Chairmans Blog

Here’s a great chance for you to put forward your thoughts on how our local railway stations could be improved.

Network Rail is asking the public for its opinion on the future of Britain’s 2,000 railway stations, and is offering respondents the chance to win an annual season ticket or £2000 in cash.

As owner and operator of Britain’s railway infrastructure, Network Rail launched their “Action Stations” online survey on 12 November to coincide with the news that they are to spend £3.25 billion on station upgrades over the next five years.

Network Rail hopes to gauge public opinion as it implements its improvement plan and has outlined a ten-point list of goals for each of its stations, including better links to other forms of transport and the encouragement of urban development.

The £3.25 billion will be spread across more than 2,000 UK train stations, the vast majority of which are leased to train operators such as Northern Rail, Arriva Trains Wales and Virgin Trains.

Network Rail said money ranging from tens of thousands to tens of millions of pounds would go into improving, among other things, passenger information systems, platforms and waiting rooms, and ticket halls.

Birmingham New Street, Blackfriars, Edinburgh Waverley, King’s Cross and London Bridge have been earmarked for investments in excess of £100 million, while Leicester, Maidstone East, Manchester Victoria, Nottingham and Oxford are among those stations to receive £10-20 million.

Professional services firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has been engaged to run the nationwide survey which will last up to three months and consist of online and telephone questionnaires and focus groups.

The Action Stations survey, the first of Network Rail’s online campaigns, closes on 31 December 2009 with PwC choosing the winner of the year’s free season ticket on 6 January 2010.

To enter the survey and for more information click this link.