Reading Station improvements

[whole diary]

[ellendune]

The tower crane has now gone!

[Jeff]

Hello folks,

I'm a brand-new member, though I've been enjoying reading all of your posts for some months now - what knowledgeable and civilised people you are!

I live in Reading and for some 10-15 years was involved in some of its re-development/renaissance (though not station-related) and so have a dual interest in watching the amazing things that NR^» (Network Rail - home page), RBC^‡(resolve) and others are doing with the station and associated areas. All of the posts on this particular thread have therefore been fascinating, and it's been really enjoyable reading your analyses and informed conjectures about why certain things have been designed in certain ways, and whether the scheme will include X or Y, and also about how the design/construction team are going to resolve outstanding issues X, Y and Z. And then with a soft "d'oh!" it finally struck me that most if not all of these issues will already have been aired and resolved in the public domain, as they'll all have had to have had Planning Consent. And so yesterday I set off with my friend Professor Google to see what I could find...and we quickly hit the motherlode. So, in the hope that I'm not repeating what somebody else may have already posted years/months ago, would you be interested in, amongst others, the Planning Applications for the viaducts west of Reading and the Station re-development itself?

Unfortunately, for some reason my browser has recently stopped letting me copy/paste URLs, so I can't just put direct links to documents here; instead, I've typed out a step-by-step guide which will take you to them. I'm sorry it's so laborious, and again I apologise if you've already seen/discussed the Planning Applications, but nevertheless here goes:

1.   Go to  www.planning.reading.gov.uk (I've typed in that URL as it's a short one)
2.   Select Enter PublicAccess for Planning
3a.   In the Search box, enter 11/01885/FUL
   This opens the Planning Application Summary for the west of Reading viaduct works
            Click on the Documents tab
   Click View associated documents
   This opens up a Results window, giving access to 5 pages of documents
   
            For me, the best stuff is on pages 2, 3 and 4, ie elevations and section drawings

3b.   Back at the Search box, enter 10/01269/FUL
           This opens the Planning Application Summary for the Station re-development
            Again click on the Documents tab
   Again click ^View associated documents^
   This again opens up a Results window, giving access to 2 pages of docs
   
            I recommend you go to p.2 and click on Design and Access Statement (parts 1 and 2). For me, this answers loads  of      questions
 
I should add that perhaps you shouldn^t embark on this if you have deadines to meet/children to feed/trains to catch ^ you should prepare to write-off several hours of your life, albeit very enjoyably.
       

[paul7575]

Hi Jeff, and welcome to the forum.

We have previously mentioned a few planning applications, in fact I first saw the one for the western viaducts only a couple of weeks back, but didn't link to it as it didn't really provide any significant new information.

In the case of the main station works, the application took quite a time to appear on the website for some reason, by the time it was available online IIRC^▸ (if I recall/remember/read correctly) it was all happening anyway...

It's possibly worth pointing out for anyone using the RBC^‡(resolve) planning portal for the first time that any links you generate seem to be session based and go stale anyway, so there's no mileage in copying and pasting them.  (This seems to vary between different local authorities as well, some do allow linking direct to documents...)

Here's one for the depot by the way:

The new Turbo depot planning reference is 10/01380/FUL if anyone wishes to look at the details - and as usual there are enough details to keep you browsing for quite a while...

As you'd expect, although the planning application is for a replacement 'Turbo Depot' the drawings show all the facilites are designed to fit four car units with OHLE structures and gantries almost everywhere you look...

Paul

[swrural]

I answered my own question about camera numbers.  the web site nrreading01 is in fact camera 2 when you get to it and vice versa, so nrreading 02 is camera 1.   

[Jeff]

Ah thanks Paul, evidently I was teaching you all to suck eggs re suggesting Planning Applications as source material - I note your post of [cough] Nov 2011 re the Depot application.

I'll get me coat.

Jeff

[grahame]

Ah thanks Paul, evidently I was teaching you all to suck eggs ....

Jeff, you may have been teaching a few, but certainly not all 

Those of us who've been on this forum for a long time (I can claim to be one of the longest standing!) and post frequently are very much in a minority.   And it's all too easy to forget the majority of the people who read as guests, or who are members who only post occasionally.   For one, I'm very grateful for your detailed post as it helps provide an ongoing resource for guest and new members (and old once who only come by occasionally, or forget ...) - please carry on in that vein.  I actually do something similar in terms of providing technical resource on my own blog - for sure these things have been written about before, but it's really nice to refresh them, put them all together in one place, and perhaps add a new slant.

In writing this answer, I looked at some of our stats.
* We have around 150 members who have posted more that 100 time.  Probably "experts"
* We have a further 1,000+ registered members who have posted less.
* In the last month, over 13,000 unique visitors have come to the site - that's a lot of guests

When I'm logged in as an admin, I can numbers of people and roughly where they are, and I frequently notice guests looking at this thread.  And typically there are many more guests than logged in users - a few minutes ago I took a peke and it was 21 to 9 [24 to 5 a few minutes later].  3 or 4 may be spiders indexing us for search engines, but most are from UK^▸ (United Kingdom) IP addresses.  In fact, the 13,000 unique visitors between them made a total of about 31,000 visits in the last month, on average stopping by 5 pages.  And over 29,000 of those 31,000 visits were from the UK.

I probably don't say "thank you" often enough to all the contributors here - especially those who post from a strong knowledge or educational background.  I hope the figures quoted here give you some idea of just how much you're read and appreciated - all of you!

[Jeff]

Thanks Grahame, that's very kind of you.

Funnily enough, I'd actually just had a look at the number of posts on this thread and though "sheesh, that's a lotta posts!". Very impressive, and also clearly a very nice community here. Coat off and back on peg.

I'm not sure whether there's been any discussion in the past about some of the interesting issues within the Design and Access Statement within the Planning Application for the Station, but here's something which caught my eye:

• the Transfer Deck was originally conceived as having a 40m width but then reduced to 30m, with the rationale being that the impacts on walking and queueing times would be within acceptable tolerances
• the "dwell time" (ie queueing and information-searching) modelled for the Transfer Deck was an average of 2 mins, within the range 1-5 mins
• there's to be no seating provision on the Deck, as I understand it, with all customer lounges to be on the platforms themselves
  

All very interesting, and whilst I do have genuine respect for all of the professionals involved in this extremely impressive project, I do wonder about those three points when taken together; instinctively, I feel that when the icy rain is slanting across the platforms during Nov-April, people may be tempted to "dwell" for considerably longer on the Deck than 1-5 mins.

What do people think?

Jeff.
 

 

[IndustryInsider]

Yes, I can certainly see people staying up on the transfer deck, given the facilities on the platforms don't look that extensive.  And it'll be a good vantage point for those that just like watching the trains.  Do we know if there will be any retail outlets on the deck, or are they being kept to the platforms?  It remains to be seen whether some discrete seating may be provided over time - I guess there will be an element of 'let's see how it goes' with regard to how the deck is used.  The good old general public (even with sophisticated modelling tools on computers) are very hard to predict!

[paul7575]

Interesting question about retail facilities on the transfer deck.  In the recent Modern Railways article about the improvements, the author stated that the reason the deck was to be so wide was to allow for retail outlets to be up there.  But I think he was making quite a wrong assumption, perhaps clouded by what's been going on at other NR^» (Network Rail - home page) run places such as Kings Cross and Waterloo; but the difference is that those retail areas are not part of the main circulation spaces.

The planning stuff (the design and access statement) includes a heck of a lot of detailed info about passenger circulation routes, and the various diagrams suggested to me no catering facilities up there at all, secondly the main layout plans (that I've referred to before now) also show the only permanent items on the deck are the lift shafts.

None of that means that the sort of pre-fabricated catering stand that they used to have on the existing footbridge cannot be used, but I think there's some evidence that it will just be an open space...

Paul

[Jeff]

I'm just trying to paste an image-grab of the proposed Transfer Deck interior from the Design & Access Statement into a Word doc, but my pedal-driven laptop is struggling. If/when it consents to me scaling down the image and centring it in the middle of the page, I'll post it here.

Jeff.

[JayMac]

If the Word .doc is less than 256KB it can be attached to a post rather than converted to an image and embedded.

Click on 'Additional Options' below the text entry box when composing a reply and you'll see an 'Attach' facility.

[Jonty]

A comparable would be the transfer deck/bridge at Clapham.

Much narrower than the new Reading deck but stuffed to the gunnels in the middle bits with retail outlets including some en-suite seating.

If NR^» (Network Rail - home page)/GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) can make money out of it they will...

[Oxman]

FGW^▸ (First Great Western) runs the station at the moment so it gets the revenue from retail outlets. Given that this is one of the few income streams it can actively develop, FGW has always been keen to get as much in as possible, in some cases to the detriment of the ambience of the station. At Reading for example, the "Stewpot" outlet on the forecourt immediately outside the main doors is, in my opinion, a dreadful eyesore.

However, I recall that NR^» (Network Rail - home page) is to manage Reading in future. Although NR is also keen to increase revenue from retail outlets, it appears to take a more holistic view, rather than cramming anything everywhere.

Whoever does it, there will be a need for coffee outlets, etc, either on the platforms or the bridge. All those commuters making their way each morning from the car park to the train will demand it!

[Jeff]

Thanks BNM but unfortunately the doc was over 2mb and when I tried to post it there was a flash and a bang and smoke came out of the top of my monitor and I thought I'd broken the internet. Fortunately I then got an automatic message from your site saying that max file size was 500-some kb. Oh well.

Instead let me quote the first sentence from the text next to an image of the proposed Transfer Deck interior in the D&A Statement:

"The transfer deck interior is designed to be as open as possible allowing clear views to all platforms".

The image shows no retail units.

For anyone wanting to see the image and the rest of the text, it's in Part 2 of the D&A Statement at Section 5.2 on p.20 in the PDF reader (p.186 of the original Grimshaw document).    

[Oxman]

I picked up the March 2013 edition of the Reading Station News today, at the station. Can't find it on a web site yet.

Contains some detail about what to expect:

The new southern entrance will have gateline and three TVMs^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine). The Northern entrance will have gateline, three TVMs, two manned ticket windows, and an excess fare facility.

FGW^▸ (First Great Western) providing two mobile help desks, each equipped with PC and printer for journey planning.

It introduces the idea of the new platforms having A and B ends, with trains sharing platforms.

It says, by the way, that the new entrances and bridge will be opened on Good Friday, 29th March, although the only train services from the station over Easter will be to Basingstoke, Newbury, Gatwick and Waterloo, The new platforms open on 2 Tuesday 2nd April.