A friend on Twitter recently raised an issue that I have also pondered : a journey from stations on the Birmingham and Gloucester line (now the Cross-City south line) to Gloucester and the south west usually involves travelling in to New Street, then catching a train out again - passing through the station you were just at, and adding between 30 and 60 minutes to your journey. The question was what could be done to improve that journey - both in terms of time, and convenience. Is there potential for a South Birmingham Parkway?
Developing a new station site might sound appealing, but is expensive and has a range of legal, technical and practical issues to resolve. So let's look at improving or reusing existing stations, specifically Longbridge, Barnt Green and Bromsgrove.
We are looking at locations that could be suitable for long-distance trains to call at, with interchange to local services on the Cross-City line, and good road links with adequate parking to act as a railhead.
Barnt Green
Possibly the easiest to deal with. Barnt Green is a small station in a small village. Whilst it would be feasible to stop more trains here for interchange purposes, it's probably not the ideal location for passengers to access to start their journey.
Bromsgrove
Bromsgrove is more appealing. It has recently been rebuilt with four platforms, and will soon be a new southern terminus of the Cross-City line. There is plenty of parking, and it already has a number of longer distance services calling. This makes it an ideal interchange point, with passengers from south Birmingham travelling out to Bromsgrove to pick up their onward train. It still requires a change of train (or car journey to get there), but at least avoids the time-wasting doubling back through New Street.
However, as always there are problems. There are suggestions that some of the long distance services will cease to stop at Bromsgrove once Worcestershire Parkway station opens. That makes perfect sense - stopping long distance trains too often results in lengthy journey times, and Worcestershire Parkway is better placed to attract a wider catchment by road and rail. However, from Birmingham the only way to reach Worcestershire Parkway is by car, or a train from New Street - which is exactly what we are trying to avoid. So serving Worcestershire Parkway instead of Bromsgrove is a decision which is perfectly sensible from the rail operator's perspective, but which makes our problem worse.
And even if you can catch a train at Bromsgrove, you still need to get there. It might just be OK if you can walk to the station to get a connecting train, but road connections from Birmingham to Bromsgrove aren't great, and buses are even worse.
So, Bromsgrove is a potential interchange station but not ideal as a starting point, even if the trains you want do call there.
Longbridge
Using Longbridge as an interchange point between local and long-distance journeys has many positives:
However, Longbridge has one big drawback - there are no platforms on the fast lines. This is a consequence of the station being provided relatively recently, on the opening of the Cross-City line in 1978. The line through Longbridge is a four-track railway, and platforms were provided on the slow lines (at the edge of the railway) to serve the local trains on the Cross-City line. There was never any intention for long distance services to call here, so no provision was made for them to do so.
If long distance trains are to call at Longbridge, platforms need to be provided on the fast lines. It is not practical to make stopping trains use the platforms on the slow lines, and the intensity of service through Longbridge mean that all four lines are required. The problem with doing this is that the railway is not wide enough to build platforms without moving the tracks. And this is not going to be easy (or cheap!).
What follows is my assessment of how to achieve this. I am a transport planner, and have spent many hours discussing construction feasibility with engineers, and acceptability of plans with the public. I am not an engineer, less still a designer. I understand (most of) the constraints, but don't have an accurate feel for whether they are a minor irritation or a showstopper. This assessment could be spot on, or it could be wide of the mark. Please do let me know if you can add some detail.
A bit further south, the other side of the road bridge, the cutting deepens. But it also widens, due to the presence an abandoned railway line and an existing railway siding. Conveniently, that widening is on the western side, so widening the formation at the station site would enable the tracks to make use of the extra space to the south to regain their original route.
The siding is currently used to reverse the services that terminate at Longbridge. The extension of services to Bromsgrove means the siding will not be used as frequently as it is now, but losing it would restrict flexibility and the ability to terminate services at Longbridge in the future.
There is also the issue that the railway is in a constrained cutting, and there is no potential to widen it. So if the space available isn't enough to move the tracks to fit in the new platforms, there is no way to fit them in.
However, the biggest constraint is probably the road bridge. As these photos show, the road bridge immediately to the south of Longbridge station is built very close to the tracks.
Any works to widen the formation here would require the rebuilding of this bridge. Apart from the cost and disruption of doing so, there are also several highway engineering considerations:
- It is served by Cross-City line trains. Unlike Bromsgrove, all Cross-City services call at Longbridge, giving a 10 minute service interval, and direct trains to Alvechurch and Redditch.
- It is already a bus interchange point, with several high frequency bus services calling outside, and more within a short walk
- It is due to have a multi-storey car park built, giving easy access to a large part of south Birmingham.
However, Longbridge has one big drawback - there are no platforms on the fast lines. This is a consequence of the station being provided relatively recently, on the opening of the Cross-City line in 1978. The line through Longbridge is a four-track railway, and platforms were provided on the slow lines (at the edge of the railway) to serve the local trains on the Cross-City line. There was never any intention for long distance services to call here, so no provision was made for them to do so.
If long distance trains are to call at Longbridge, platforms need to be provided on the fast lines. It is not practical to make stopping trains use the platforms on the slow lines, and the intensity of service through Longbridge mean that all four lines are required. The problem with doing this is that the railway is not wide enough to build platforms without moving the tracks. And this is not going to be easy (or cheap!).
What follows is my assessment of how to achieve this. I am a transport planner, and have spent many hours discussing construction feasibility with engineers, and acceptability of plans with the public. I am not an engineer, less still a designer. I understand (most of) the constraints, but don't have an accurate feel for whether they are a minor irritation or a showstopper. This assessment could be spot on, or it could be wide of the mark. Please do let me know if you can add some detail.
Rebuilding Longbridge station
The station itself is location in a shallow cutting. There is a certain amount of space that could be used, but probably not enough to fit in platforms to modern specifications. To the east of the station is housing, and to the west is a road, Tessall Lane. To provide the space for the platforms would probably involve using the space taken up by Tessall Lane to widen the railway formation. Whilst not a major road, any closure is legally difficult and prone to objections from those who currently use it. That isn't necessarily a showstopper, and closing the road would provide benefits through improved public realm and better links to the new car park, as well as improved cycle links between Longbridge and the Rea Valley cycle route. All this would require significant earthworks, and might not provide enough space. There is also the issue of a major electric sub-station the other side of the road. This cannot be disturbed, and ensuring that it is unaffected by work to widen the railway cutting could be tricky and costly.A bit further south, the other side of the road bridge, the cutting deepens. But it also widens, due to the presence an abandoned railway line and an existing railway siding. Conveniently, that widening is on the western side, so widening the formation at the station site would enable the tracks to make use of the extra space to the south to regain their original route.
The siding is currently used to reverse the services that terminate at Longbridge. The extension of services to Bromsgrove means the siding will not be used as frequently as it is now, but losing it would restrict flexibility and the ability to terminate services at Longbridge in the future.
There is also the issue that the railway is in a constrained cutting, and there is no potential to widen it. So if the space available isn't enough to move the tracks to fit in the new platforms, there is no way to fit them in.
However, the biggest constraint is probably the road bridge. As these photos show, the road bridge immediately to the south of Longbridge station is built very close to the tracks.
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| View to the west. The white van is emerging from Tessall Lane. |
Any works to widen the formation here would require the rebuilding of this bridge. Apart from the cost and disruption of doing so, there are also several highway engineering considerations:
- To the west of the railway is the junction with Tessall Lane. This could be built in to the revised bridge, at a cost. Closing Tessall Lane removes that complication.
- To the east of the railway are the bus stops and a series of junctions with local roads. These would need to be preserved.
- The biggest issue with a revised bridge is the gradient. The bridge is at a higher level than the road approaches with relatively steep rises on either side. Extending the length of the bridge would reduce the amount of space available to drop back to road level before the next junction. And that might put the road over the safe limits to allow heavy vehicles (including buses) enough space to stop if required.
The vision
Summing all this up, I see the only way of providing interchange at Longbridge to involve closure of Tessall Lane, a new road overbridge, improved public realm and significant alterations to the railway. There is no guarantee that all this is even possible within engineering limits, without any consideration of the legal, financial and practical issues of achieving it. Even then, it is not clear that sufficient long distance services would stop at the station to make it all worthwhile.
Overall this is quite challenging, and is probably unachievable unless other circumstances mean that one or more of the required changes needs to happen anyway.
What next
Of the options looked at here, the only one that seems feasible and deliverable is to develop Bromsgrove as an interchange. The only infrastructure required would be improvements to road access, and the station already has both (planned) local and long-distance services either calling or passing existing platforms.
The only issue is encouraging train companies to stop their trains in order to provide the interchange possibilities.
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