News / Bristol
Full steam ahead for £2.23m Portway station
Long-held ambitions to build a new Portway railway station will finally be realised, as work on designing the £2.23m project gets underway.
Hailed as great news for Bristol, the development will be the first of its kind in the city for more than 20 years and it is hoped its completion in 2019 will provide vital access to jobs and public infrastructure, as well as ease congestion.
The city council secured £1.67m from the Government’s New Stations Fund for the project and it marks the culmination of after many years of work and planning with Network Rail.
“Securing this much-needed rail funding from the Government is great news for Bristol and it will help meet a long held aspiration to build a new station to serve the Portway Park and Ride site,” said mayor Marvin Rees.
“It will complement the existing bus services which will continue to serve the city centre and encourage more people from a wider area to use these routes, reducing congestion and improving our air quality.”
The newly-formed West of England Combined Authority and the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) are supporting the project by providing some of the additional funding required, as well as wider investment to better link the new station to the park and ride site.
The new station will form part of wider infrastructure improvement plans, with links to the long-awaited 12,000 capacity arena by Temple Meads
Mhairi Threlfall, the council’s cabinet member for transport, said: “To improve the flow of people across the city and connect them to jobs, education and healthcare, we need the right transport infrastructure – and rail improvements like this are an important part of our travel planning.
“The Portway scheme will also play a critical role in improving access to both the Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone and the Avonmouth Enterprise Area, which are anticipated to accommodate up to 31,000 new jobs over the next 25 years.”
The scheme will form part of long-term rail improvement plans that include improved frequencies on the Severn Beach Line, which will serve the station by 2020.
“This is great news and will significantly improve journeys for passengers in Bristol at a time when more people are using the railway than ever before, added Malcolm Parsons of Network Rail.
“It supports the wider upgrades being delivered in Bristol, which include the biggest signalling modernisation anywhere in the country, Filton Four Tracking and improvements to the Severn Beach Line. These upgrades will provide greater capacity, more frequent services and a more reliable railway with the new Portway station further enhancing Bristol’s rail network.”
The total estimated cost of the project is £2.63m which includes £2.23m for delivering the rail infrastructure, plus funding to make necessary improvements to the park and ride site, which will include a new amenity building for rail and bus passengers.
Main photo: Show the site where the new station will be, it’s rough location is marked in red.
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