Railway Stations: Car Parking Charges

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul Maynard)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) on securing this debate, on a subject close to his heart. As he pointed out, he wrote to me only last month to set out his concerns and those of the Rugby Rail Users Group. As he rightly points out, I park at Virgin Preston on the west coast, where price rises—admittedly, of only 20%—came in last July, so I am not personally insensitive to the points that he makes.

I am sure my hon. Friend will be aware that station car parking is not a simple matter, particularly in view of the fact that we have more than 2,500 stations of all sizes across the country that link the railway with the communities and people they serve. Clearly, they provide the first and last impression of the railway and often of the communities themselves, so every station needs to provide passengers with a safe, accessible and comfortable experience. A good station should also serve the wider community with social, retail and leisure facilities. Stations can and should go beyond their traditional role as portals to the rail network, and should be fully integrated, as my hon. Friend mentioned, into local transport networks to make multimodal travel far simpler. They should be catalysts for local development and play an important role in supporting local economic growth.

I urge all local enterprise partnerships and councils to think about how they, too, can support the provision of better car parking across the rail network. In that context, we can all recognise just how crucial car parks are, not least in enabling passengers to access the rail network, by parking their cars close to the station in a safe, convenient car park. That is why it is important that train operators have the flexibility to set commercially viable car park fees.

If fees are too low, the operator will provide lower returns to the Government, thereby increasing the taxpayer contribution to the railways. If fees are too high, however, the car park will be underused, and that, too, will lead to lower premium payments to the Government. A commercially flexible rate allows maximum revenue to be derived from car parking income, which reduces the requirement for taxpayer support for the franchise. It is important to stress that car park charges are not just a tool for revenue generation, but provide an important foundation for investment in not just trains but stations.

Let me try to specifically address the issues in Rugby. As my hon. Friend recollects from our reply to him, the Government do not own the car parks; train companies and others—local councils, for example—do, and that varies across the country. I am sure Virgin will have noted his criticisms of the communication strategy it adopted and of whether it has adequate capacity at Rugby and, indeed, at Coventry and other stations across its network.

Virgin West Coast has received a number of complaints from passengers that the station car park was always full. On investigation, it became apparent that the charges were much lower than in the surrounding areas and that the station car park was being used by non-rail users. I should just stress that my comments in my reply were specifically about Rugby, not about Preston, and that is what we were told by Virgin.

In a bid to be more helpful than that reply might have indicated, let me say that my hon. Friend might be interested to know that the Rail Delivery Group, which represents the train operating companies, is looking at how to better measure the passenger experience, because the group, along with the Government, recognises that it does not just start when a passenger boards a train. The group is looking at the entire range of ways that the passenger interacts with the railway network. That will include not just buying a ticket before they get to the station, but such things as car parking, ease of access, the likelihood of finding a space and ease of payment.

All that work will inform Transport Focus as it looks into how to better design the national rail passenger survey. That survey, in turn, has a specific impact on franchise design and the way in which we hold train operating companies to account. If a franchise fails to meet satisfaction levels in the national rail passenger survey and underperforms, it will suffer financial penalties. As we constantly refine the survey, issues such as car parking will form part of that and may well become something on which we choose to judge train operating companies.

As more spaces become available for those who wish to catch a train, I hope we can start to bring fees into line with those in other car parks in all local economic areas. We want to encourage investment in car parking and, moreover, to drive better value for money across all station facilities. That can partly be done through franchise competitions, and that will include the forthcoming west coast franchise competition, where we will challenge bidders to innovate in how they seek to provide car parking. We will look at how they want to improve facilities at stations for all users.

We are already doing a lot to improve car parking as part of the wider passenger experience. Train operating companies will need to take a much longer-term view of managing station assets than they do at the moment—over 40 years, rather than just the existing franchise length. That will include car parks, and it will mean incremental improvements continually to the quality and standard of the facilities on offer. Investment patterns will now start to mirror not just a train operator’s franchise term, but the lifespan of the bit of infrastructure that the train operating company will be investing in. That will not mean just a lack of potholes; it might mean more innovative ways to deliver car parking that meet the passengers’ needs.

We are also conducting a review of security and safety in our car parks and stations, because a well-lit, well-maintained car park, covered by CCTV, provides passengers with reassurance not only that they are safe at a station but that the price of their parking fee and travel ticket has been reinvested back into the railway.

Innovation is also crucial. That is why I am looking to train operating companies to make it easier for the passenger to pre-book a parking space, so that they have certainty when they arrive at the station that they will be able to park without difficulty; nor will they need to delay their journey or risk missing their train by having to use complicated coin-operated payment machines that may or may not be out of order. We will also seek to make far better use of station travel plans, which my hon. Friend mentioned, so that passengers understand the options that are available to them in how they reach the station that best meets their needs and is the most sustainable method of transport.

[Mark Pawsey]

I welcome the Minister’s remarks, but will he address the broader integrated view? There is a grave danger that if car parking charges are disproportionate, that will encourage more car use and encourage people to seek to park for free around the station, causing problems for residents.

[Paul Maynard]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The impact will differ from station to station across the network. The stations that I am familiar with all have their own quirks and differences in terms of how local people utilise them, approach them, park, drop passengers off, and so on. This can have a substantial impact on the local road network. It is very important that train operators work together with local highway authorities to plan the local road network immediately around the station to make sure that no passenger is inconvenienced. I can think of many cases at peak hours where, all too often, we have traffic jams. I hope that train operating companies will hear my plea for them to work far more closely with the local highway authority to plan traffic flow and ensure that, wherever problems can be minimised, we seek to do so.

As I keep saying, we need to continue to invest in our station facilities.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

rose—

[Paul Maynard]

I will happily give way. I was about to talk about Coventry.

[Mr Cunningham]

The Minister said that he hoped that the train operators would take note of what he says. May I suggest, in the nicest possible way, that it would not be a bad idea to take our concerns to a meeting with the train operators’ representatives?

[Paul Maynard]

I should praise the hon. Gentleman for almost being psychic in predicting what I was about to say. I am more than happy to have that conversation next time I meet Virgin West Coast, which I try to do as frequently as I can. Only today, I heard about some of the interesting plans in Coventry for a new boulevard into the town centre and potential new car parking facilities that, by expanding capacity, might allow costs to come down. Coventry is having an interesting time. I gather that in Rugby there is also substantial investment in cycle-rail facilities, which help to ensure that people have more options in how they get to the station, including bicycle hire. That is a good step forward.

[Mr Cunningham]

The Minister will know that in Coventry we have the NUCKLE project, which we are hoping to get started very soon. That has taken about 10 years to get off the ground.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Maynard]

I am always happy to hear news of Coventry’s progress. My visits to Coventry are probably in my diary as we speak, without my even knowing about it. I look forward to going there.

I recognise that capacity, as much as anything else, is often key in car parks around stations. It is important to design them to allow extra decks to be placed on top with greater flexibility, because demand is going to keep on growing as more and more people use our railways. We also need to redesign stations themselves better to reflect passenger flows through them. Many of these stations are Victorian and often have not been updated since that time. We will always need to invest in our railways and to change and adapt to face that increasing demand.

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby recognises that such extensive change cannot happen overnight, but I hope that he and his constituents will see the change in the station environment at Rugby—as at Coventry and elsewhere—that long-term investment can bring. I hope that I have laid out some aspects of how we are seeking to re-evaluate the entire spectrum of the passenger experience, so that we capture every interaction between passenger and rail network to make sure that, where there is dissatisfaction, we as a Government not only become aware of it but start to use it as a tool to drive up improvements on behalf of the passenger through the franchising mechanism. I will be more than happy to report back to him once I have spoken again to Virgin West Coast.

Question put and agreed to.