their journey] they will have to exit at the other end [the front] to get out, so it should encourage them to "move down the car"

 

[HSTEd]

Individual taxis for every passenger would be an easier and more sensible idea.

Or just keep things as they are. I've always managed quite well.

Given that 2 million people a year use Foregate street I really really really doubt that.
If we don't indulge in any of the architectural flourishes Boris put on the Air Line to turn it into a show-piece the prices would be a few million pounds.

 

[satisnek]

There's another issue regarding an aerial ropeway... While we transport enthusiasts may flock to it there are a lot of people - including members of my own family past and present - who don't like heights and would therefore choose to never use it.

 

[birchesgreen]

Well transport enthusiasts who don't like heights will also be put off of course

 

[HSTEd]

There's another issue regarding an aerial ropeway... While we transport enthusiasts may flock to it there are a lot of people - including members of my own family past and present - who don't like heights and would therefore choose to never use it.

Those people do tend to be a rather small fraction of the total populace however.

 

[jimm]

Hardly a massive detour: WOF - WOS with flying start is only a minute and allow for the gondola perhaps 5 minutes. Think of the time savings for those on MalWolds (CotsVern?) axis who do not wish to alight and are saved one stop in Worcester.

Think of the people who want to get to their places of work, shops, bus station, etc, etc, who already have a nice short walk from Foregate Street - but apparently they don't fit with your fantasy, so don't count.

I am unsure why we need to "acknowledge the existence of" Parkway in this debate when your post seems to describe it as simply a place where existing trains might in future stop on the Cotswold and XC lines rather than something to immediately cause a massive recast of services around Worcester.

Let's see. Shrub Hill is the only station with car parking in central Worcester, so at the moment anyone using their car to get from home to the station has to go to Shrub Hill, despite the city's lousy central road network and lone bridge over the river. From next year they will be able to drive to a place with lots of parking spaces, with easy access to the M5, the eastern and southern bypasses and all the roads that connect with those.

What do you think is going to happen to custom at Shrub Hill as a result? Once the effects of that are understood, then a recast of services around Worcester might be just what happens.

Worcestershire parkway isn't really a Worcester station anyway, so I can't see any relevance at all. I've always lived far nearer to Shrub hill anyway, as do a decent proportion of residents. On the upsides, it has parking, it has the old Kay's office block which could make excellent housing, and the dead-on-arrival retail park might as well go over to something useful. It's also only 5 minutes further from the bits of the town centre that anybody would want to visit. Basically shutting foregate Street is the only sensible option. Shove a wee escalator up the hill and really there wouldn't be any objections

Are you serious? Worcestershire Parkway isn't a Worcester station? See my comments above about road access all around the city of Worcester, avoiding the centre. Just wait and see what happens when it opens and people have the choice of going there or battling their way to Shrub Hill to catch a train.

In this discussion I have to ask what is Worcester Parkway Station for exactly? To me a parkway station outside a city is for commuters and visitors to park outside the city and continue their journey into the city by public transport. That is why I spoke about the need to know the service pattern envisaged for this station. If it is for visitors and commuters into Worcester then to my mind it is pretty useless if it will get only the Cotswold trains running into Worcester. This makes me think that it is intended for the long distance passengers to London and possibly on the Cross Country services when the new franchise comes into operation.

Did you actually read my reply to your previous post? Of course it's for London and XC passengers - though if it had a decent service to Birmingham in prospect, people currently using WMR services from the centre of Worcester would flock there in droves.

You seem to be confusing a Parkway railway station with a bus park-and-ride site. Didcot Parkway is slap bang in the middle of Didcot, so not much use to anyone trying to get a train from the edge of town to the centre.

^^^I think that's where you are not correct. I think Parkway stations are for the sons and daughters of white flight, people who moved out of city centres decades ago and now would find it a bind to go into a city centre station to pick up the London /Brum / Oxford train from their bijou properties in the countryside.

Do you know what the roads in central Worcester are like? I'd suggest not. And are you seriously suggesting the people who use Bristol Parkway should have to fight their way to Temple Meads to get on a train?

It's Worcestershire parkway. It's nothing much to do with Worcester, more a railhead for rural users to get to London and Birmingham. It's probably a waste of time and money even for that, and neither operating company seems very keen, but some people can't see two railways cross without wanting to build a complex expensive station there.

Going back 20-30 years there was an ambition for it to be an easy change from Worcester for trains going south rather than getting the very irregular train to Cheltenham. Since then XC have been fairly clear they aren't stopping any big trains there, and growing traffic means there's more ambition to improve the direct Bristol service instead.

Oxford Parkway station is used by people from the city and from parts of Oxfordshire that are distinctly rural - should they change its name?

Probably not surprising that GWR aren't too keen. On the one hand they get it in the neck from Worcestershire politicians, both local and MPs, who want faster trains to London, but the same people also want those trains to stop three times in the space of four miles to serve Worcester. If they were given a choice of just making two calls, guess which one of the three would get dropped? Begins with an S and an H...

Please don't tell me that people living in Worcester suburbs near the bypasses are going to bother trying to drive to Shrub Hill to catch a London service once an alternative is available. People were never that keen on driving to Oxford station before the Parkway opened. Nowadays few bother. Anyone looking for a parking space at Oxford station is now spoiled for choice.

The GWR Bristol service should be improved anyway, irrespective of whatever XC services call at the Parkway, as it also offers the prospect of a better service for Ashchurch, which XC clearly finds a chore to stop a few Cardiff services at now. Given the current XC fleet, they would be doing well to stop any large trains almost anywhere...

 

[Pokelet]

Wow, this all escalated rather quickly!

It's worth pointing out that the OP travels through the Worcester area and doesn't, like me, live there and commute from there each day.

Worcester is a bizarre set up, is a bizarre place whereby the locals believe it is their given right to have a John Lewis store on every corner.

The current layout whilst a little odd is perfectly sufficient, Foregate sees a good mix of routes and services while Shrub Hill caters for the high volumes of people commuting at the peaks with its carpark and variety of on street parking nearby.

Yes a cross over from P2 at foregate to the shrub hill chord between the starter and Rainbow hill junction would be useful and partially eliminate the long stretch to Henwick to cross over. That might buy a minute or 2.

What is really needed though are longer trains in lieu of additional paths. Especially to New Street. The problem that Worcester has though is that it's signalling is older than that on the Severn Valley And it's capacity is governed by events further up the line.,

To New Street via Bromsgrove the constraint is the single line from Droitwich to Stoke Works and the long signal sections from Worcester.

To Hereford there are 2 long sections of single line and 2 long narrow tunnels, no chance of widening.

To Oxford and on to London there is the single line from Norton to Evesham and then the growing patronage on the Cotswold line meaning where stations used to be missed they aren't any more.

Worcestershire parkway could work or it could be a white elephant, the whole premise is to have XC services stopping to give faster journey times to Birmingham and London. I believe that the London element involves a change at New Street to be faster than the Cotswold line and on a cramped XC service and then an extortionate VTWC one.

Adding capacity to the Southern end of the Cotswold line would ease some pressure but you would be looking at Morton in Marsh or Evesham to turn and it would be diesel only and with the turbos going to Bristol that is unlikely to happen.

Shrub Hill is operationally very useful but hamstrung by the cord to Foregate. Late running services from the east or south can be capped here and not clog up Foregate. Without this it is likely that from London you might get to Evesham and from Birmingham who knows.

Yes there are limited opportunities and limited scope for integrated transport at either station. Shrub Hill has a bus stop with a 10 minute frequency, Foregate is a short walk from the bus station. However what Worcester doesn't have is a bus company that gives a damn.

Finally if Shrub Hill were to close then what would happen to the regularly used freight yard and lines and the two depots based there??

 

[The Ham]

Deleted

 

[B&I]

Clifton isn't the centre of Bristol. Indeed you can get a train connection to it from TM, to be every half hour in the near future, never mind numerous buses and taxis. Arguably, Bristol TM is now the centre - it certainly is in the CBD nowadays. The CBD has moved to surround TM. I don't rule out your idea for Worcester as fantasy, as some have claimed, but the west cross-river station seems a good idea. I am interested in the view that a station is central because it's next to shops. A small provincial city like Worcester is surely not the venue of rail-using comparison shoppers. There is no conurbation size that would justify rapid transit, or local rail, is there?

Or alternatively, Bristol now has a mich-expanded centre, stretching from the newer business area around Temple Meads, across the shopping centre, to the older commercial and civic district around Baldwin and Broad Streets. A cable car to Clifton might however work because of a. the demand generated by the university and associated businesses b. Bristol's poorish public transport and challenging terrain c. its potential as a tourist attraction.

Nice as Worcester is, I don't think the same factors apply. In particular, is Shrub Hill even sufficiently elevated to make a cable car viable without requiring some sort of substantial tower at the city centre end ?

 

[squizzler]

Think of the people who want to get to their places of work, shops, bus station, etc, etc, who already have a nice short walk from Foregate Street - but apparently they don't fit with your fantasy, so don't count.

That's your own assertion. If I had no care for these passengers I would simply suggest that Foregate were shuttered for operational reasons, end of. Instead I propose the skyway which would get rail passengers to the centre of town, and no reason why the town end of the gondola should not be even more central and convenient than Foregate is.

For all intents and purposes the WOS entrance would be the town gondola station. I prefer the gondola would be free to all but, if it had to be limited to train passengers only, the town station is where the ticket barriers would be located.

If they were given a choice of just making two calls, guess which one of the three would get dropped? Begins with an S and an H...

The rub is that WOF is a constrained site and, whilst used by around twice the numbers of WOS, closure of the latter will immediately require WOF to handle nearly half again the number of passengers. Would the station even be safe at those levels, let alone accounting for future growth? We don't know if Parkway will abstract all Shrub Hill's passengers, don't we all hope it brings in new business?

Worcester is a bizarre set up, is a bizarre place whereby the locals believe it is their given right to have a John Lewis store on every corner.

That sense of entitlement won't be helped much when the multi-billion pound IEP fleet is at their disposal for journeys of less than a mile

The current layout whilst a little odd is perfectly sufficient, Foregate sees a good mix of routes and services while Shrub Hill caters for the high volumes of people commuting at the peaks with its carpark and variety of on street parking nearby.

There's the fact that Worcester is one of the few places in the UK that still seems to have random 1990s timetables, rather than the clockface ones the rest of the country has evolved to enjoy. I can understand places like Kyle of Lochalsh/ Whitby still getting quirky timetables with random gaps but it's surprising how bad the Worcester timetables are (considering that it's a large enough place in the Birmingham "travel to work" area).

What we might describe as "reversing branching" - where the trunk line splits on approach to its destination city to termini in different neighbourhoods or markets therein (as opposed to the correct sort of branching where lines from the city fork to cover the hinterland) - is a bad idea even in cities as big as London (link). In a city the size of Worcester it is parody. It would all have been so different if the Hereford line had forked off to the South of WOS...

Far from providing convenience by placing stations in more than one part of town, the current set up provides confusion. Where to go? What's the timetable? This must suppress demand. If we concentrated all traffic into WOF, magically gained a regular clock face timetable on all routes with appropriate train length to meet demand (with only two short platforms to play with? LOL), and the demand were no longer suppressed, my previous concern over the ability of WOF to handle the resulting traffic would now be understated.

Shrub Hill is operationally very useful but hamstrung by the cord to Foregate. Late running services from the east or south can be capped here and not clog up Foregate. Without this it is likely that from London you might get to Evesham and from Birmingham who knows.

Perhaps we can liken WOF to a vampire sucking the lifeblood out of WOS. The latter is operationally necessary and the former benefits from all the passengers. Parasites try not to kill their hosts they depend on but WOF has left WOS in an enfeebled state and hardly a good advert for rail travel. The bad old days of train travel: the infrequent trains, draughty platforms and general decrepitude are writ large, looming over the city for all to see.

My proposal would lead to a total regeneration of WOS to create a benchmark transport hub. Cinderella stuff that retains the historic frontage and puts a state of the art station on the back. If there is one thing we do to world class standard in this country it is station regeneration. Even president Trump would be unable to find words to describe the big beautiful station we could build on the site. But this requires us to slay the charismatic vampire of Foregate Street

What is really needed though are longer trains in lieu of additional paths. Especially to New Street. The problem that Worcester has though is that it's signalling is older than that on the Severn Valley And it's capacity is governed by events further up the line.,

To New Street via Bromsgrove the constraint is the single line from Droitwich to Stoke Works and the long signal sections from Worcester.

To Hereford there are 2 long sections of single line and 2 long narrow tunnels, no chance of widening.

To Oxford and on to London there is the single line from Norton to Evesham and then the growing patronage on the Cotswold line meaning where stations used to be missed they aren't any more.

Longer trains are only half the story: tailoring the length of trains to different routes is the other half. My experience in with the Hereford line is that fewer people travel WOF - HFD than on the WOF - BNS portion. There are short platforms on some of the Hereford route including WOF itself. To make the most of the limited number of paths allowed by infrastructure, we need to split and join trains, something not possible at WOF.

Yes there are limited opportunities and limited scope for integrated transport at either station. Shrub Hill has a bus stop with a 10 minute frequency, Foregate is a short walk from the bus station. However what Worcester doesn't have is a bus company that gives a damn.

Like the rail passengers, they probably can't figure out which station to use as their hub, thereby spreading their resources thinly

 

[Doctor Fegg]

Worcestershire parkway could work or it could be a white elephant, the whole premise is to have XC services stopping to give faster journey times to Birmingham and London. I believe that the London element involves a change at New Street to be faster than the Cotswold line and on a cramped XC service and then an extortionate VTWC one.

No it doesn't. Worcestershire County Council has an aspiration for sub-2 hour journeys from Worcester (not just Parkway) to London, but via the Cotswold Line, not via New Street. It'll be half an hour from Worcestershire Parkway to New Street, and typical Euston-New Street fasts are 1hr23, so you could only get sub-2 hours by that route if you had a perfect connection at New Street.

On the Cotswold Line, meanwhile, there's already at least one service that does Norton Junction to Paddington in two hours exactly, including a stop at Slough: http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/C55941/2018/03/13/advanced

That's a limited-stop service, which rather reinforces the point that the best way to get sub-2 hour services from Worcester to London is to cut out the least-used stops on the Cotswold Line, which are... all in Worcestershire: Pershore, Honeybourne, and as jimm observes upthread, perhaps Shrub Hill in the future. WCC should be careful what they wish for!

Worcester is a bizarre set up, is a bizarre place whereby the locals believe it is their given right to have a John Lewis store on every corner.

Now you've lost me entirely.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

I don't think a cable car link is viable as it will affect the historic skyline of Worcester, i suggest a circular underground line a la Glasgow instead, stops both sides of the river.

With so many people classed as obese these days we need a far healthier way of interchanging beween Worcester stations. I would suggest a series of vines attached to trees spaced 100m apart so prospective passengers can swing, Tarzan-style, all the way from Shrub Hill to Foregate Street. Loincloths optional.

 

[urbophile]

Something like this perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniMetro

 

[squizzler]

It occurred to me that there is an ideal counterfactual with which to compare Worcester, and that is Shrewsbury with its single station. Both settlements are secondary hubs in the orbit of Birmingham. Shrewsbury has two thirds the population of Worcester and roughly similar per capita rail usage. We would expect Worcester to have greater ridership per capita because it is much more integrated into the West Midlands economy. Traffic at Shrewsbury is also growing more strongly than Worcester. SHR handles virtually the same traffic as WOF.

History determines why this is so. WOF came later than WOS and was built by a rival company, so they built it closer to town centre to abstract business from the established operation. In Shrewsbury heads were knocked together and they got a joint station. No surprise WOF is a vampire sucking the vitality from WOS, it was built for precisely that reason.

Both Shrewsbury and Worcester have five platforms, only in Worcester they are spread over two stations. Our redeveloped Shrub hill might also have five platforms in a facsimile of Shrewsbury: retain three through-platforms but add two north facing bay platforms for reversing the Hereford - New Street services. On the subject of reversing services, the Cambrian line services reverse at SHR with no problem.

Stick to established technology! If we're doing fantasy - and if the useage and heavy rail track congestion justified it - an underground might be nice to have. However in the meantime I would consider an automated Gatwick-style people-mover shuttle, single track (with a passing loop if needed) supported on pillars stuck into the grass banks on the inside of the existing curve, passengers board and unload off the platform ends of the existing stations. This would have next to no land take, no operator staffing costs, out-of-hours it could run on an as-needed frequency like a pelican crossing control...

I'm sure the millions of people who do alpine skiing would be surprised to hear that gondola lifts are experimental technology!

Something like this perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniMetro

A few notes on the evolution of my proposal. First I looked at a people mover from WOF to WOS to enable the platforms on the former to shut. The width of the embankment convinced me it would be too challenging. Then I thought about using a gondola lift system (to give it the proper name) which would not have land take except for the station and the towers. The direct route between WOS and WOF passes over some housing which I thought would be environmentally unacceptable.

However a gondola lift does not restrict you to Foregate as the city terminus. Looking at arial mapping suggested that placing the gondola station further south would deliver the dual benefits of not operating over existing housing and being closer to the city centre. In my first post I suggested the Trinity just inside the City Wall ring road (A38) as the location of the terminal. Alternatively in this neighbourhood it could be the other side of the street in the nearby St Martins Quarter retail park or St Martins gate carpark; the latter already has a footbridge over the road. However, at the expense of a longer run, we could build it at Crown Gate (a shopping centre and car park of little architectural merit) next to the bus station. Now that really would be integrated transport!

 

[HowardGWR]

And are you seriously suggesting the people who use Bristol Parkway should have to fight their way to Temple Meads to get on a train?

No, whatever made you think that I was? Perhaps re-read my post. I was actually explaining the raison d'etre for Worcestershire Parkway. What did you not understand about my 'people would find it a bind to go into a city central station'?

We are in fact in total agreement, although, strangely, you seem to prefer it otherwise.

 

[HSTEd]

A few notes on the evolution of my proposal. First I looked at a people mover from WOF to WOS to enable the platforms on the former to shut. The width of the embankment convinced me it would be too challenging. Then I thought about using a gondola lift system (to give it the proper name) which would not have land take except for the station and the towers. The direct route between WOS and WOF passes over some housing which I thought would be environmentally unacceptable.

However a gondola lift does not restrict you to Foregate as the city terminus. Looking at arial mapping suggested that placing the gondola station further south would deliver the dual benefits of not operating over existing housing and being closer to the city centre. In my first post I suggested the Trinity just inside the City Wall ring road (A38) as the location of the terminal. Alternatively in this neighbourhood it could be the other side of the street in the nearby St Martins Quarter retail park or St Martins gate carpark; the latter already has a footbridge over the road. However, at the expense of a longer run, we could build it at Crown Gate (a shopping centre and car park of little architectural merit) next to the bus station. Now that really would be integrated transport!

In france they are allowed over housing if you have a 20m vertical clearance, both for privacy and for fire safety - so a fire in the building cannot rapidly endanger the integrity of the ropeway.

 

[jimm]

The current layout whilst a little odd is perfectly sufficient, Foregate sees a good mix of routes and services while Shrub Hill caters for the high volumes of people commuting at the peaks with its carpark and variety of on street parking nearby.

It's far from sufficient - the issues with the bi-di single lines through Foregate Street often result in trains from London or Bristol that are supposed to get to Foregate Street or Malvern being terminated at Shrub Hill, as something else is late and using the single line. Or trains from Birmingham sat at the tunnel waiting to get into Foregate Street, as a train coming the other way from Hereford or Malvern is late - and vice-versa the other side of the river.

Shrub Hill is operationally very useful but hamstrung by the cord to Foregate. Late running services from the east or south can be capped here and not clog up Foregate. Without this it is likely that from London you might get to Evesham and from Birmingham who knows.

It may be operationally convenient for the operators, but such terminations are rarely convenient for the passengers affected - the whole track layout in central Worcester and over the river is inadequate and needs replacing with something better - probably more akin to what was there until the early 1970s.

Finally if Shrub Hill were to close then what would happen to the regularly used freight yard and lines and the two depots based there??

There is a difference between shutting the station, as opposed to the other railway facilities in its vicinity.

That's your own assertion. If I had no care for these passengers I would simply suggest that Foregate were shuttered for operational reasons, end of. Instead I propose the skyway which would get rail passengers to the centre of town, and no reason why the town end of the gondola should not be even more central and convenient than Foregate is.

For all intents and purposes the WOS entrance would be the town gondola station. I prefer the gondola would be free to all but, if it had to be limited to train passengers only, the town station is where the ticket barriers would be located.

For all intents and purposes, your idea is nonsense. I can think of a few reasons why the town end of the gondola would not be remotely convenient - all the buildings in the way, which make the whole idea a non-starter. Or are you proposing to cut a swathe through them to achieve touchdown at The Cross or in the middle of the High Street? Something flying over the rooftops would ruin the setting of the cathedral from several directions.

How it is convenient to make everyone go to Shrub Hill and change there to a pie-in-the-skyway beats me.

The rub is that WOF is a constrained site and, whilst used by around twice the numbers of WOS, closure of the latter will immediately require WOF to handle nearly half again the number of passengers. Would the station even be safe at those levels, let alone accounting for future growth? We don't know if Parkway will abstract all Shrub Hill's passengers, don't we all hope it brings in new business?

Are you saying Shrub Hill isn't constrained? As things stand, the use made of the entire area is way less than optimal - car parking provision is feeble for a city of 100,000 - there are stations in small towns and villages along the Cotswold Line with more spaces. Road access is second rate and there are no obvious ways to improve it. Etc, etc...

What we might describe as "reversing branching" - where the trunk line splits on approach to its destination city to termini in different neighbourhoods or markets therein (as opposed to the correct sort of branching where lines from the city fork to cover the hinterland) - is a bad idea even in cities as big as London (link). In a city the size of Worcester it is parody. It would all have been so different if the Hereford line had forked off to the South of WOS...

Unfortunately you can't rewrite railway history - and the backers of the Hereford route did not want their trains to end up far from the central area of the city out at Shrub Hill. Why might that be?

My experience in with the Hereford line is that fewer people travel WOF - HFD than on the WOF - BNS portion.

Not exactly surprising.

No, whatever made you think that I was? Perhaps re-read my post. I was actually explaining the raison d'etre for Worcestershire Parkway. What did you not understand about my 'people would find it a bind to go into a city central station'?

We are in fact in total agreement, although, strangely, you seem to prefer it otherwise.

I don't think we are in total agreement. Bristol Parkway is used by a lot of people living in distinctly urban, non-bijou parts of that city - who find it a lot easier to get to than Temple Meads - and the likes of Yate, as well as people from the adjacent rural areas.

In the same way, I am pretty sure that people living in large parts of the city of Worcester who want to get to London will be driving to the Parkway station there, along with bijou types from adjacent rural areas - who wouldn't given what the roads in central Worcester are like?