Rugby Parkway

Project Overview

We’re supporting Warwickshire County Council (WCC) in promoting the construction of the new station, which will serve a number of key sites including the Rugby Sustainable Urban Extension (SUE) which will introduce a new population of approximately 14,600 people to the area, as well as the Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT) which is predicted to grow the number of jobs provided from the current 8,000 to over 17,000.

In turn the new station will contribute to the sustainability and environment of Rugby itself, alleviating congestion on the strategic road network and local highways, whilst freeing capacity for more local people to use the existing Rugby station. Rugby Parkway will provide new passenger access to frequent, fast, direct services to London, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Coventry and Birmingham. The new station will significantly improve direct business to business connectivity to major UK economic centers.

Located at the crossroads of the UK strategic highway network, easily accessible from the M1, M6, M45, A5 and A14, Rugby Parkway will support significant transfer of journeys from road to rail. This project is consistent with WCC’s 2011-26 Local Transport Plan, the Rugby Core Strategy and the emerging CWLEP strategy for enhanced rail services to support Rugby’s 35% growth to 2026.

The project objectives are:

• Support the sustainable delivery of the Local Development Framework for Warwickshire as well as key developments and regeneration goals within the Warwickshire sub-region.
• Improve accessibility to local employment sites.
• Provide access to a public transport hub for residents and business of new Sustainable Urban Extension.
• Improve public transport accessibility to and between the key urban centres.
• Improve public transport accessibility and choice for journeys to London.
• Increase public transport usage in Warwickshire for commuting and leisure travel.
• Ease congestion at the capacity constrained Rugby and Long Buckby stations.

The new station will comprise two platforms including a footbridge, ramps and passenger lifts, as well as creation of a new highway access, bus stop and a car park with capacity to meet the strategic aims of a parkway-type station.  It is intended that this will be a third party funded development, financed through private investment based on a revenue share model, agreed with the Department For Transport.

What we did

As Warwickshire County Council’s Delivery Partner and Framework Rail Advisors for the Rugby Parkway project, we have been working with our client for the last 3+ years to develop the proposals for the new station to improve access to the rail network for thousands of new and existing residents across the area. This has involved all parts of the SLC Group including Rail, Property and Investments.

Our work has focused on delivering a number of key workstreams which have been developed based on a number of critical project assurance measures required to provide a potential Investor Developer partner with an overview of the work undertaken to date to develop the proposals to a sufficient level of maturity in order to demonstrate the feasibility and economic viability of the project.

During this phase of the project, we have undertaken the following work:

• Establishment of the Project Governance and implementation of robust processes to manage the successful delivery of the project.
• Assisted WCC in the procurement of specialist suppliers required to deliver key aspects of the project.
• Design Management and Assurance of the Option Selection and Preferred Option Scoping Reports.
• Demand and Revenue Forecasting
• Extensive Timetable Modelling
• Land Assembly and Acquisition
• Preparation of an Outline Planning Application
• Stakeholder Communications and Public Engagement
• Strategic Industry Engagement
• Development of a Funding and Financing Strategy
• Business Case Development

Next steps

The next stage of the project will be defined once an Investor/Developer Partner has been secured but will involve taking the project through PACE (Project Acceleration in a Controlled Environment) Stages 2 – 4 of development and delivery.