Steer was commissioned by Network Rail to prepare the 'Parking & Mobility at Stations' design manual, which is part of the 200 SERIES – Design.
The provision of station parking and mobility facilities is linked to broader patterns of mobility depending on how people and goods move around. Those patterns are being transformed with the rise of emerging services and technologies and changes to user behaviours and needs. At the same time, parking & mobility facility providers have an opportunity to significantly improve the customer experience and gain an understanding of how facilities are being used, potentially enabling smarter use of space.
The manual was prepared by Steer based on industry best practice, benchmarking, available published research, standards and specifications. Collecting evidence based on key mobility trends and emerging technologies and services, including active travel, shared mobility, cycling, micromobility, mobility hubs, Mobility as a Service (MaaS), smart parking systems, kerbside management, EV charging, CAVs and Automated autonomous valet parking (AVP), last-mile freight and advanced aerial mobility (AAM). These were then applied to six representative station models with different urban and mobility characteristics to illustrate how parking & mobility facilities could transform over the next decade.
Ongoing stakeholder engagement with Network Rail and key subject matter experts informed the development of the manual’s content development, which generated buy-in for the document’s subsequent use.
While the manual is expected to inform current projects, it also looks to the future, assessing current innovations and trends and their impact on how people will access railway stations and the changes to parking facility design required to accommodate them.
The guidance within aligns with broader UK government mobility policies and strategies, including the Future of Mobility report, which assessed how the UK transport system could change up to 2040, Transport Vision 2050, which predicts an increase in the use of most travel modes alongside a trend towards alternative forms of mobility and Gear Change, which sets out an ambition for half of all journeys in towns and cities to be cycled or walked by 2050.