transport

Park and Ride for Northern English Cities

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A photo of Temple Green Park and Ride in Leeds

I like a good Park and Ride system. You park your car somewhere on the edge of a city, usually for free, and then switch to a more sustainable mode of transport to get to the city centre.

I grew up in York, whose Park and Ride system has been around since the late 1980s. Nestlé Rowntree were an early sponsor, and I remember as a kid getting a box of Smarties when boarding. Back then, it was operated in the car park of the (then) York College of Art and Design on Saturdays, using hired in coaches. Later, it moved to a purpose built site on the other side of the A1036 Tadcaster Road and eventually got its own dedicated fleet of buses. Nowadays, York’s system operates from six sites and is the largest one in the UK, as befits such an ancient city.

Most other cities in the north of England have some kind of Park and Ride scheme, and this is my attempt at summarising them. I’m including every settlement in the North East, North West and Yorkshire that has official city status.

Bradford

In a way, it’s a shame to start with Bradford, as there isn’t an official Park and Ride scheme there yet. Bradford definitely needs one – I think part of the reason why Bradford has such a reputation for bad driving is that congestion is a major issue, and you almost have to drive aggressively to be able to get anywhere because otherwise no-one will let you in. One was proposed for south Bradford, near the northern end of the M606, but it seems that a majority of respondents to a consultation opposed it, and nothing has come of it since.

There is also Low Moor railway station, which opened in 2017 and is located a short drive from the M62. If you time it right, you can park there and commute by train to Bradford. However, there’s only a couple of trains per hour, so it’s not a ‘turn up and go’ service, and only around 100 car parking spaces.

Carlisle

I’ve only been into Carlisle once, in 2012, and I apparently didn’t see fit to write much about it. We were there just for an afternoon and, it being January, it was pouring with rain.

From what I can tell, Carlisle does not have a formal Park and Ride scheme.

Chester

Chester, however, does have a formal Park and Ride scheme. At present, there are three services, located in the north, south and east of the city. A fourth site, to the west, is closed at the time of writing. These are all bus-based services, and the northern site is next to Chester Zoo.

Back in 2011, Christine and I used the Park and Ride service in reverse, to get from Chester city centre, where we were staying, to the zoo. At the time, the Park and Ride called at Chester railway station and so we actually had ‘train’ tickets to use the bus. However, none of the current Park and Ride services call at Chester station and so zoo visitors are instead advised to catch the Chester-Liverpool X1 service; this also drops you at the zoo entrance, rather than the Park and Ride site which is a 5-10 minute walk.

Doncaster

Yes, Doncaster is a city, as of 2022, thanks to Queen Elizabeth II’s Platty Jubes. Travel South Yorkshire list 10 (!) Park and Ride sites for Doncaster, although some of these are ‘railway stations with car parks’ and not all of them have a turn-up-and-go service. Still, it’s good that they’re being promoted in this way.

Durham

Durham is a bit like York, but with additional altitude, and so it has three Park and Ride sites. These are all bus services.

Kingston upon Hull

Hull just has the one Park and Ride service, and unlike most others, it looks like it’s purely a commercial service operated by Stagecoach. It’s for traffic approaching from the west, which is where most of the traffic to Hull comes from to be fair, with it being on the East Coast. It’s located at Priory Park, which is the next junction on the A63 after the Humber Bridge as you head east.

Lancaster

Like Hull, Lancaster has one site, located by junction 34 of the M6 to the north of the city. It’s a bus service.

Leeds

Leeds has three Park and Ride sites: one at Elland Road, the Leeds United Stadium, serving the west of the city, one at Stourton, to the south, and a third at Temple Green, serving the east. There isn’t currently a northern site. We use the Elland Road service quite frequently, as it’s cheaper than parking in Leeds city centre and has recently started running on Saturdays again. It’s a bus service, with buses every 10-15 minutes. We’ve used the Temple Green service once, which is the header image for this post.

If the West Yorkshire Rapid Transit System goes ahead, then you may also be able to catch a tram from the White Rose Centre into Leeds in a decade’s time.

Liverpool

There’s no formal Park and Ride service in Liverpool, but Merseyrail has information about car parking at its stations. Of these, Headbolt Lane, Liverpool South Parkway, Maghull, Southport, Bidston, Birkenhead North, Hooton and Leasowe all have 200 or more car parking spaces. Generally, trains on Merseyrail run every 15 minutes.

Manchester and Salford

Salford is a city in its own right, but I’ve grouped it with its larger neighbour as it shares a transport authority. The Bee Network lists a staggering 41 Park and Ride sites, using a combination of rail, bus and tram. Not all of them have lots of spaces, but many have 200+. For some, you may have to pay for parking as well as your travel. Helpfully, the Bee Network page also lists those that have electric car charging facilities.

We tend to use Hollinwood Metrolink, which is just off the eastern side of the M60, and has a modest multi-storey car park with 178 spaces. You can tell that it’s well-used but we’ve also always managed to find a space when we’ve used it. Metrolink services are normally every 12 minutes.

Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland

I’m also grouping these two local rivals for the same reason as Manchester and Sunderland. Nexus list the stations on the Tyne and Wear Metro with parking, rather than offering a formal park and ride scheme. Again, you may need to pay to park at some of these stations. Trains are typically every 12-15 minutes.

Preston

There are two Park and Ride sites in Preston; one at Walton-le-Dale, to the south-east of the city near the M6, and a second at Portway, to the west. Whilst the Walton-le-Dale site is run by the county council, the Portway site is a commercial one, run by a local operator.

There’s been a long-standing proposal for a privately-funded tram line running to Preston city centre from a potential park and ride site at Junction 31A of the M6, but nothing seems to have come of it.

Ripon

I’m including Ripon on this list as it is officially a city, despite its small size. There have long been proposals for a park and ride scheme, but there isn’t one at present. Elsewhere in North Yorkshire, the towns of Whitby and Scarborough have Park and Ride schemes, but neither is a city.

Sheffield

As with Doncaster, Travel South Yorkshire offer a list for Sheffield. Unlike Doncaster, the majority of these are tram services, and each has a decent number of car parking spaces. Trams typically operate every 12 minutes.

Wakefield

No formal scheme here either. You could park at Outwood, or Sandal & Agbrigg railway stations, I suppose.

York

And we’re back to York. York wasn’t the first city in the UK to adopt a Park and Ride – services in Oxford date back to the 1960s. But it’s one of the biggest and has a dedicated fleet of all-electric buses. As it’s a dedicated service, the buses are limited-stop services that skip stops in the suburbs.

It makes sense that York was an early adopter of Park and Ride services, being an ancient city with roads that weren’t designed for cars and therefore limited capacity for car parking.

Snow longer welcome

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A photo of a snowy scene, taken from our house

I can’t remember a time that there’s been snow on the ground for eight days straight. It’s certainly not happened in my adult life; it may have happened when I was much younger, perhaps in the late 1980s or early 1990s. But the heavy snow that we had last Sunday has stuck around for over a week now, thanks to low temperatures that have prevented it all from melting.

I’m writing this yesterday (Sunday 11th January) and it’s probable that most of the snow will start to melt today (Monday). Yesterday (Sunday), the temperatures reached a ‘dizzying high’ of 4° C (39° F), which is the warmest it’s been all week. Meanwhile, night-time temperatures have apparently dropped as low as -10° C (14° F).

Suffice to say, it’s been an interesting week. The school that our nine-year-old attends announced it would be closed on Monday. As it’s the 21st century, thankfully this wasn’t a case of listening to local radio, but a message via the parents’ app just after 7am. Also, as it’s the 21st century and in the years following a pandemic, us parents were provided with the schoolwork that our kids would be doing if they were in school. I booked last minute annual leave with my (thankfully) understanding employer, and we got to work. Thankfully, most of it was Maths, and so not something I struggle with.

Tuesday was a return to relative normality as the school re-opened, but many other local schools remained closed throughout last week (some are still closed today, as in Monday). I even made it into the office on Tuesday, as the trains were running with almost no delays. However, many of my colleagues didn’t, and those of us that did were advised to head home mid-afternoon. We’ve then spent the rest of the week working remotely. I am very pleased that we have this option.

A photo of our In Home Display, showing £64.03 spent on gas this week.

Temperatures should continue to rise, and so whilst there will probably still be snow on the ground this morning, at least we won’t also have ice to contend with. And I’m hoping our heating bills will come down too; as per the photo above, we had spent over £64 on gas this week alone. Some of this is because we were home more, but also because of how cold it was outside.

So, here’s looking forward to some warmer weather. The snow has been fun for a while, but it has outstayed its welcome.

Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester

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Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester

On Saturday, whilst Christine was working, I took myself off to the Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester. I’ve been meaning to go for a while, but the recent opening of Queens Road Metrolink station nearby has made it somewhat easier to get to. Although railway engineering works, and the temporary closure of the Metrolink platforms at Victoria station, meant that it was still something of a trek taking a couple of hours each way from Sowerby Bridge. Normally, it’d take around an hour.

Anyway, the museum. It’s in the Cheetham Hill area of Manchester, to the north of the city centre, and is housed in the back of what was the Queens Road tramshed for Manchester Corportation Tramways – now used by First buses as a bus depot. It’s home to a wide variety of buses that operated in or are linked with Greater Manchester, plus a few other bits and bobs. But mostly buses – other forms of transport were not very well represented.

There are three trams, only one of which is complete (a horse tram). Of the others, one is Metrolink 1000, a half-tram mock-up of what would become the production T68 tram series. The T68s have only recently been retired from revenue service in Manchester and I imagine that a production model may enter the collection when one is preserved. The other bit of tram is the lower passenger compartment of what was originally a double decker tram, in the process of being restored.

There are also re-created transport offices, as well as an extensive collection of bus tickets, roller blinds and old signs. But, buses form the main attraction here.

On the whole I found it interesting but it’s not as good as other transport museums – particularly the excellent London Transport Museum. You definitely need to be more of a transport geek to enjoy it, and I’m sure Christine would have been bored stiff by it had I dragged her along. (I very nearly did last summer, but we ended up going bra shopping instead.)

The museum is open three days a week – Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, or all week in August. Entry is only £4 for adults, and free for accompanied under-16s, which is good value for a museum that can keep your average transport geek occupied for a couple of hours.

Photos from my visit are available on Flickr.

Taking the Megabusplus to London

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Leading on from yesterday’s post about our trip to London, here’s a little more about the Megabusplus service that we used. I’ve taken it before, when I needed to get down to London to fly to France for a holiday in 2009, but this was Christine’s first time, and also my first return trip.

Like the regular Megabus, it is run by the Stagecoach Group, and takes advantage of the fact that Stagecoach is also the current East Midlands Trains franchisee. So rather than getting a coach all of the way, time-wise roughly half of the journey is by coach and the reminder by train, with the switchover talking place at East Midlands Parkway railway station.

This is significantly quicker than taking a coach all of the way. Taking Halifax-London as the example, to do this by coach takes almost 6 hours in total. Megabusplus knocks this down to a little over four hours. You also arrive into London St Pancras railway station, which has much better onward transport links, than Victoria coach station. And I find that I can’t read on coaches (I get travel sick), so for me there’s less ‘downtime’ than a regular coach.

However, compared with a direct train Megabusplus is still slower – the 08:06 Grand Central train from Halifax left a few minutes after our coach and would have reached King’s Cross a full hour before we did.

The prices are about the same as regular Megabus, with fares starting at £1 one way, plus a 50p booking fee. I was too late to get it this cheap, but it was still much more affordable than the train at the last minute. Your ‘ticket’ is the reference number that you get by email when you pay – most people print this out but you can just show it on your phone to the driver, like I did.

The Halifax service actually starts from Bradford, then calls at Halifax and onto Huddersfield, before running direct to East Midlands Parkway. I say ‘direct’ – Huddersfield’s links with the southbound M1 are pretty poor and so we went on some very narrow and windy roads to get there. On the way down we briefly called at a service station, but this was only to change to a different driver and customers were not allowed to alight. East Midlands Parkway is effectively a service station though, with a café, toilets and a vending machine.

The Megabusplus coaches themselves are reasonably bog-standard – single-decker, space below for luggage, and a toilet. There’s no on-board catering, and seats aren’t allocated. Most of the people on the two journeys we made were travelling on their own, so if the coach is busy you’ll have to sit next to a stranger. Pre-booking is mandatory – there’s no facility to turn up and pay, although you can book up until the night before, as I did. On the other hand, this means that if everyone arrives early, then the coach can leave early – as happened on the return leg.

I would definitely recommend bringing a music player. Unlike trains, there’s no quiet coach, or any way of moving to another carriage if it’s too noisy. On the way back there was a very restless baby, so I was glad I had some music to listen to.

If you need to get to London cheaply, and don’t want it to take all day, then Megabusplus is worth it. But if you’re able to get a cheaper train ticket, then the train is a quicker and better experience.

RailFest 2012

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Sir Nigel Gresley and Tornado

I went to RailFest 2012 at the National Railway Museum yesterday. As it’s still on until Sunday, I’ve decided to write about it now, just in case you have time to go and visit.

Firstly, if you’re not normally interested in trains, then, to be frank, RailFest probably isn’t for you. In essence, you have several items of the NRM’s own collection, mixed in with some visiting trains, both old and new. This is great for train geeks like me, but not so great for those without a passion for rail travel, like Christine, who did not accompany me on this occasion.

You can go onto the footplate, or into the drivers cab of many of the trains on show, and there are plenty of volunteers around to talk with you about the train. Plus, every train on show has an information board, with many answering the question ‘Why is this here?’ as some locomotives are notable. There’s Sarah Siddons, a Metropolitan Railway locomotive preserved by London Underground which is now Britain’s oldest working electric locomotive. Or a class 43 High Speed Train locomotive called 43159, which was part of a pair of locomotives that set the official world speed record for a diesel locomotive, and which is still in regular revenue service with First Great Western. And next to it is 41001, the sole remaining prototype locomotive for the High Speed Train which has just commenced restoration. And then there are the more well-known locomotives – both Mallard and Sir Nigel Gresley were available for footplate talks, as was Tornado, a steam locomotive built in 2008 to original LNER designs.

But in a way it was nice to be able to get up close to some of the trains that we see every day, or look behind the scenes in places where passengers don’t normally go, like the drivers cab. It was particularly interesting comparing the cab of 41001, which dates from 1972, with the cab of one of the Class 395 Hitachi trains which operate on High Speed 1 for Southeastern’s domestic high speed services (and the Javelin services for the upcoming Olympics) which were introduced 37 years later in 2009. Both seem to have a similar number of buttons and controls but the latter could do so much more.

There were also a number of train rides available on standard, narrow and miniature gauge trains, although I didn’t take this up even though they were included with the entry price – £13 for all day if bought in advance online. The site was quite busy, especially in the afternoon, and, unsurprisingly, most visitors were older men with cameras and excitable young boys. The museum itself is open as usual, and remains free to those who aren’t interested in RailFest.

If you are going, allow at least 3 hours for RailFest alone, on top of any time you want to spend in the rest of the museum. I’d also advise bringing your own food as the catering on the RailFest site is extortionate (best part of £10 for a cheeseburger, chips and a bottle of cola). And also think of lots of questions to ask, as the volunteers are more than happy to answer them. It’s well worth the visit.

Transperience, Bradford’s forgotten transport museum

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A photo of the former auditorium at Transperience

At the weekend I wrote a new Wikipedia article about Transperience.

The Transperience Museum

Transperience was a museum that I was aware of when I was younger, and I remember seeing leaflets about it. But neither I, nor my parents, had never had the chance to visit it during the short time that it was open.

It was essentially an open-air museum of passenger transport. There were some transport simulators, as well as a working one kilometre tram line and a couple of trolleybuses. In addition, there was an auditorium and some workshops were its preserved vehicles were maintained.

The museum was built on the site of Low Moor station, south of Bradford. The station used to be at the junction of the Caldervale Line, between Bradford and Manchester, with the Spen Valley Line which ran through Cleckheaton, Heckmondwike and Liversedge. The station, and the whole Spen Valley Line, were closed in the 1960s, but the Caldervale Line thankfully remains. Otherwise, my regular trips to Blackpool would be far more difficult.

Closure

Despite being right next to junction 2 of the M606 and easy reach of the M62, and costing £11.5 million to build, the park closed in 1997. It had only been open for a little over 2 years. Unfortunately, it couldn’t attract enough visitors to be viable, and was £1 million in the red by the time it was taken over by administrators. The land was mostly sold off to a private developer and is now an industrial estate. The route of the tram line now forms the first part of the Spen Valley Greenway, a footpath and cycle route which follows the route of the Spen Valley Line. Some buildings, like the auditorium remain, but overgrown and derelict.

Interestingly, the site is likely to go full circle. Metro, the public body which manages passenger transport in West Yorkshire, has plans to re-open Low Moor station. Its location close to the M606 means it would make a good parkway station. Plus, it will allow residents of Low Moor and towns in the Spen Valley to catch the train without having to travel into central Bradford or Leeds. It’s likely that the few remaining relics of Transperience will be tarmacked over by the new station’s car park. The station is proposed for 2012, subject to planning permission and funding.

It’s a shame that I never had chance to visit Transperience, as it seemed like an interesting museum that suffered from poor marketing and a lack of focus. Thankfully, museums such as the Crich Tramway Village have succeeded where Transperience failed.

Update (Dec 2016): Work on the new Low Moor railway station is underway, with a likely opening date in 2017. Most of the Transperience infrastructure that remained by 2010 is still there, albeit still abandoned.

The header image for this post is Copyright Humphrey Bolton and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Bradford good for transport links?

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According to this article, Bradford is the best British city for business due to its transport links. It’s a little scant on details, but it claims Bradford has good transport links and low levels of congestion.

Now I live in Bradford, and this surprises me. To start with, here’s what is good about transport in Bradford:

  • Roads – Bradford has good links with the M62, via the M606 and the A650/A641, and the bits of the central ring road that have been completed make for a good bypass of the city centre. The signposting is generally good and even at peak times traffic generally keeps moving.
  • Buses – Bradford Interchange is a large, modern bus station with both short and mid-distance bus services and long distance coach services serving a wide variety of destinations, including many airports. It’s also connected to the railway station. Bus services are frequent and reasonably cheap.
  • Trains – Bradford has two railway stations, with trains at least every 15 minutes to Leeds all day and regular local services. A couple of trains run direct to London each day.

But there’s a lot that needs improving.

Roads

The central ring road isn’t finished, and probably never will be. Part of the missing bit requires demolishing listed buildings around the university, or tunnelling underneath it, which would be prohibitively expensive. The missing section therefore uses older roads in the city centre, which makes for a confusing one-way system on roads not designed for the level of traffic they now take.

And while the road connections to the south and to Leeds are adequate, to the north the road quality falls sharply. Anyone who’s ever wanted to drive from Bradford to north Lancashire would testify to this, as you crawl through places like Saltaire and Keighley. Leeds Bradford Airport, for example, is only accessible via a single carriageway A-road, which passes through suburbs and villages on the way. And the outer ring road is mostly a joke – it’s a series of existing roads roughly forming a ring around the city that were designated a number. Most sections are not designed for the amount of traffic they now carry, and so it’s often quicker to use the central ring road rather than try to avoid the city altogether.

Buses

To be honest I don’t have a lot to fault Bradford’s bus services on – compared to other cities they’re pretty good.

Trains

One of the local sayings here is on the lines of ‘Bradford may have 2 railway stations, but you still need to change at Leeds to go anywhere’. Unfortunately this is quite true – the direct service to London is only twice a day, and there are no long distance services, just hourly mid-distance trains which stretch out to York, Manchester, Wakefield, Blackpool and Preston.

To go anywhere else, and you have to change at Leeds or Manchester, and since the trains call at Manchester Victoria and not Piccadilly, you might as well just go via Leeds. Leeds Bradford Airport is one of the few airports in the country that doesn’t have a railway station or concrete plans for one, despite its proximity to the Leeds-Harrogate railway line. Most of the trains which run into Bradford Interchange are at least 15 years old and tend to be handed down from other companies when they get new trains – the only ‘new’ trains running into Bradford are those which serve Ilkley, Skipton and Leeds from Bradford Forster Square.

Bradford’s transport links aren’t bad on the whole, but to call them the best is laughable. There is so much that can be done to improve transport here, especially the railways.