Trying to keep the politics out of this but here are a few points with regards to the airport railway station
- The wind-down of the station must have happened sometime before summer 1996 (the June 1996 timetable shows 1 train a day stopping at the airport). Station usage data published by Office of Rail and Road (ORR), goes back to 1997-98 and Teesside Airport station has not been used significantly at any point since then (low of 2 passengers in 2022-23, high of 338 in 2019-20). Whatever the situation, usage of the station was minimal even in the airport's peak passenger years of 2000-2008.
- The line does not appear to be well used anyway. There are 17 stations on the Tees Valley line which together serve 5.6m passenger trips a year (although not all these people are using the Tees Valley line itself). However, this is hugely skewed by stations with fast links to big cities (ie Darlington, Eaglescliffe, Thornaby & Middlesbrough) but places like Shildon, Newton Aycliffe, Heighington, North Road, Dinsdale, Allens West, South Bank, Redcar East, Longbeck & Marske together average 160 passengers a day each. Clearly the Mayor needs to get more people using the line but with only 2 trains an hour running between Darlington & Middlesbrough, there is not the convenience of a urban metro like we would see in places like Newcastle or Manchester and this must reduce demand.
- The Darlington station redevelopment will hugely increase capacity on the line as local trains will be able to run east of Darlington without having to cross the East Coast mainline. The mayor is saying that when the new platform at Darlington is finished, they can run trains every 5 minutes on the line. One might question the demand for 12 trains an hour but when this work is complete, the plan is clearly to run a more regular timetable. This means that stopping at Teesside Airport (and a future Teesside Park station) will not be such a major issue. Furthermore, all trains do not necessarily need to stop at all stations along the line.
- Presumably the future station usage is a combination of airport passengers and people who work on the airport site?
- The cost of refurbishing the station was only £6m in 2020. Link Presumably this was cancelled due to COVID?
- Finally, given that Network rail are responsible for Teesside Airport station, and that a lot of the issues appear to come from a lack of maintenance - why is the mayor coughing up £20m out of his budget to bring it back into usage? Shouldn't some of this come from Network Rail?