New Station

[presta]

Time lapse video showing the construction of Great Eastern's first new mainline station in a century at Chelmsford:

The station in the city centre is the busiest two-platform station in the country, a state of affairs that's prevailed because it's perched on top of the viaduct with too little scope for expansion. The additional station at Beaulieu will have a passing loop to enable fast trains to overtake and relieve the bottleneck (the existing station used to have a passing loop, but it was dismantled in the 1960s when trains became too long to fit in it).

It has an 8-bay bus station, and parking for 500 bikes, and 700 cars. It's due to open the end of next year.

 

[mjr]

Why's it only got half the cycle parking of the secondary Cambridge North station's 1000 spaces? That station opened in 2017 on the Great Eastern Railway's original mainline to Norwich. Beaulieu is good but it's a step backwards. I wonder how many spaces are planned for Cambridge South, opening also expected 2025.

 

[spen666]

Why's it only got half the cycle parking of the secondary Cambridge North station's 1000 spaces? That station opened in 2017 on the Great Eastern Railway's original mainline to Norwich. Beaulieu is good but it's a step backwards. I wonder how many spaces are planned for Cambridge South, opening also expected 2025.

Probably because of the difference in cycling numbers in the 2 cities

 

[Alex321]

Why's it only got half the cycle parking of the secondary Cambridge North station's 1000 spaces? That station opened in 2017 on the Great Eastern Railway's original mainline to Norwich. Beaulieu is good but it's a step backwards. I wonder how many spaces are planned for Cambridge South, opening also expected 2025.

It is a different city, with different demographics and different demands.

According to this article, Cambridge South is also expected to have space for 1000 bicycles

 

[mjr]

Probably because of the difference in cycling numbers in the 2 cities

If Chelmsford never builds the basic infrastructure, they'll never catch up. I hope they've at least left space to expand the cycle parking.

 

[Jenkins]

Cambridge North and South stations are also within easy cycling reach of the main Cambridge city and surrounding residential/emplyment areas while Chelmsford Beaulieu is some distance from anything at the moment and will only slowly be surrounded by a new town and whatever cycling links that they bother to put in.

 

[mjr]

Cambridge North and South stations are also within easy cycling reach of the main Cambridge city and surrounding residential/emplyment areas while Chelmsford Beaulieu is some distance from anything at the moment and will only slowly be surrounded by a new town and whatever cycling links that they bother to put in.

Cambridge South is 5km from Market Hill in the middle of Cambridge. Cambridge North is 4.3km. Chelmsford Beaulieu is 4.8km from Chelmsford Cathedral. The distance is comparable and all three stations are on the edges of their city's current developed area. I accept that Cambridge has more cyclists already, but they've also got Cambridge main station's 2850 spaces. Chelmsford main station has fewer than 1000, so to give the new station only 500 spaces seems like a spectacular lack of ambition to me. 🤷 Like I said, I hope they've left room to expand it.

 

[T4tomo]

If Chelmsford never builds the basic infrastructure, they'll never catch up. I hope they've at least left space to expand the cycle parking.

From the OP it sounds like they built a nice Viaduct quite a long time ago, how much more infrastructure do you want?

I think the clue to all this is Cambridge has a lot more student who tend to be bike users whereas Chelmsford University is much smaller.

 

[spen666]

Cambridge South is 5km from Market Hill in the middle of Cambridge. Cambridge North is 4.3km. Chelmsford Beaulieu is 4.8km from Chelmsford Cathedral. The distance is comparable and all three stations are on the edges of their city's current developed area. I accept that Cambridge has more cyclists already, but they've also got Cambridge main station's 2850 spaces. Chelmsford main station has fewer than 1000, so to give the new station only 500 spaces seems like a spectacular lack of ambition to me. 🤷 Like I said, I hope they've left room to expand it.

is there any evidence to suggest there is a shortage of bike parking spaces at Chelmsford Station

 

[mjr]

is there any evidence to suggest there is a shortage of bike parking spaces at Chelmsford Station

Chelmsford Station is used for about 15,800 entries/exits a day, so say 6,000 commuter return journeys. Half of journeys within Chelmsford should be done by bus, bike or foot (government target). We can't know how many of the 6,000 are from within Chelmsford, but there's only about 1000 bus seats to it in a morning peak hour (and occupancy will not be 100%), which suggests that 1,000 cycle parking spaces is probably less than what's needed.

However, Chelmsford main does have more cycle parking than car parking, unlike off-target Beaulieu.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

From the OP it sounds like they built a nice Viaduct quite a long time ago, how much more infrastructure do you want?

I think the clue to all this is Cambridge has a lot more student who tend to be bike users whereas Chelmsford University is much smaller.

Many many Cambridge residents tend to bike. It’s not just students.

 

[presta]

As I said up top, the primary point of Beaulieu is getting rid of the bottleneck at Chelmsford, not cycling. Looking at the station, I'm not entirely convinced it wouldn't have been economical to widen the viaduct so that the original passing loop could be reinstated and lengthened, particularly at the time the Viaduct Road and Park Road areas were redeveloped, although that would still have had only two platforms.

The primary point of the thread was just the time lapse video, 500 bike spaces seemed a lot, but I'd not seen all the new spaces at Chelmsford.

 

[spen666]

Chelmsford Station is used for about 15,800 entries/exits a day, so say 6,000 commuter return journeys. Half of journeys within Chelmsford should be done by bus, bike or foot (government target). We can't know how many of the 6,000 are from within Chelmsford, but there's only about 1000 bus seats to it in a morning peak hour (and occupancy will not be 100%), which suggests that 1,000 cycle parking spaces is probably less than what's needed.

However, Chelmsford main does have more cycle parking than car parking, unlike off-target Beaulieu.

So you do not have any actual figures to show a lack of cycle parking provision at Chelmsford station then. It seems you only have hypothetical imaginary ones

 

[Alex321]

So you do not have any actual figures to show a lack of cycle parking provision at Chelmsford station then. It seems you only have hypothetical imaginary ones

He isn't saying it will definitely not be enough, he is suggesting it should be at least as many as the Cambridge stations to encourage more use of bikes.

 

[mjr]

So you do not have any actual figures to show a lack of cycle parking provision at Chelmsford station then. It seems you only have hypothetical imaginary ones

Sorry if it was unclear, but the Chelmsford station entries/exits is the actual figure from the Office of Rail and Road; the proportion of journeys to be done by cycle, bus and foot is the actual figure from current adopted government targets; and the number of bus seats is the actual number of service calls in the morning peak hour multiplied by 50 (bustimes says most are single-deckers with fewer seats and all the peak hour calls this morning were single deck, but it's not impossible there might be a few doubles some days).

The only hypotheticals were what proportion of the entries/exits are return journeys, what proportion of those will be from the city itself and how they will split bus/bike/foot. I know that my own borough currently has more walkers than cyclists and more of either than bus passengers, but I don't know the split for Chelmsford, nor what they're aiming for. Please provide the figures if you have them.

Current usage is largely irrelevant. We don't estimate whether a bridge is needed from the number of people swimming across the river. We need to decide what we want to see (half of journeys by bike, bus or foot) and then provide the infrastructure to enable it, same as has long happened for motoring.