Decision time on Newcastle barriers

A planning committee will decide on an application for ticket barriers at Newcastle on Friday, 15th May. Local campaigners are gearing up to persuade the committee to turn down the Listed Building Consent. Newcastle railway station is an outstanding Grade II* listed building.

Whilst English Heritage have withdrawn their objections after significant amendments from National Express, Planning Policy Guidance note 15 (PPG15), which is part of the national advice to planning authorities, clearly states that any proposals for change to historic buildings must be justified. Campaigners will therefore be urging the committee to look at the statement of support presented by National Express.

Many of the claims made by National Express in their supporting statement are highly dubious. For example, they claim to have conducted "pedestrian flow analysis" to determine the number of automatic ticket gates required at each station, claiming throughput rates of up to 33 people per minute (higher than is typical on the London Underground where there is a well-established barrier system). The key phrase here is "up to" - as reported in earlier posts, when the barriers have not been switched to "accept all-tickets" mode, in which case they are effectively useless in preventing ticket fraud, up to 30% of valid tickets can end up being rejected. On top of that there are the wheelchair users, people with pushchairs, people with bicycles, heavy luggage, pets and so on, all of which mean that the 33 ppm is in effect a complete fantasy.

On the question of whether there is any business case (in revenue protection terms) the document helpfully states: "Rest assured that the case for gating is very convincing from a commercial perspective, but we cannot divulge particular details for reasons of commercial sensitivity and confidentiality."

Perhaps this reticence has something to do with the fact that the commitment to gating was made as part of NXEC's original franchise bid; however they would not have had sufficient information as part of the bidding process to conduct detailed business case assessments on the effects of gating at each station. So the so called "business case" is at best a fig leaf designed to justify their original commitment to the Department for Transport.

On the subject of railway enthusiasts, the statement says "Likewise, passes can be issued to people wishing to view the building or the locomotives passing through it." Well, clearly passes can be issued, but this does not mean that they will be. In March, Gerry Doherty, the General Secretary of the rail union TSSA, reported that his members had been instructed at a meeting with National Express that trainspotters would be banned "without exception" from ECML stations.

You can view the NXEC statement here:

http://planningapplications.newcastle.gov.uk/WAM/doc/Supporting%20Information-123895.pdf?extension=.pdf&id=123895&location=VOLUME1&contentType=application/pdf&pageCount=63

And Richard Malins' detailed rebuttal of NXEC's claims here:

http://one.xthost.info/cabys/NXECrefute1.pdf

CABYS would like to give every support to the Newcastle campaigners in their aim to keep the station free of barriers.