Letter: Station Plan Appears To Be About Building Properties

Published on: 23 Jan, 2015
Updated on: 23 Jan, 2015

From Bibhas Neogi

I attended The Guildford Society’s meeting on Wednesday (January 21) about Solum’s planning application for the development of the railway station site.

There isn’t much in the plans about improvements to the station – platform facilities (such as lifts and toilets), transport infrastructure and hub, nor safe pedestrian route(s) to the town centre with a new bridge over the River Wey.

Rather this is a scheme to construct properties only.

I did not have an opportunity to comment, but I would have liked to have asked the  Solum team who gave a short presentation as to how they propose to construct these very tall buildings so close to the railway tracks.

Network Rail’s own safety standards have many conditions on the location of tower cranes and their heights close to the tracks.

The station entrance is about 2m above the level of Walnut Tree Close (WTC) and yet the photo montages gave the impression that the forecourt is almost on a level area.

Only steps but no ramp was shown down from the station entrance to the crossing on WTC. The opening between the buildings on WTC is 10m north of this crossing, right opposite another of Solum’s tall buildings, obstructing any future high-level walkway from the station to the town centre.

Without highway infrastructure improvements, access to the station is extremely poor for such a big development and therefore this planning application should be rejected.

If one manages to enter the station, I’m afraid getting out of it may take up to an hour!

Surrey County Council and Guildford Borough Council need to speed up ideas on possible schemes for infrastructure improvements and get Solum on board to achieve a holistic solution to traffic in the gyratory, the town centre and a new east-west corridor over the tracks.

Otherwise, future schemes are going to be unduly costly warranting demolition of newly built housing and that would be such a waste!

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