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Tuesday 11 Dec 2012

Major changes on the way at Reading station

Region & Route:

| Wales & Western: Western

| Wales & Western

Passengers will have a chance to see what changes are in store for 2013 at a public exhibition in Reading station on 11 and 12 December.

Staff from Network Rail, First Great Western and Reading Borough Council, along with contractors who are delivering the works, will be on hand from 7.30am until 6.30pm, to answer questions about the £895 million investment to upgrade the station and unblock the bottleneck on the railway.

The first phase of the station will open in early April 2013 – with the whole project remaining on course to be finished in 2015, one year ahead of schedule.

Network Rail programme director, Bill Henry, said: “It will be all change at the station in 2013. In late February, the bridge that links the multi-storey car park to the station will close for good and for four weeks people using the car park will have to add up to 15 minutes on to their journeys. The current structure sits in the way of two new platforms, so it has to be removed. We realise this will be an inconvenience to passengers and apologise for this - if there was another way of building the new platforms we would do.”

Those who normally use the car park link bridge will be able to follow a specially-marshalled walking route leading to the newly refurbished subway. This will take them on to what was Station Hill, adjacent to the Brunel Arcade and the main entrance to the station.

When the new northern entrance has opened, the subway will be the only means for non-rail passengers to get from one side of the railway to the other without going through the station. The subway has new lighting and a digital CCTV system.

There will be 10 days of disruption on the railway over Easter 2013 to allow essential work to be done to open a spectacular new passenger bridge, new platforms and entrances.

Mark Hopwood, Managing Director of First Great Western, said: “Network Rail has completed most of the work without interrupting customers’ journeys at all. Next Easter, between 28^th March and 8^th April, they will be preparing the ground for the most extensive stage of the improvements yet. As a result, we will have to make significant changes to train services that would normally run through the area and a number of other FGW stations.

“We‘ll be doing all we can to minimise inconvenience to our customers while the work is going on. This includes putting on special train services via diversionary routes to avoid the work, and making First Great Western tickets available on other train operators’ routes.”

From January, customers will be able to check their journeys for over Easter online at firstgreatwestern.co.uk, where they can also buy advance tickets.

Passengers and the public are also set to benefit from the work Reading Borough Council is doing to improve the areas outside the station’s two new entrances. Their work is well on course to be almost completed by the start of April 2013, to coincide with the opening of the first phase of the new station.

The station upgrades are just one part of the Reading improvement scheme, which also includes the construction of a new train care depot, a viaduct to provide more room for trains, new signalling to improve reliability and the introduction of over-head electrical lines to allow new state-of-the-art electric trains to run. Network Rail is due to start work on the construction of the viaduct in January 2013.