Four new platforms have opened at Reading station following a busy Easter period on the rennovation project.
Two-thousand engineers completed the equivalent of 20 full weekends of work on site between Thursday (March 28) and the early hours of Tuesday (April 2) morning.
A 110-metre long passenger bridge and new escalators were also completed over the weekend.
Graham Denny, Network Rail senior programme manager, station works, said: “It’s gone absolutely brilliantly.
“We opened some of the improvements over the weekend and this morning we opened the new platforms, which were ready to receive the first train when it came in at 04.40.”
The number of passengers moving through Reading station is expected to double to 30 million by 2030.
The programme as a whole will upgrade the station and unblock the bottleneck on the railway serving it.
All work is scheduled to be completed by 2015, a year ahead of schedule.
The South East gets so much money. The South West gets nothing at all.
However, Reading is a key interchange point for people travelling to / from the South West, so these people will see the benefit. Also, it is fair that the areas which have the highest population see a proportionate share of the investment, as high populations are more likely to see big bottlenecks which require resolving.
The population difference doesn’t explain it since the per person figures speak for themselves
TRANSPORT SPENDING PER HEAD
London – £2,731
South-east of England – £792
East Midlands – £311
West Midlands – £269
Yorkshire and Humberside – £201
North-west of England – £134
Eastern England – £43
South-west of England – £19
North-east of England – £5
While I won’t dispute your figures, it would be nice if there was a reference to these. Numbers are meaningless unless an explanation of how they were obtained is available.
I am reasonably willing to bet that they don’t take into account revenue received from ticket sales etc from each geographical area, so they don’t tell the whole story.
Google “TRANSPORT SPENDING PER HEAD” and the BBC page comes up. It’s pretty indicative rather than anything else. I was surprised it was a high as £19, I can’t remember anything being built in my lifetime. I guess it was all spent around Bristol, I don’t really count that as the South West.
I
doubt if there were 2,000 engineers! Skilled workers & technicians yes
I
doubt if there were 2,000 engineers! Skilled workers & technicians yes