Countryside Commission Chairman Opens and Praises Norden Park & Ride

NEWS RELEASE From: Andrew P.M. Wright. Swanage Railway Press Officer: May 30th 1998

ONE of the Government’s top rural affairs chiefs has praised the £530,000 extension to the unique and successful Park & Ride scheme next to the Swanage Railway’s Norden Station as being an important benefit to the environment and giving the local economy a valuable boost.

Countryside Commission chairman Richard Simmonds opened the second phase of Purbeck District Council’s trail-blazing Park & Ride car and coach park at Norden - linking into the relaid steam-operated six mile Purbeck Line to Corfe Castle, Harman’s Cross and Swanage - on May 22.

"Rural traffic management is very much on the Commission’s agenda at the moment. This project demonstrates a novel approach to the problem which has involved active partnership between the public, private and voluntary sectors," said Mr Simmonds.

"The success of the venture also shows that working together to address Purbeck’s problems in a strategic way can reap benefits for the environment and the local economy."

"I’m delighted to be asked to open this facility at Norden. The Commission has been happy to play a part in this project and it looks forward to many more successes in taking steps to keep Purbeck as a very special, and thriving, place," added Mr Simmonds who is pictured here with Gloria Marsh Mayor of Swanage, and Bill Trite and Mark Woolley of the Swanage Railway..

The integrated public transport scheme at Norden is the UK’s only permanent all-year-round steam operated park and Ride scheme. The 120 space car park has been doubled to 240 spaces and made permanent. It now includes facilities for coaches and the service bus from Bournemouth, Poole and Wareham. It’s also linked into the local footpath and cycleway networks.

In the autumn, the Norden Park & Ride car park - for the road/rail interchange with the Swanage Railway used by 20,000 cars and 60,000 people a year - will have its own visitors’ centre with toilets and warden’s office built out of the traditional Dorset cob material. There will also be a children’s play area.

Built on redundant clay mine land, the first trial phase of the Norden car park was opened in August, 1995. More than 132000 people and 44,000 cars have used it - vehicles that would otherwise have used the winding A351 road to Corfe Castle and Swanage: causing congestion, and a strain on limited parking in an area protected as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty status.

The Swanage Railway first advocated the fledgling ‘park and Ride ’ principle to help alleviate traffic congestion in Purbeck - and give the public a practical, economic and convenient alternative to the motor car - in the late 1970s: a principle the district council has been pursuing since the mid-1980s.

The Norden Park & Ride scheme has been a joint project between the Swanage Railway and Purbeck District Council as well as the Government’s Rural Development Commission, Countryside Commission and English Partnerships bodies.

The derelict former clay slag heap land has been generously supplied by quarrying giant English China Clays with oil giant BP Exploration allowing a short portion of its Wytch Farm oil field access road off the main A351 Wareham to Corfe Castle road to be used by traffic entering the Norden Park & Ride car park.

"Norden Park & Ride is an example of partnerships and it has taken pressure off the roads. It’s also environmentally friendly - the more people we can move, the fewer there on the roads.The idea is sound, practical and convenient," said Swanage Railway chairman Bill Trite..

This summer, Swanage Railway volunteers will be running 19 trains a day in each direction between Swanage and Norden - more trains than are run by any other independent railway in the county.

Tourism is vital to Purbeck - almost three million people visit each year, boosting the local economy by more than £90 million per annum and supporting 3,500 jobs; 26 per cent of the total.