On Sun, 28 Aug 2005, Martin Underwood wrote:

It's a great shame that there isn't a railway station adjoining the
Redbridge P&R to ferry people into Oxford station to cover the critical
couple of miles through the outskirts - and similarly one at Kidlington
would be good to take people from the north.

That's a really good idea! I'd never thought of that. Yes, Redbridge, Pear
Tree and Water Eaton P&Rs are right next to railway lines: Redbridge is
about two miles south of Oxford station (and about three miles north of
Radley) on the main line, Pear Tree is about 3 miles north of the station
(and about the same distance south of Islip) on the Bicester Town branch,
and Water Eaton is about 3.5 miles out on the same branch.

It'd be easy as falling off a punt to stick some cheap little platforms
there; you'd presumably only want one station at the northern end, which
couldn't be perfectly convenient for both P&Rs, but it's not too bad -
they're only a few hundred metres apart. You could then make them part of
the Bicester Town shuttle.

The cost is the problem, of course - not only would the stations be
expensive (although i think they could be built on the cheap, as minor
extensions to the P&Rs), but to run a service that's a meaningful
alternative to the buses would mean quite a lot of trains: the Bicester -
Redbridge - Bicester round trip is going to be at least an hour, so to
provide a turn-up-and-go (park-and-go?) service (6 tph) would take at
least six trains, which is rather a lot for such a small operation.
Perhaps if they were those little railbus jobs it would be practical.

Anyway, Mr Adam Evans has already had thoughts along these lines, albeit
rather grander:

http://www.geocities.com/lostlines/oxfordmetro

He's missed Redbridge, though.

tom

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