PLANS for the long-awaited Chapelford, or Warrington West, railway station will go before the borough council’s development management committee next Thursday – some 20 years after proposals were first put forward.
The two-platform station was first mooted in the mid-1990s and was approved as part of outline permission for Chapelford urban village in May 2002.
It is planned for land west of Belvedere Drive and Detroit Close, south of Oklahoma Boulevard and Boston Boulevard, and north of Sycamore Lane and will have3 a station building, new footbridge, two lift towers and a car park for 261 vehicles.
The site will be well lit and covered by CCTV cameras.
Planners say the facility has been designed to cope with 607,700 passengers by 2020 and 737,100 passengers by 2040.
It will have charging points for electric car users, a dedicated bus-only section of road immediately outside the station and a taxi rank and drop-off facilities, as well as a covered compound for 42 pedal cycles.
Planners believe the station will reduce congestion on local roads by taking both local and strategic trips off the highway network.
Nearby residents have expressed concern about noise, but planners believe this will be redeuced as a result of screening by the proposed new building and the platforms which have the potential to significantly reduce the noise of train wheels on the rails. The nearest house will be 38 metres from the platform and the nearest flats – to the west of the site – will be 30 metres away. The public address system will have sensing equipment to automatically reduce the volume to the minimum setting when background noise levels are low.
There are currently no plans to close the nearby, existing Sankey station.
An artist's impression of the new station
Twenty years on…the station now arriving at Chapelford
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