This is a picture of the train station at my local regional airport Durham Tees Valley Airport.
Today I found out exactly how many people used the airport train station in the past year – how many do you think this was? 1,000? 10,000? 40,000? 100,000?
The answer?
52!
Yes, thats right only 52 people used this station in the past year – thats an average of 1 person every week – and theres only 1 train per week that stops there.
This is the station that going to be part of the new ‘Tees Valley Metro’ system. On the plan they plan to have regular metro trains going to and from the airport station. Looking at the local train track network they could have decided to send all or some of the trains to my hometown (the current train track split into two with one going to my town and the other to the airport).
Under the current plans my nearest metro station would be a minimum of 15 minutes away in the car when the traffic is quiet.
I know where I would send the majority of the metro trains – to my hometown.
The figures in the first part of this blog post came from a report on BBC Look North, BBC ONE NE & Cumbria, 26th October 2009 6.30PM: http://www.bbc.co.uk/looknorthnecumbria