Plan for Worcester
Not from Brighton:
Is there a plan for Worcester? Does anyone have any idea what will happen to Worcester in the future?
A search of this forum for threads with Worcester in the title brings up quite a lot of different ideas and thoughts that affect the future of Worcester and I was wondering if anyone anywhere was thinking about joining up the dots? I think Worcester suffers somewhat from being at the wrong end of four different routes, changes that affect Worcester are almost always driven by the needs of London or Birmingham.
Some things that have been mentioned on this forum (in no particular order):
Worcester parkway station. (supported by council, less so by NR)
Closure of Shrub Hill station (usually associated with Parkway scheme).
Much overdue signaling upgrade / track layout improvements.
Improvements to facilities at Foregate Street.
Cross city metro/tram sharing railway with current services. (proposed by council I think)
New station serving the west of the city.
Most of the routes into Worcester are being improved either now or in the near future potentially fueling demand when Worcester seems to be running at capacility as it is. Is there a plan? Or will Worcester just make do and mend?
Don:
Worcester is a problem. There are plans, but no champion or money, so as a result nothing really will happen for it seems many years. The only thing currently happening is that London Midland are looking at ways of providing a better service / more income from the Worcester area, but realistically it is tinkering at the edges.
Worcester parkway station. (supported by council, less so by NR)
Yes supported by the council, but would have to be sponsored by Cross Country trains, as it is their trains stopping there that would make it worthwhile. Neither Cross Country or it's Virgin predecessor wants to stop trains there as this will make their services slower and would mess up their clock-face timetable and Network Rail pathing slots.
Closure of Shrub Hill station (usually associated with Parkway scheme).
Yes tied in with the Parkway scheme so moribund and again no money or direction of what to do. Shrub Hill is I believe getting a new car park to try to increase communting travel to Birmingham - one of London Midland's ideas.
Much overdue signaling upgrade / track layout improvements.
Current plan is for Birmingham Satley's new computerised signalling control centre to replace all the signal boxes in Worcester. Six years away, and with it a new track layout for Worcester allowing better pathing for trains.
Imrovements to facilities at Foregate Street.
Cross city metro/tram sharing railway with current services. (proposed by council I think)
New station serving the west of the city.
All pie in the sky - given the lack of money.
Useless.
willc:
But the key to doing anything at Worcester is resignalling and the opportunity it will bring for extra capacity all round.
Even Parkway will hinge on this, because of the issue of stopping Cotswold Line trains - which would be pretty fundamental in making the station pay its way from London traffic - on what will remain a single-line section for the time being.
Maybe with several years to prepare, all parties involved can come up with a masterplan to tackle all the issues at one go - and work out where the money will come from.
Btline:
The priority is to get the track layout/signalling (TASK 1) updated to allow full bi-directional working to/from all platforms in the whole area. (on which a standard pattern of operations can be kept to, but with extra flexibility and capacity for disruption)
This should expand capacity at Foregate Street (renamed Worcester Central - TASK 2) to allow more trains to be extended there. The LM Gloucester and remaining FGW/LM trains should be extended.
To lift constraints at the WOF platforms, a better turnaround area should be constructed (TASK 4) to the West (Henwick area) so that terminating trains can run around and then return later on the other platform. This might require extra train diagrams to compensate for longer turnarounds - LM's new 172 order should reflect this. It currently doesn't.
Worcester Foregate Street:
*extend platforms to HST length;
*extend canopies to where they used to end;
*put a lot more benches on the platform;
*give the subway/concourse area a clean! ( :o )
*install ticket barriers (and at Shrub Hill to provide a "ring of steel" around Worcester).
Not from Brighton:
If Foregate street were to be enhanced, could it handle all the traffic currently dealt with by Shrub Hill?
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