Students can help you to design station improvements that are more creative and innovative. Young minds from outside the rail industry can enable your project to break free of conventional approaches, bringing fresh ideas.

This is particularly recommended for smaller stations with lots of constraints (both physical and financial). Involving a university can give impetus to a small station, preventing it from being neglected at the expense of other higher profile transport projects.

By involving even a small group of students you will receive a great diversity of different approaches and ideas. The local community can then help to select a design to be implemented.

A competition was held between students from Nantes Design School. Nine designs were created and were showcased at a public exhibition attended by 170 people in 2013. The “Tuyau Toi” (or “You Pipe”) was then selected by regional and city elected representatives as the design to take forward. A programme of community engagement began in spring 2015 to inform station users and nearby residents about the upcoming improvements to the station, which will be implemented later in the year.
See more of the designs.

The 48 students came from a range of disciplines including geography, tourism, design and civil engineering. They undertook site visits and heard from expert speakers. They then formed four international, multi-disciplinary teams to create impressive visions for improvements to Nuth and Eilendorf stations.

Their designs included a strong green ethos, and a desire to link the station with the identity of the local area, for example Nuth’s mining heritage. See the designs and read more.