A scheme costing nearly £11 million to make Petts Wood railway station fully accessible for the first time is about to get underway.
At the moment, the station splits the town in half, so the station has a public footbridge across the railway which also allows entry to the station from either side. However, both sides need stairs up to the footbridge, and naturally down to the two island platforms.
Aerial view of Petts Wood Station (c) Google
To enable step-free access, four lifts are being added to the station, with one serving the main entrance on the east side, one lift each on platforms 1/2 and 3/4 and a fourth lift serving the western entrance. As the footbridge and stairs lead to the ends of the platforms, the only place to put the lifts would drop them onto the ground between the tracks, so they will also have to extend the platforms to create space for the lifts.
CGI render of new lifts and extended platforms (c) Network Rail
During the works, the existing staircase on Station Square will be closed off and a temporary scaffold staircase will be installed to access the ticket hall. This will remain in place until the end of this year. Baring modest repainting work, the existing footbridge isn’t expected to get any work done to it while the new lifts are added.
The work, funded by the Department for Transport’s Access for All scheme and delivered by Network Rail and its partners BAM Nuttall, will start in late May and should finish in autumn next year (2023).
Off peak, all services at Petts Wood are operated by Southeastern, with peak hours services from Thameslink as well.
Schematic of new lifts (c) Network Rail
I remember in the late 60s they would open a gate and take us over track somehow to access the platform. My wheelchair using Grandma would then be loaded into the guard’s van.
Its absolutely right that stations are made accessable but the cost of doing it is becoming too high I thought Coulson Sth at 3.5m was excessive but that should make Petts Wood 7m ok say 8m with inflation as its four track. These should be standard designs prefabricated off site and just installed but won’t be as NR and its contractor will turn up with a construction village and be there for at least six months.
I appreciate people saying things are too expensive — when they explain where the costs are being wasted.
I notice the plans include a lift down to platforms 1 and 2. As a local user of Petts Wood Station, I have never seen a train call at those platforms and they appear to instead be used by the non-stopping trains to fly through. Are there ever any scheduled trains on this side of the station?