It might enable a more orderly approach to the exits.

Playing in Bath Spa's favour is that there's a bit of space on the platforms.

After the bad experience at Paddington last year - very full, late, and very standing train arrival, people + me off it at the pointy end of the platform and I had to be first off as I was standing against the door - people getting off and mixing with passengers already on the platform, wanting to move down and board the train we'd arrived on, and then for good measure, another shorter IEP appeared as it departed from the other platform face. If anyone finds themselves in that situation, do what I didn't know to do: step off and make your way to the platform end and wait there for a bit to give things a chance to settle.

Mark

 

I wholeheartedly agree with the extra local capacity and especially the doubling of services it brings to Keynsham and Oldfield Park, and the big improvements at Dilton Marsh and between Warminster and Salisbury. Excellent.  What more short trains do, ironically, at Bath Spa is to boost that "hot spot" of people milling about at the top of the stops on the eastbound platform.

Radical question - if the stop boards were moved forward (as they are at Melksham) so that local trains stop away from the platform entrance, would that help spread people out?

 

Until not long before Covid, which was the big nail in that coffin.  Instead of that, the core Bristol<>Westbury section has had a decent capacity increase thanks to the additional trains introduced from summer ‘23.

 

How long ago was this "preposterous" idea put forward as being the gospel truth by GWR with regards to the Cardiff - Portsmouth route ? ....................so don't hold your breath for the "local trains".

 

NO WAY would I [:swear:] do so.  I would look to divert footfall from the current staircases and lifts at Bath Spa, and from the busier middle of the platform to the quieter ends.

 

So glad you didn't stray to the dark side and include a list of footfall-suppression techniques. Particularly evil would be to shape the passenger profile, minimising the numbers who would consider rail to travel with children, pushchairs, luggage, or those that for one reason or other, slow crowd movements down.

Mark

 
In the 1950s did BR really propose replacing Bath Spa with a new station on the site of Westmoreland Road goods station? Also, closing the Midland line between Green Park and the outskirts of the city along with the S&D from Midford, replaced with a spur from the GWR line to the Midland west of the city, and a junction close to the Bath Spa station site serving a new-build double  track line from there beneath Claverton Down to Monkton Combe, rejoining the S&D south of Midford?

Mark

 

Agreed there is a quick win there to cut the crowds at the top of the stairs as trains arrived from the east.  But a look at the passenger and public transport flows is needed to come up with the best combination of solutions all around - and that includes flows beyond station property, and flow of trains.  "6" would be good - and would do nothing for the overcrowding on the stairs to the London bound platform or at the top of those stairs.

 
6 is your best bet....

 

Ten preposterous ideas ...

1. Extend Bristol bound platform over bridge
2. Access ramps rise over river from south bank
3. Three track section to the west becomes main lines on outside with turnback track in centre.
4. Access lifts / escalator in Prezzo Restaurant
5. Re-instate bay plaform at London end / side
6. Make better use of level access already there to car park at London end on London arrival side
7. Make all local trains 5 carriages long and stop them at the end of the platfom where people come on new local entries
8. Could there be a travellator up from the booking hall to the front of the London platform (old bay space)?
9. Could trains run on time to reduce passenger dwell time on platform?
10. Escalator / lifts in bus station to overhead walkway to platform (and across Dorchester Street?)

 


The platforms at Bath Spa can get very busy indeed and the numbers of people coming in and out of the city "can only grow".

A question from my mailbox asks how the congestion we already see might be eased.  I have a whole load of way out ideas and thoughts and I am starting with an a satellite picture showing the position of the station and places around it, which I can follow up with - keeping my initial post clean as a post to raise the issue.