With the appointment of WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff to take forward the latest plans for the transformation of Halifax Railway Station, [1] will this transformed Halifax Station be superior or inferior than the existing arrangement?
The latest station masterplan, drawn up by Bauman Lyons, Arcadis, Arup and Cushman Wakefield dated 2016, presented to a meeting of Calderdale Councils Cabinet on 20th October 2016, will see the demolition of the existing station entrance along with the existing level access that has been described as offering “an efficient link from the station to the town” [2] With the creation of a new station entrance constructed at ground (car park) level. This along with the reopening of the third platform and new bus rail interchange is supposed to encourage and increase public transport use. But will it?
As currently those travelling between the railway station and the town centre on foot are only required to travel up or down two flights of stairs, this plan will see commuters on foot between these two locations travel up/down at least four flights of stairs simply to get down to subway level before they can make their way up to platform level, in order to catch trains running from the Island Platform.
On top of this and due to the fact that the footbridge currently removes the need to travel between ground and platform level, further steps will have to be traversed. Although this doesn’t seem much, those travelling from the island platform will be forced to traverse this many steps potentially up to 3 times, depending on how access to this new station is created as the station entrance will most likely be provided at platform level and will no-doubt include Ticket Gates, something that Northern were required to provide by the 31stMarch 2017 according to their Franchise Agreement, but have yet to do so. [3]
Although this will predominantly benefit those travelling between the railway station and this new bus interchange, especially when travelling from the direction of Huddersfield/Manchester & Blackpool North and those travelling to Leeds. The council is supposed to be encouraging the whole borough to be more active and have even launched their own strategy aptly named ‘Active Calderdale’ in order to achieve this. [4] Furthermore since it is anticipated that this new bus rail interchange is expected to be served by buses on their way to the bus station that is located at the other end of town, it may not be practical for the majority of commuters arriving at the railway station especially during peak time, to continue the rest of their journey by bus as occasionally buses are running above and beyond capacity. Although this could be rectified by increasing the number of buses, buses will still have a significantly lower capacity than the trains pulling into Halifax Station.
So it is hard to see what the benefits are for demolishing an extremely efficient link when the benefits of which could easily be achieved by reopening the third platform as is proposed/planned with the creation of another entrance between platform/car park level. Due to that this master-plan also proposes to construct a new multistory car park upon the site of the former Mackintosh Factory, which is expected to be access from Navigation Road, Northern will be forced to provided another set of Ticket Gates anyway if this plan goes ahead. So providing another entrance at the existing railway station shouldn’t be too much trouble.
An additional ramped access to the north of the existing station overbridge between these two entrances could also be provided to make it easier for all commuters travelling between the station and this new interchange from either direction, without having a detrimental effect on those travelling on foot and creating unnecessarily confusion. This would also the remove the need to install an outside lift. Something that wasn’t even shown within the 2016 masterplan, probably due to the fact that outside lifts are prone to breakdowns, vandalism and also hinders those with mobility issues and those with children by unnecessarily increasing their time commuting.
[2] Halifax Station Gateway Masterplan / Page 28, PDF Page 34
[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/northern-rail-2016-rail-franchise-agreement
[4] http://news.calderdale.gov.uk/help-us-become-the-most-active-borough/
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