Station Quarter: Access All Areas

While Peterborough’s railway station helped put the city on the map, its location and layout have often made for confusing and uninspiring first impressions. Finally, plans for a new Station Quarter – a brighter, lighter, more welcoming ‘first step’ into Peterborough – are going ahead, promising a new western entrance and refreshed eastern station buildings and access...

Firstly, we have to tackle something of an infrastructure- shaped elephant in the room: Peterborough has long been promised a fundamental shake-up of the area around the railway station – a key space that welcomes visitors and provides vital first impressions. While places such as Cathedral Square are now looking enviably sharp, there are strong feelings the momentum needs to keep going and perhaps always hasn’t.

What’s different this time is the government funding specifically to kick-start the project – an initiative driven by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority and Peterborough City Council working together in partnership. The city has been allocated around £47.8m to develop the complete business case and is not competing with anyone else for the full construction costs. If the plans pass the full business case stage, the necessary funding will be secured.

There are three headline issues that the project will aim to fix: everyone knows that coming out of the station, it looks confusing, with convoluted routes. If you look at it on Google maps and jump into Street View, you can see that once you’ve come out of the station it’s difficult to figure out where to go, unclear and not very welcoming. The area is mostly covered by car parks, and if you’ve ever walked this route you’ll know it’s hard to know when and where to turn – you have to go through narrow pathways, there’s an underpass that definitely doesn’t feel like the safest and most welcoming space. “Our number one goal is to make this all much more inviting and intuitive, a route that people actually want to take. One of the other major problems here are the constant changes in ground level, that is, it’s not easily accessible for disabled users or cyclists, it’s all uphill and downhill sections with sharp turns,” a spokesperson for the team overseeing the project explains.

There’s something very refreshing about hearing someone so openly recognising the issues we’re all aware of, but have been rubbing along with because “that’s how it is”. The redesign of the Station Quarter – and more importantly the passion and determination to make it happen, and happen properly – feels like part of a sea-change we’re seeing elsewhere in the city: the new university and the evolution of other higher education institutions; renewed green entrepreneurism; and a reinvigorated appetite to become a tourist destination to name just a few are all part of the turning point we’ve been hoping for now for several decades.

Back to the Station Quarter… What’s been described will transform many people’s first impression of Peterborough into a place that not only feels inviting but also, crucially, intuitive – an immediate visual invitation to explore, get involved and spend time.

Coming out of the station, the team will reconfigure the area with what are called desire lines. (A ‘desire line’ essentially does what it says on the tin – you see somewhere you want to go, and if the designated pathway doesn’t use the quickest, most effective route, you and eventually most of the other users of the space will create a short- cut. Planners have since discovered it’s far easier and more aesthetically pleasing to simply start with these ‘desire lines’ in the first place…) A diagonal desire line will be installed, which is perfect for active travel. It will encourage better accessibility for bikes and more accessible access in general. The underpass will be kept, but will be gradually brought up to surface level and a crossing put in place, which will make the journey much more intuitive and inviting. People will want to come here and then go into the city centre.

So, how will this translate into practice? In other words, what will change on the ground? For now, in this first phase, a lot is about unlocking the ambition and potential. At the moment there are, as mentioned, car parks everywhere, both surface level asphalt and multi-storeys; the aim is to consolidate these and move them to the west side of the bridge, and put a new entrance on the western side. Currently, research suggests that 30% of rail users come from the western side, so they’re coming along Thorpe Road/Crescent Bridge to the eastern entrance/exit, causing traffic. With a new entrance, passengers can enter the station via a far more direct route – and a ‘double-sided’ station will provide better ‘resilience’ for rail users. The Network Rail office will be consolidated further up, which will also free up a lot of space.

But what else will be on offer from a project whose name, ‘Station Quarter’, already evokes a pretty ambitious and sophisticated picture, geographically and culturally? We’ve already seen examples of how a vibrant, attractive station area can transform a place almost beyond recognition, with examples in Cambridge, Kings Cross St Pancras and at Bristol Temple Meads.

The answer is deceptively simple, at its core. Currently, our station is a place you want to get out of as quickly as possible – but the project aims to make it a place where people actually want to spend time! Maybe they’re going to the city centre, but this will also offer something to do at this gateway in and out of town. There’s green space, some office blocks, potential residential areas, a mixed-use master plan for wide development. In the first phase there’s ambition for a Station Square, and that design is still evolving, but the idea is to have a space where one can breathe and relax, rather than having car parks everywhere. It will be a civic space, and if the car parking is consolidated into a multi-storey, it will free up the surrounding land. Then, alternative uses for it can be explored – and this could include retail, residential, commercial and green space.

The Station Quarter feeling like – and actually acting as – a civic space with the attendant civic buy-in this suggests is an important point. How and when will Peterborians get input into how
they want this reclaimed area to work for them? Well, you have until Friday 27 September to have your say in the public engagement on the plans. You can do this by visiting www.peterborough.gov.uk/psq-consultation to fill out the survey.

The whole purpose is to make this more of a new district for the city, and that’s where the public engagement will help to deliver over this first phase, getting residents’ view on the look and feel of that space, Station Square, the route into the station and Queensgate roundabout. There has already been extensive input from Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB), for example, and in design meetings the views of the cycle forum are being discussed and considered. With that in mind, the team is aiming for further consultation, opening up to include focus sessions with other representative groups but also the wider public. This is a standalone project in its own right, and it’s going to bring huge benefits – so it’s only right to see what people want from it. It all fits nicely into the bigger picture, too, that’s seen investment into a new university, for example. It’s about making the most of this part of the city’s true potential with great public spaces, places to live and work, and finally giving people an attractive, accessible journey between the city centre and the station.

• Early 2025: Full business case planned for submission to Department of Transport for the £48M funding.
• Summer/Autumn 2025: Construction of Phase One anticipated to start.
• 2027 Onwards: Future Phases to be designed and developed.

The Station Quarter – It’s a Numbers Game

• Over 2022 and 2023, 4,519 million rail passengers travelled via Peterborough Station.
• Over the same period, 0.773 million passengers used it to change trains.
• Peterborough Station car parks currently take up over four hectares of land.
• The outline business case estimates that for every £1 of money spent from the Ministry of Housing, Community and Local Government (formerly part of the Levelling Up Fund) there will be £2 of economic benefit (a benefit cost ratio of 2).
• The total cost of the Station Quarter project is predicted to be £64.35 million – made up of £47.85M from the Levelling Up Fund, £1.5M from the Towns Fund, and £15M from Network Rail.

STATION QUARTER VOICES:
DEPUTY MAYOR OF CAMBRIDGESHIRE AND PETERBOROUGH CLLR ANNA SMITH

“Peterborough Station Quarter will be a transformational project to see a new western entrance and refreshed eastern station buildings and access. The scheme matches the huge ambition in Peterborough and the region to invest for a better future and improve connectivity.

“The Combined Authority and Peterborough City Council are working with the Government and other partners to bring the investment the city needs. Improvements to Peterborough Station and the surrounding area have been long-awaited; the development will benefit not just passengers, but create opportunities for the whole city, bringing a new quarter which everyone can enjoy.

“Peterborough Station Quarter ticks so many of the boxes of what the Combined Authority
is here to do, in cooperation with our partners. We want to make public transport better and easier to use. We want to grow the economy sustainably, and the stunning new entrance to the city that this project will create will bring more people to its shops and attractions, while also making Peterborough more attractive to business. We also hope that this project will be a stepping stone to unlocking further phases in the regeneration of this area, creating jobs, providing housing close to shops and transport, and bringing fantastic new community and public spaces that will make Peterborough an even better place to live, visit and explore.

“Collaboration is at the heart of the Combined Authority under Mayor Dr Nik Johnson, and it’s great to be working with the City Council, as well as Network Rail, and LNER who operate the station, to help make this once-in-a-generation opportunity a reality.”

STATION QUARTER VOICES:
COUNCILLOR NICK THULBOURN, PETERBOROUGH CITY COUNCIL CABINET POST HOLDER FOR GROWTH AND REGENERATION

Nick, how do you think people will make the most out of the new Station Quarter, day to day?
It’s an opportunity for people. I am coming at the whole thing from a very people-centred perspective, and I have a phrase, ‘Bob from Bretton’, he’s my kind of ‘everyman’ who represents Peterborough – how does it affect him? How can this opportunity be driven for him? The initial phase is a seed phase to improve things, but then it’s up to us to create opportunity going forward with what follows. Obviously, the way it looks and the way people feel when they actually arrive is crucial, but more importantly it will make residents feel like things are moving forward, and that they are actually getting something.

What excites you most about the project?
It’s going to provide opportunities for residents, revitalising that particular part of the city, but it will also create a new gateway, and convey to visitors what a great city we have.

It feels as though it’s tying nicely into the green tech boom that Peterborough is enjoying, and also leaning into our engineering and technology heritage.
We’re an engineering town, and absolutely our prosperity going forward can and should revolve around engineering. One of the things I observed while working all over the world was that when these kinds of projects were done elsewhere, there were plenty of opportunities associated with them. The situation here is no different. I’ll be asking, how do we integrate various companies into the station area, that kind of thing? It’s about changing the way we perceive things.

Some of the images presented are artistic interpretations and are intended to enhance the visual appeal of this editorial feature. They do not represent the actual design or appearance of the Station Quarter redevelopment.