New station at Finningley for Robin Hood Airport Doncaster Sheffield

[telstarbox]

In 2008 planning permission was granted for a station on the Doncaster - Lincoln line to serve the Airport. Has there been any progress towards this station being built?

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

I understand that a Network Rail report in 2012 made a comment that more train services would be needed on the line to make this proposal a viable proposition.

The original two-platform Finningley station that was closed in 1961 was under the original aegis of the Great Northern and Great Eastern Joint Railway and was situated in-between the stations of Park Drain and of Bessacarr.

 

[trentside]

With just five services per day over the route, I doubt such a station could be viable. The other question, is can the airport produce enough traffic to justify a more frequent service over the route and a new station? The only scheduled flights are concentrated in the evening with Wizz Air to Poland, the rest are Thomson holidays flights on limited seasonal services.

 

[telstarbox]

It seems unlikely when Doncaster and Sheffield both have an hourly service to the much busier Manchester Airport, but no direct link to the airport that (in name) is intended to serve them. From Sheffield the journey time to Manchester Airport isn't much longer than that to RHA, and there are many more destinations from Manchester.

Having said that, there is a lot of residential and office development going on around the Airport (which I'm loosely involved with) as well as the Airport itself, so could this eventually lead to the station being built?

 

[Tom B]

Presumably there would need to be some improvement of the service along the line, whether that be a shuttle between Donny and Finningley or a through service on the Lincoln line. The current service is quirky bordering on pointless!

Would there not need to be a long walk or a connecting bus from such a station anyway? In which case people may just catch the 191 bus from the Frenchgate - although I believe that only runs every hour now.

 

[Max]

Would there not need to be a long walk or a connecting bus from such a station anyway? In which case people may just catch the 191 bus from the Frenchgate - although I believe that only runs every hour now.

It's 91 every 30 minutes, plus an additional X19 every hour. Early morning/late evening services are very poor though, much to the dissatisfaction of passengers.

 

[johnnychips]

Several things militate against this proposal:

- the poor existing service on the line

- the low numbers of flights and passengers using the airport, especially in winter

- the inconvenient flight arrival and departure times, concentrated in the early morning/evening

- it had been proposed to divert the Lincoln-Sheffield-Adwick stoppers to a P+R station at Finningley. Apart from depriving Adwick and Bentley of their service, it would have to traverse the ECML, causing pathing problems

- as has been said, the distance between any potential station and the terminal

- the nature of the clientele. DSA is not a tourist destination per se, so a lot of passengers are dropped of by families and friends, whether they are going on holiday or returning to Poland/Lithuania. The new road link to the M18, which has been approved, will facilitate this further

 

[tbtc]

I think that this is the only UK airport without a public transport link to the city in its name ( and I expect that to stay the case)

 

[johnnychips]

I think that this is the only UK airport without a public transport link to the city in its name ( and I expect that to stay the case)

Durham Tees Valley Airport

 

[Tom B]

It's 91 every 30 minutes, plus an additional X19 every hour. Early morning/late evening services are very poor though, much to the dissatisfaction of passengers.

Fair enough - when it opened there was a 91 every 20 minutes, a 191 every 20 minutes, and X19/707 every 30 minutes, but these were cut back a few years after opening.

 

[Greenback]

On my only visit to the airport, which was on a Sunday, the bus service to Doncaster wa sone per hour. As we had just missed one, and the next service failed to turn up at all, we had a rather long and miserable wait!

 

[telstarbox]

Durham Tees Valley Airport

This Street View image shows the pedestrian route from the bus stop at DTVA to the passenger terminal. I can't see many passengers using the single bus service to get there, even less so if they have to wheel suitcases along an unsurfaced muddy path.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

This Street View image shows the pedestrian route from the bus stop at DTVA to the passenger terminal. I can't see many passengers using the single bus service to get there, even less so if they have to wheel suitcases along an unsurfaced muddy path.

That does seem a more likely statement to be seen when reading about an airfield in one of the less developed areas of the world, such as Burkina Faso, rather that an airfield in Britain in the year 2013..:roll:

 

[PR1Berske]

Why have a passenger airport there in the first place? If it's no serving enough people, shut the thing down.

 

[brompton rail]

This Street View image shows the pedestrian route from the bus stop at DTVA to the passenger terminal. I can't see many passengers using the single bus service to get there, even less so if they have to wheel suitcases along an unsurfaced muddy path.

The bus stop is directly outside the Terminal Building and not anywhere near your Street View picture. Oops - sorry I misread your comment to be about Doncaster. Apologies
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Buses to Doncaster Robin Hood Airport run to these destinations:-
Bawtry and Bircoats/Harworth ... Hourly (Stagecoach)
Doncaster Interchange .... Half hourly (05.00 - 23.00, though less frequent early and late. First 91)
Doncaster interchange and Barnsley Interchange ...... Hourly (Stagecoach X19).
Connections with rail services at Doncaster Interchange (York & North), Scunthorpe, Grimsby, Hull, Leeds, Sheffield as well as East Coast Mainline south.

To be attractive to airline passengers any airport needs a frequent service to the nearest large town / city as well as services further afield. Manchester being the best example. The Lincoln to Doncaster line could never provide this level of service and customer base. As the bus journey is 30 mins at most and delivers you to the mainline station the train would not compete. A quick look at the map would demonstrate that the railway isn't even very close airport terminal, thus a transfer vehicle would be required reducing even further any time advantage that te train might have.

 

[W230]

Why have a passenger airport there in the first place? If it's no serving enough people, shut the thing down.

No idea if it's true but I was told that as the airfield was already there, the cheapest thing to do was to put up a terminal building right next to it and christen it Doncaster Sheffield Airport. I always got the feeling that most of the will to build it came from the ill fated Sheffield City airport.

I only used Robin Hood once when I lived in Sheffield, and this was only because I found an Easyjet flight where I needed to go that was considerably cheaper than Leeds Bradford, East Midlands or Manchester. I would choose those airports over Doncaster Sheffield any day! It's far harder to get to if having to use public transport than those other three.

I reckon there's more chance of the airport closing than of it having it's own railway station opened!

 

[brompton rail]

RAF Finningley was an important base during WWII and after. It was the HQ of Bomber Command and the base for Vulcans for many years. It was also one of two Battle of Britain Day bases for many years. Concorde attended on at least one occasion as Finningley has one of the longest runways in the UK.

When the RAF closed the base there were said to be three possible uses for its site. A large gravel quarry, a(nother) prison ( nearby RAF Lindholme is now two prisons) or re-open as a commercial airport. Peel Holdings (they own the Manchester Ship Canal, Speke Airport and the Trafford Centre amongst last more) became the developer of the Airport.

I think Sheffield City Airport and Humberside Airport (now owned by Manchester Airport) put up strong objections. Doncaster MBC were in favour - jobs, jobs, jobs! If it was loosing serious money I doubt Peel would keep it going, so I guess it must turn a profit. There are freight flights as well as passenger ones.

 

[johnnychips]

It is almost certainly losing money at this time. Peel have so many other profitable enterprises that they can bear this at the moment and hope traffic improves when the recession ends; or, if not, it has a valuable acreage of land which could be used for other purposes, as detailed above.