The train of thought around modernising the UK’s major train stations to become sizeable lifestyle hubs has been gaining steam, particularly in the past year.
From a commercial perspective, improved access and interchanges have boosted rental and land values significantly.
And there appears to be an abundance of opportunities that could potentially be unblocked with land owned by railway companies.
For one, Network Rail has outlined aims to unlock land to develop around 12,000 homes by 2020 across more than 150 sites, to bolster the government’s aim to build 1.5m homes between 2015 and 2022. It owns around 55,000ha of railway land.
Transport for London, which owns 5,700 acres, plans to raise £850m in income from property development and disposals by the 2021-22 financial year to reinvest in its network. It has a long-term pipeline to deliver 10,000 homes across 300 acres.
London & Continental Railways, meanwhile, said last year that it had identified the ability to build more than 3,000 homes in the lead-up to 2021, through development and disposals.
But the push to redevelop stations and their surroundings into community-focused centres has not been able to get past the barriers, according to senior industry figures including Lord Adonis, previously secretary of state for transport.
“My main reflection [on the past decade] is, with a few isolated exceptions, nothing much has changed,” the Labour peer told delegates at the Movement Matters event at ETC Venues County Hall, SE1.
“It’s very depressing. Our stations are not noticeably worse, but they have not improved. There have been minor changes, not major changes; a few more coffee shops, but not much else.”
Calling for clarity
Adonis said a “few big new projects” have been successful, such as the stations at Birmingham New Street and Reading – but that there have been just as many “disaster areas”.
“We’ve made some progress and done some very big projects since, [but] we haven’t got any systematic plan for upgrading our stations,” he said.
“We still have a big problem in that it is no one’s prime responsibility.”
For Adonis, the solution is for more freestanding organisations to oversee development at each station as a social and retail centre, rather than transport companies.
Jeremy Long, chief executive of MTR’s European operations and stations lead for the Rail Delivery Group, agreed: “We absolutely suffer from lack of clarity over strategic ownership of most of our station assets.
“I applaud the way in that some transport authorities are emerging and taking more metaphorical, if not physical, ownership, in the same way… [that] I daresay Lendlease will take forward Euston; there are others taking ownership of developing above and around stations.
“At a more prosaic level, there is a frustrating overlap in the practical day-to-day responsibilities in facilities management. It is leading to cost inefficiencies and a lack of focus in terms of the longer-term direction of those assets.”
Euston, we have lift-off
Lendlease, which is the master development partner for the £4bn, 54-acre revamp at Euston station, NW1, aims to create a lifestyle campus by improving links between existing facilities in the area.
“In terms of the masterplan, we are very much at an early stage, but we are looking at how we break down this estate, how it can be delivered [in terms of] costs and resonate with communities feeling the impact of this large project coming their way,” said Rob Heasman, project director for Euston at Lendlease.
Currently in the first 12 months of a 25-year strategy, Heasman said the goal is to work with landowners to create a “super-connector” between rail transport and homes, offices, retail, commercial, leisure and education facilities.
“Our role at Euston is to start connecting knowledge locally, nationally and internationally,” he said, pointing to existing higher education, cultural, biomedical and research facilities surrounding the site.
One of the main issues, for Heasman, is extracting maximum value from the site, which measures 54 acres: “The challenge is actually the land footprint can deliver a hell of a lot more than [planned], which [could take] the pressure off other parts of London.
“This is a collective endeavour like we have never seen before to make it work and fulfil our role, [which is to] maximise the economic, social environmental benefits, and ultimately deliver maximum value back to the public, to reinvest in infrastructure.”
Negotiating with the “melting pot” of different transport bodies relating to the scheme, including parties involved with Crossrail 2, taxis, buses, Euston Road and air quality, also each presents challenges to accelerating the development programme.
By pulling all perspectives together in this manner, commercial return can be reconciled with wider economic gains.
Too many stations?
Additionally, Long suggested more radical measures to counteract diminished government funding and save costs.
“It’s very important we focus on where we need new stations. If I was being very controversial, I think we have too many,” Long said.
He cited estimates that outside of London, there are around 500 stations with fewer than 50 users per day.
Retail was also identified as a hurdle to drawing up long-term investment plans around developments and asset management, in some cases.
Long argued that an ongoing lack of transparency has made it trickier to determine how much revenue can be generated to reinvest in stations.
He said: “This is a retail estate for which we do not have profit and loss accounts for every one of our retail assets.
“It is very strange to me in this industry – we are all very aware of the cost of the industry in almost every other respect. I would never have imagined having 2,500 outlets without knowing what each one would cost of a 10-year investment plan [for each of those].
“It is unthinkable to have an estate like that and not to be saying, we should look at how we improve that estate as we go along, as we move up and down the high street.
“I think it is right, in order to have the debate, that we look in some areas at what could be difficult decisions, but where there will be a greater provision of good for a greater number of users.”
Improving interchanges
Adonis hailed St Pancras as one of the only redevelopments to have turned into a successful social centre, since it was built with placemaking as its ultimate goal.
He compared St Pancras to its neighbour King’s Cross, which was “almost devoid of retail”.
“There is a massive amount of wasted space there,” said Adonis. “It is all run as a transport undertaking with retail as an add-on, whereas St Pancras is building a place and integrating wider purposes.”
However, St Pancras was criticised in turn for its lengthy interchanges.
“It is brilliant as a social centre but terrible as a transport interchange,” said Adonis. “The time it takes to [change between trains], the number of steps – these are all crucial to the passenger experience.”
Another aspect found lacking within the UK’s rail stations was their connectivity with other forms of public transport, including cycling and bus facilities.
“We still do not have a single station I’m aware of in England which is as good as any Dutch station I have visited, when it comes to cycling interchanges,” Adonis said.
“We still haven’t worked out how to have cycle hire companies operate at stations, where most people want to hire bikes, because they haven’t worked out how to get bicycles to and from them.
“How many [regional] bus and coach interchanges are some way away from the railway stations? Whose job is it to sort these things out? This is a constant problem.”
Simon Warburton, transport strategy director at Transport for Greater Manchester, noted that cycle interchanges present a “classic institutional issue”.
“A lot of the time, station managers are very concerned to see additional disruption introduced into what is too often generally seen as a collection of liabilities, rather than a collection of assets at a railway station,” Warburton said. “We have to fundamentally change this approach.”
Station operators were also urged to keep up to speed with swift changes in wayfinding, with the uptake of autonomous vehicles also on the horizon.
There is no question that well-designed railway stations could play a significant role in regenerating their surrounding areas, but the industry has been found lacking when it comes to clarity in terms of accountability; long-term thinking around developments and asset management; and reconciling commercial gains with a wider economic return.
It appears these are core issues the industry cannot afford to lose track of, in the overarching goal to make best use of the possible development opportunities the sector has to offer.
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