Summary

New rail stations refer to new rail stations on existing heavy, or conventional, railway lines that provide new places for people to board and alight trains and, hence increase the geographical accessibility of the rail network. Several types of new stations can be identified, these are:

1. New stations on existing local, suburban lines – these tend to be located in suburbs and hinterlands of particular urban areas and facilitate trips to and from the city/town centre, with access to the station tending to be by foot.
2. New interchange stations on existing lines – these tend to be found in dense urban areas where several railway lines cross each other, or where there is a network of inter-connecting bus routes. Such a station provides opportunities for trips beyond the city centre and possibly for journeys involving integration between different modes.
3. New strategic park and ride or parkway stations on existing inter-city lines – these stations tend to be located at the edges of urban areas to serve as large scale park and ride facilities providing access to the centre of urban areas. Whilst the station itself might be small the adjoining car park would be large.
4. New stations on new lines – where a new railway line or system is built it will, naturally, be associated with the building of one or, more generally, a series of new rail stations. The nature of these stations will depend largely on the nature of the new line or system of which it is part.

New stations are principally introduced to increase the number of journeys made by rail, however there often exist some secondary reasons behind their opening such as a desire to reduce car traffic or to encourage economic growth. Constructing a station is expensive (at least £500K for a simple two platform local station) and the justification required tends not to be met purely on financial grounds. Therefore a package of secondary benefits often needs to be identified to enable new station investment to go ahead.

The evidence shows that new local rail stations draw most of their passengers from within an 800 m radius and this has tended to define the size of the catchment area served by any one particular station. The potential for a new station will depend upon its distance from existing stations, the size of the catchment population, engineering constraints (local terrain) and operational constraints (are there pathing difficulties). Whilst new stations will provide new travel opportunities and an alternative to the car (so improvements in adverse externalities) they are also likely to worsen conditions for current rail passengers given that the new station will tend to be served by existing rail services, e.g. longer journey times and more overcrowding. New stations may also encourage more decentralised patterns of land use and so longer distance travel. As such it may be useful to combine new stations with different policy instruments to ensure a the maximisation of positive impacts and the minimisation of complementary instruments.