We know that the demand for car parking outstrips the supply of spaces at some of our stations. At these busy stations, car parks fill up very early in the morning leaving little or no space for some commuters and many off-peak passengers.
The extent of the problem at a particular station is fed back to us by local employees, passengers (through our Customer Service Centre), local Meet the Manager events, and regular car park usage surveys undertaken at all our stations.
Unfortunately, even though we may be aware that there is a car-parking problem, we can’t necessarily do anything about it, much as we would like to. The reason is that creating any significant amount of extra space usually involves either acquiring land or creating a deck over the existing car park. Both of these options are costly and usually involve quite protracted time scales, including time to secure planning permission.
Recovery of the cost of such an investment would be necessary over a much longer time than the two years remaining of our current franchise and, at the moment, franchising rules prevent a return on the investment beyond the end of the franchise period. We lease the car parks from the infrastructure owner, Network Rail (formerly Railtrack). Prior to Railtrack going into administration in 2001, it invested in expansion and we paid higher rent, but the Network Rail funding arrangements restrict the availability of such funds at present. However, we are determined not to let these issues defeat us and so, we have developed improvement schemes at Esher, Guildford, Weybridge, Egham and Winchfield stations, all of which give relatively small but easily achievable increases in capacity. We are also pressing the Strategic Rail Authority to relax the investment rules for car park expansions so that the recovery of the costs take into account the shortness of our franchise. Further schemes would follow if we were successful. We are also working on an innovative funding arrangement for a scheme at Southampton Airport (Parkway), which would provide several hundred additional spaces by decking over the existing facility. In addition, there are some large schemes linked to major development of stations and the adjoining car parks, which Network Rail is sponsoring. These are longer-term opportunities that could offer many more spaces at key sites. More car parking is not the only answer to the current issues of under-provision of spaces. We are working hard with local authorities to encourage more cycling to stations by providing lots of cycle shelters and ensuring that the approaches to stations are safe for pedestrians. There are also a number of bus links connecting with trains at our stations. We’ve also recently launched our first TaxiBus service in Petersfield to transport passengers between their homes and the station.