A planning application for the Thanet Parkway station has been submitted

Thanet Parkway Station

A planning application for the Thanet Parkway Station has been submitted.

The application for the project, which was initially expected to cost £11 million but has now been estimated at £21.4 million, was due to be submitted last year but amendments to junction design and pedestrian and cycle access pushed this back.

The parkway station will be built off the Hengist Way, on the existing Ashford to Ramsgate rail line near the Sevenscore roundabout.

The aim is to provide improved services to London Stratford International station with travel times being reduced to around one hour. Currently the average journey time between Ramsgate and London St Pancras Intl is 1 hour 35 minutes. The fastest journey time is 1 hour 16 minutes.

A Kent County Council spokesman said: “An application for the proposed Thanet Parkway Station was submitted last week.

“It will go through a period of validation and once this is completed, people will be able to view and comment on the Kent.gov.uk planning site.

“Once validated we will also notify all residents who requested updates on the project at the public consultation held last year.

“All residents affected by or in the immediate vicinity of the proposals will be contacted as part of the planning process as a matter of course.”

Design changes have been made following the second public consultation on the scheme last year.

The station is due to open in 2021. It was first proposed in 2010 and is being funded by the Local Growth Fund (LGF) through the South East Local Enterprise Partnership (SELEP) along with a contribution from KCC.

The original estimated cost of the project was £11.2 million but in 2016 documents from a SE England Local Enterprise Partnership (SELEP) and Kent & Medway Economic Partnership (KMEP) meeting said the cost could rise to £26 million. KCC rebutted this saying construction costs were expected to be £16 million.

A government grant of £10 million was agreed through the Regional Growth Scheme but this still left a significant shortfall.

A funding gap of £8.75million still exists after a bid last year to the Network Rail and the Department for Transport’s New Stations Fund was unsuccessful.

A KCC spokesman said other options are being explored to fill the funding gap.

A spokesman said:“KCC are contributing £2.65million from our own capital, and the South East Local Enterprise Partnership are contributing £10million from the Local Growth Fund.

“The lower cost estimate was from an early stage in the project and the revised figure of £21.4million is based on the GRIP (Guide to Rail Investment Process) 3 design, which is a feasibility design.

“We will refine the cost estimate in the later GRIP stages, with outline design and then detailed design.”

KCC says the new station will be served by both mainline and High Speed trains, and will offer good transport links to the surrounding highway network via the A299 Hengist Way as well as offering local connections for pedestrians and cyclists.

They add that it will help to reduce the level of commuter parking demand at Ramsgate station (where there is limited parking available) and so help reduce congestion on local roads in the Thanet urban Air Quality Management Area.

It is hoped the station will widen employment opportunities for Thanet residents by providing improved rail access to London and other locations in the county and also cater for growth in rail usage and unlock homes and jobs.

Thanet Parkway Station proposal

Thanet Parkway will be a  two platform station. The station entrance will be on the north side adjacent to the car park with platforms accessible by stairs, lift and pedestrian bridge.

Waiting shelters, CCTV and passenger information points will be provided on each platform along with ticket machines and a help point to provide remote assistance by intercom.

The station is designed to be unstaffed and managed remotely through the use of CCTV and intercom.

However, a station building could be added in the future to include facilities such as a coffee shop, toilets, waiting room and a ticket office or facilities to accommodate station staff. Once operational, it will be for the train operating company to decide on staffing levels.

The proposed station will include 300 parking spaces offering both long and short stay parking.   The car park will also include disabled bays, a dedicated area for motorcycles, spaces offering electric car charging points and cycle storage.  There will be lighting and CCTV cameras as well as a pick up/drop off area and a reserved taxi rank.

Charges for parking at the station will be decided by Kent County Council following submission of the planning application.

The preferred option for road access was to provide a two-way single access road from Hengist Way (A299).  A signalised T-junction with dedicated turning lanes would provide access from the A299.

11 Comments

  1. Overall, this is a good idea. Parkway station will be built to serve all the London commuters who will be living in expensive houses on the former airfield at Manston(a walkable distance away). But what’s all this about government and County Council money being used to pay for it?? I thought the railways had been privatised! We were told that the generous private companies would take over the burden of paying to run the trains and we poor taxpayers would see a reduction in our taxes as a result. The opposite has happened. The passengers pay for a poor service. The taxpayers fork out yet more to keep the service modernised and the owners of the private companies walk away with loads of cash!! We voted for this!!

  2. This reminds of the tunnel that cost millions of pounds down to Ramsgate Harbour it was built after the ferries pulled out and is now little used. This station is being built after the closure of Manston Airport . Had it been built before the Airport closed it would have made the travel to and from the airport so much more appealing to would be investors. One could not make it up. To be constantly told of the need for public spending cuts to essential services such as Police / schools / roads. Yet billions are going to be wasted on Heathrow and Parkway station.

  3. It looks bloody awful and what’s the point of it? Instead, improve the existing local stations, improve public transport. Provide more and better cycle paths throughout Thanet.

    How can having an extra station speed up journey times?

  4. Can we put to bed, once and for all, the notion that journey times to London will be reduced by the opening of this station. They won’t, for passengers from Margate, Broadstairs and Ramsgate. They probably won’t for passengers from the proposed station. The only way to significantly reduce journey times is to upgrade the track and signalling betwern Thanet and Ashford.
    The existance, or bot, of a Parkway station would have had no impact on passenger usage at Manston. It would require a station within the perimeter of the airport to be of any use (Stansted, Gatwick, Heathrow, for example).
    The Ramsgate Port access tunnel was built years before the ferry closed.

  5. Andrew. Sallyline stopped sailing from Ramsgate in 1998 the tunnel to the harbour opened in June 2000.

  6. There are a number of misleading statistics in this article.
    Average journey time from Ramsgate to St Pancras quoted at 1 hour 35. This figure is for all routes including via Dover and Folkestone. The reduction to just over an hour quoted is only for the direct Ramsgate to St Pancras via Canterbury and so not an effective comparison against the 1 hour 35 quoted. Currently the quickest time of 1 hour 16 is from Ramsgate but the proposed station is 5 minutes closer to London and so the journey reduces to 1 hour 11 which I assume is the just over an hour statistic. Not the journey being quicker – just a case of timing from a different station.
    Commuters from the Thanet towns will actiually have longer journey times due to an extra stop. Yes only 3 minutes each way but hardly justification for spending £20 million

  7. Will, you overlook the fact that TransEuropa operated Ramsgate – Ostend until 2013 at great cost to Thanet taxpayers!

  8. A totally pointless waste of money. Train stations should be built close to where people LIVE (for example Ramsgate train station) not somewhere where everyone will then have to drive to, this generating MORE pollution and car usage. This will also cause regular delays on the railways especially at times when several trains are timed close together since an extra stop here reduces the capacity of the track significantly. AND it makes journey times to London from the rest of Thanet LONGER thanks to an extra stop. If KCC have that much money to burn then invest it into improving the existing public transport network, not this strange vanity project that serves no purpose.

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