Citizens' Rail

Tag: best practice

  • Our work-in-progress “toolkit”

    Our work-in-progress “toolkit”

    We’ve been working hard behind-the-scenes on our upcoming Citizens’ Rail toolkit, which is now rapidly taking shape. Here’s an update…

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    Set to be launched this summer, the toolkit will be an online guide to inspire more people in the UK and abroad about community rail, and to give them the advice and knowledge to make things happen.

    It will be full of examples, photos and videos of great projects. This will range from the French station that is now home to a thriving creche, to the award-winning “passport” scheme run by Community Rail Lancashire to engage local schools with their railway. All of this will be organised under four main themes:

    • Creating better stations
    • Bringing lines to life
    • Getting people involved
    • Evaluating your success

    The finished mini-website will be aimed at audiences including the rail industry, local, regional and national government, other public sector organisations and of course CRPs and volunteers.

    We realise that appealing to all of these groups is a tough challenge. However we’ve received some excellent feedback about how to make the toolkit useful, attractive and effective.

    Last autumn we ran workshop sessions about it at ACoRP’s North and South seminars and at the Devon & Cornwall Rail Partnership conference. Along with regular discussions with our UK, French, Dutch and German partners, the workshops generated some extremely helpful ideas about what the toolkit needs to look like, prioritise and include. A helping hand also comes from all the resources already out there, like ACoRP’s Station Adoption guide. We won’t try to duplicate or compete with these – instead we will highlight and link to them.

    Once we have a working draft of the toolkit (something we’re beavering away at as we speak), then we hope to share it with members of our target audiences in order to “road test” it. Following any tweaks, we will then create French and German language versions to increase its potential audience on the continent.

    Even after it has been launched, we hope that the toolkit will continue to grow, thanks to contributions from the community rail sector and others. Readers will be able to share their own advice and experience by adding comments and suggesting new case studies to be featured. In this way we are aiming for the toolkit to provide a long-lasting legacy for the Citizens’ Rail project, which comes to a close this autumn.

    To hear more about the toolkit and to be notified about its launch later in the year, sign up to receive the quarterly Citizens’ Rail e-newsletter.

  • Citizens’ Rail to present at European mobility conference

    Citizens’ Rail to present at European mobility conference

    Citizens’ Rail’s academic team will be presenting at the European Conference on Mobility Management (ECOMM 2015) in May.

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    In a positive example of transnational working, Nick Davies and Richard Weston (University of Central Lancashire, UK) and Dominik Elsmann and Marco Trienes (RWTH Aachen University, Germany) have prepared a paper on “Understanding Citizens’ Rail: how marketing and social outreach can encourage involvement by the public in their rail services and change attitudes towards rail”.

    This has now been accepted as part of the “Understanding the user” presentation session at the conference, to be held in Utrecht in the Netherlands from 20th to 22nd May 2015.

    Visit the conference website to find out more.

  • Joint meeting with UITP

    Joint meeting with UITP

    Citizens’ Rail partners enjoyed a productive joint meeting with UITP’s Regional and Suburban Railways committee last week, held in the South West of England.

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    UITP, also known as The International Association of Public Transport, champions sustainable urban mobility and is the only worldwide network to bring together all public transport stakeholders and all sustainable transport modes. It has 1,300 member companies from 92 countries. Its members include public transport authorities and operators, policy decision-makers, research institutes and the public transport supply and service industry.

    The association’s Regional and Suburban Railways committee joined Citizens’ Rail partners for presentations, networking opportunities and rail trips over the course of two days, taking in locations including Plymouth, Calstock and Torquay. The joint meeting, hosted by the Devon & Cornwall Rail Partnership, was made possible thanks to Ian Ambrose at Network Rail, who is part of both the UITP committee and the Citizens’ Rail project.

    Some photographs from the joint meeting:

    The UITP contingent arrive on the scenic Tamar Valley Line for the first meeting in Calstock. This photo was taken from the balcony of the Calstock Arts Centre, our picturesque meeting venue (see further photo below):

    At the Calstock Arts Centre, Paul Alzer from Parkstad Limburg presents some tulip bulbs to help brighten stations on The Riviera Line (Exeter-Paignton):

    Mal McGreevy, chairman of the Regional and Suburban Railways committee and General Manager, Rail Services for Northern Ireland Railways, Translink (second from right), explores Calstock with Citizens’ Rail partners:

    In Torquay, Kai Mohnen from Stadt Aachen presented the work happening in the German city as part of Citizens’ Rail:

    Delegates each received an information pack / goodie bag:

  • German academic enjoys trip to research UK community rail

    German academic enjoys trip to research UK community rail

    One of the German members of Citizens’ Rail’s academic team enjoyed an action-packed visit last week to research the UK’s community rail sector.

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    Fresh from his presentation to the International Geographers’ Union in Krakow, Dominik Elsmann from RWTH Aachen University (pictured left above, with Richard Burningham of the Devon & Cornwall Rail Partnership) visited the UK to interview a range of experienced figures from the country’s long-standing community rail sector.

    The research will help to inform his PhD on “Regional railway governance”, with a specific focus on participatory approaches. In this context he will compare two case study regions in Germany and Great Britain.

    Also as part of the trip, Dominik joined the Devon & Cornwall Rail Partnership at their local conference – giving the opportunity to hear from speakers from the rail industry, local authorities and the community rail sector. The conference was preceded by a social evening for early attendees. This included a “music train” on the Tamar Valley line (pictured), enjoyed by delegates and local passengers alike.

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    As the final part of the visit, a productive planning meeting with the Devon & Cornwall Rail Partnership was held. This focused on the relationship and links between Citizens’ Rail’s academic evaluation, and the project’s practitioner toolkit – a free resource being developed to help rail professionals and others to get local communities more involved in their local and regional railways.


  • Presenting at an international geographers’ conference

    Presenting at an international geographers’ conference

    Dominik Elsmann from RWTH Aachen University presented on the topic of “Citizens’ Rail – Using citizens‘ participation for rail revitalization” at the International Geographical Union conference in Krakow this month.

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    The presentation formed part of the session on “Geography of Governance – Geography, governance and citizens’ participation“. It was a great opportunity to promote the Citizens’ Rail project to a dedicated audience and to exchange knowledge on this important topic. Geographers from all over the world joined the conference, which takes place annually.


    View the slides from Dominik’s presentation:




  • Citizens’ Rail at the International Geographical Union

    Citizens’ Rail at the International Geographical Union

    Dominik Elsmann from RWTH Aachen University has been accepted to speak at the International Geographical Union’s 2014 conference on “Citizens’ Rail – Using citizens‘ participation for rail revitalization”.

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    The conference takes place next month in Krakow, and the presentation will form part of the session on “Geography of Governance – Geography, governance and citizens’ participation“. It is a great opportunity to promote the Citizens’ Rail project to a dedicated audience and to exchange knowledge on this important topic. Geographers from all over the world will join the conference, which takes place annually.


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  • First Great Western Community Rail Conference 2014

    First Great Western Community Rail Conference 2014

    Representatives from our lead partner, the Devon & Cornwall Rail Partnership, gave an update on our Riviera Line project at the First Great Western Community Rail Conference 2014 this week.

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    Other speakers were from the UK government’s Department for Transport, Devon County Council, First Great Western (the train operating company for our project area in Devon), and four fellow community rail organisations, introduced by Chris Austin: the Tarka Rail Association, TransWilts, Severnside and Heart of Wessex.

    John Burch from the Tarka Rail Association gave a lowdown on how to create a line strategy. Graham Ellis from TransWilts, England’s newest Community Rail Partnership (CRP), told the story of how they have smashed their growth targets within their first year – including anecdotes about how local people are now selling their cars because they no longer need them, and the benefits that improved services are bringing to local businesses and their staff.

    Heather Cullimore from Severnside CRP described their fantastic City to Seaside Rail Arts project, with the fruits of the project on display in a free photography exhibition until the end of 2014. First Great Western’s Nick Reid reported on behalf of Heart of Wessex CRP, telling of their huge army of volunteers who contributed 13,500 hours in 2013 alone.

    The conference was held at the excellent Seale Hayne.

  • Photos: Partner meeting in Devon

    Photos: Partner meeting in Devon

    Our latest transnational partner meeting took place in Devon this week. It included site visits to a thriving Community Station in Crediton, as well as several stations on the Riviera Line (Exeter to Paignton). Here is a snapshot in pictures…

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    Mark Langdon from Network Rail shares his ideas in one of our interactive workshop sessions. Topics discussed by our partners from the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands included our upcoming “how to” manual on the Citizens’ Rail approach, methods of surveying rail users and non-users, and updates from each of our local projects.

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    Crediton

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    At Crediton station (on the Tarka Line between Exeter and Barnstaple), our partners heard from The Friends of Crediton Station and the owner of the station’s tea rooms, who explained how community involvement can transform the appearance of a station, reduce vandalism and sustain a successful local business. The use of the old station house as the tea rooms is especially relevant for our work looking at how to revive disused station buildings in rural areas of Pays de la Loire.

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    On our site visits to stations on the Riviera Line, we were joined by representatives from First Great Western, Devon County Council and Torbay Council, who discussed local aspirations and challenges with the visiting partners.

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    Our visit to Torre station coincided with the busy end-of-school rush. The station will be one of the targets of our station improvement programme – more news to follow soon.

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    At Dawlish our partners got a glimpse of the serious damage sustained in recent storms which means this crucial section of the main line into Cornwall continues to be closed (read the latest on the Network Rail website). The smaller photos show a bus being used as a temporary waiting room outside the station. Citizens’ Rail will be helping the line to bounce back when it re-opens, through a major marketing campaign, station improvements and community engagement work.

    [box close=”false” color=”#d42053″ icon=”” ]If you’d like to get involved in our Devon projects, or to participate in a future Citizens’ Rail workshop, get in touch.[/box]

  • Follow us on Twitter

    Follow us on Twitter

    To coincide with the launch of the Citizens’ Rail website, you can now also follow us on Twitter (@citizensrail). Connect with us for the latest news and findings from our projects as well as interesting sustainable transport and community engagement links from around the web.

  • Transnational masterclass

    Transnational masterclass

    Students from all four of the Citizens’ Rail partner countries came together in Heerlen in the Netherlands and Aachen in Germany for a two-day masterclass to learn, collaborate and generate radical new visions for local stations.

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    The masterclass on Monday 7th and Tuesday 8th October 2013 included site visits to stations including Nuth, Aachen Eilendorf and Aachen West. The 48 students (from Plymouth University, the University of Central Lancashire, L’Ecole de Design Nantes Atlantique, Hogeschool Zuyd and RWTH Aachen University) came from a range of disciplines including geography, tourism, design and civil engineering. They formed four international multi-disciplinary teams to create impressive visions for improvements to Nuth and Eilendorf stations (PDFs):

    [box close=”false” color=”#36A9E1″ icon=”” ]Eilendorf
    Blue team[/box]
    [box close=”false” color=”#93c01f” icon=”” ]Eilendorf
    Green team[/box]
    [box close=”false” color=”#d42053″ icon=”” ]Nuth
    Red team[/box]
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    Yellow team[/box]

    The students also benefited from thought-provoking presentations from Prof Martina Fromhold-Eisebith (RWTH Aachen University), UK-based community rail champion Paul Salveson and artist Michel Huisman, the man behind the spectacular “Maankwartier” redevelopment of the nearby Heerlen station.

    The masterclass was organised by Citizens’ Rail partners RWTH Aachen University, the City of Aachen, Aachen Transport Authority (AVV) and Parkstad Limburg.