Portway Park & Ride station on the Severn Beach line in Bristol opened to passengers on 1 August. An official opening event the previous day was attended by senior figures including Transport Secretary Mark Harper and West of England Metro Mayor Dan Norris.
The station serves an existing bus park and ride facility and is located near Avonmouth, close to the M5 motorway. All Severn Beach line services call at the new station, with a journey time to Bristol Temple Meads of 24 minutes. The station aims to support local growth by improving access to the Avonmouth and Temple Quarter Enterprise Zones, which are expected to create 31,000 new jobs by 2050. Its opening is part of the MetroWest programme led by the West of England Combined Authority.
Portway Park & Ride has a single 126-metre-long platform designed to accommodate trains up to five carriages in length. It is the first station to open within the City of Bristol since Parson Street in 1927, while the last station to open in the wider West of England area was Filton Abbey Wood in 1996.
The station cost £5.866 million. The majority funder was WECA (£3.153 million), with other contributions from the Department for Transport’s New Stations Fund (£1.672 million), Bristol City Council (£857,000), Network Rail (£114,000) and Great Western Railway (£70,000).
