New train station planned for Rochester

A new station for residents in Rochester could help improve train services.

Network Rail plans to move the current station to a new site to allow more passengers to use the station, and allow for a more reliable, quicker service.

The current station, just off Rochester High Street, has few car parking spaces and platforms that can only accommodate 10-carriage trains.

With regeneration on Rochester Riverside already underway, passenger numbers are expected to rise by 30% over the next few years, meaning the current station will be inadequate to support the growing population.

Addressing these figures, Network Rail have proposed to move the current station to Corporation Road Car Park as part of a £25million investment in rail infrastructure.

With more car parking spaces and longer platforms accommodating for 12-carriage and more passengers, it is hoped the plan will prove a hit with the local council and local people.

Councillor Rodney Chambers, Medway Council Leader and Regeneration Lead, said: “If this proposal gets the go ahead it will lead to a new, better train station for Rochester

“It will result in a quicker, more reliable service with more space for passengers,” he added.

The station would be closer to the main town centre then the current station, with a new subway planned to link the station to the shopping parade. Train users would also benefit from being closer to the main bus routes running through the town.

If approved, the station would take up 1/3 of the land on Corporation Road, and would be scheduled to open in 2015.

It is believed Network Rail will submit a planning application for the proposals later this year.

Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

Design plans unveiled for Thames Estuary Airport

Designs for the estimated £50Billion airport in the Thames Estuary have been unveiled.

The plans for what has been dubbed the ‘world’s biggest airport’ show how the project, which plans to serve over 150million passengers a year, will be built on waste land on the Isle of Grain in Kent.

Lord Norman Foster, the architect who created the new Wembley Stadium, is behind the plans for the new airport, which includes four runways, terminal buildings and high-speed rail connections to London and the rest of the UK.

Talking of the benefits of the plans, Lord Foster said that it would “lay the foundations for the future prosperity of Britain.”

Architectural critic Edwin Heathcoate said that the plans would be a “complete re-imagining of the UK’s transport infrastructure.”

“It’s a vision of the kind of integration in transport and utilities that has not been considered since the great age of canals and then of railways.”

The plans for a new airport, first unveiled two years ago by the Thames Estuary Airport Feasibility Review, will serve to overcome the current problems surrounding London’s Aviation industry.

Experts estimate that by 2030, Heathrow – currently the UK’s biggest and busiest airport – will reach maximum capacity, and with other London airports restricted on growth, a sustainable resolution to the problems is needed.

However, critics of the plans, including Medway council and environmental charities including the RSPB – who say the plans will threaten thousands of bird species – are against the plans.

Leader of Medway Council, Rodney Chambers, said the plan were “quite possibly the daftest in a long list of pie-in-the-sky schemes that have been put forward for an airport.”

An RSPB spokesperson said: “We oppose this airport proposal because the massive environmental impact is unjustified.”

Picture courtesy of Wikipedia


*a piece from my University of Kent portfolio