On the 26th October 2009 I posted this on my tumblr blog:
How many people used Durham Tees Valley Airport’s train station in the last year?
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
The plans for the metro have been given the go ahead and they are going to move the train station closer to the terminal building. They are also sending all the new metro trains to the Airport and none to the nearby market town – my hometown – Yarm.
The Airport is going through a massive decline with lots of routes being pulled by the likes of Ryanair – you can now only travel to Aberdeen, Southampton, Amsterdam and Palma (the latter only once a week during Summer). They are also charging passengers £8 to use the terminal. Theres even talk of reverting back to the old name of Teesside Airport and moving most of the RAF base near Northallerton to the airport as a way of keeping it open.