Unfinished work: The £22m bridge at East Croydon. Notice how it hangs in the air on the Addiscombe side, like a long pregnant pause. Even now, the gestation period is not over
Our transport correspondent, JEREMY CLACKSON, on the latest bizarre twist in a £22m railway saga of incompetence and mismanagement
The deadline for resident comments is fast approaching on a planning application for the notorious Bridge to Nowhere – with proposals that would still fail to complete the £22million piece of railway infrastructure at East Croydon Station in the manner that was intended, or to best serve the public. Or that could in any way be described as commonsense.
Final work on the bridge, after a very long pause waiting for a commercial development of flats to be finished, was promised to be completed in 2024. By the early months of this year, everything appeared to be in place.
But still the bridge has remained off-limits to public and passengers.
Now, Network Rail wants to press ahead with opening the bridge at the eastern, Addiscombe side of the tracks – but just without providing access to the station’s platforms for ticketed passengers.
Network Rail last month submitted a planning application to Croydon Council, but has done little, if anything, to publicise their hare-brained scheme to the thousands of passengers who use the station every day, or to the residents in Addiscombe who have been waiting for more than a decade to be able to access the station and stroll across the bridge to the town centre from Cherry Orchard Road.
They appear to achieved their objective. By the weekend, the planning application had attracted fewer than half-a-dozen public comments – though all of those object to Network Rail’s half-arsed solution to this development conundrum.
One-way street: East Croydon’s entrance on Dingwall Road, where there are staff and ticket barriers, on a bridge that fails to connect to the other side of the tracks
When originally proposed in 2012, someone in a planning or legal department not a million miles from Croydon Town Hall failed to get a binding agreement from developers Menta that, as well as granting permission for the access to the pedestrian bridge to straddle their development, that they would also facilitate this important public amenity.
And exploiting that loophole, Menta bided their time over their money-spinning private development, keeping the public bodies who paid for the bridge – Network Rail, Transport for London and Croydon Council – all waiting for such a long time that now none of them have the readies available to pay to finish the job as intended.
Residents living on the cut-off, Addiscombe side of the Bridge to Nowhere say, “The current plan is confusing.”
Network Rail’s no barrier proposal (they say that they can’t afford to staff them), means that commuters using the bridge would have to cross to the main entrance, tap in and then return. Not that any of this is made clear in the planning application.
Residents reckon that there is a cost-neutral solution, of just relocating a redundant ticket barrier from elsewhere on East Croydon Station. “This would create a fully functional entrance for the Addiscombe side, benefiting local residents and businesses without increasing costs for Network Rail.”
They call it a “no brainer”. Which has got to be better than no barrier.
“Local Addiscombe businesses, including historic pubs, restaurants, greengrocers, charity shops, independent cafés and barbers, are all struggling. A meaningful ticketed entrance would help revitalise this area.”
As recently as July, senior representatives of Network Rail attended the annual meeting of the East Croydon Community Organisation and apologised for their poor communication with residents. Then, they acknowledged that they must do better.
“Their commitment to the provision of that gate line had appeared to be rock solid in their 2010 and 2012 planning applications,” Fitzpatrick said. “The south side of the bridge would be an unobstructed pedestrian walkway. The gate line would be erected on the north side and would be used by residents accessing the platforms.” Seems straightforward enough.
Fitzpatrick says that Network Rail has not been back in communication with residents since that ECCO meeting in July. He wrote to Network Rail’s attendees, the senior project manager and the senior public affairs manager, last month, but has had no reply.
On October 21, Network Rail submitted its application to abandon their commitment to provide the gate line.
They state: “There will not be a paid access on the east side and pedestrians will be required to walk along the south side of the bridge and enter the north side to platforms via the gate line.” This latter gate line has to be “accessed via the stairs on the western side”.
Fitzpatrick says, “So the Bridge to Nowhere has become the Bridge of Futility.
“Most of these residents will just continue to walk round the narrow pavement at the top of George Street and jostle to get access through the existing crowded station entrances.”
Where is Croydon’s dynamo Mayor in all of this?
It took Jason Perry three weeks to get round to replying to Fitzpatrick’s letter to him.
Bridge to Nowhere: 10 months after the Cherry Orchard Road link was finally completed, the bridge can still not be accessed by passengers or pedestrians
In the Mayor’s reply, Perry says how he and the council are “focused” to create “a pedestrian connection from Menta’s East Croydon development at Cherry Orchard Road to Caithness Walk on the station’s west side and the town centre beyond”. Which sort of overlooks the bleedin’ obvious: access for fare-paying rail passengers from Cherry Orchard Road to East Croydon Station.
But then, 12 years ago, when someone at Croydon Council dropped a £22million clanger over enabling the Bridge to Nowhere to be completed as a Bridge to Somewhere, the Croydon Council cabinet member responsible was… Jason Perry.
And Mayor Perry in 2024 does not appear too keen to try to force Network Rail to finally finish the job that Croydon Council cackhandedness has delayed for so long.
In his letter, dated November 15, Perry writes, “The council have [sic] requested that Network Rail provide [sic] provisional costs for the installation of a ticket barrier at the new Cherry Orchard Road entrance to allow direct station/platform access.
“A new ticket barrier would create ongoing staffing costs, and currently, Network Rail have [sic] confirmed they do not consider that there is a business case to support such a ticket barrier here. We believe there is a business case and will continue to push Network Rail on this issue.”
So “push”. Just not very hard?
Fitzpatrick is calling on all Addiscombe residents, and East Croydon station-users, to take part in the planning process by posting their comments. “If you are disgusted by how Network Rail has let down its East Croydon passengers, you can use get the council planning portal and state that you want Network Rail to carry through its commitment to provide the eastern gate line.”
Unelected, faceless council bureaucrats may decide Network Rail’s application as early as December 14.
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