Rail passengers yesterday welcomed plans to extend Oxford station, but said more should be done to make it a landmark gateway to the city.

On Wednesday city councillors approved plans for a £12.5m extension plan to build a new platform south of Botley Road and a new covered footbridge to link it with the existing station buildings north of the road.

The new dead-end platform, to be used by services between the city and London, will be built on part of the station’s long-stay car park, off Becket Street.

While welcoming the move to increase capacity at the station, which is used by 5.6m people a year, passengers said more should be done to improve the whole station.

Valerie Pritchard, 69, who travels from Macclesfield to Oxford every month to visit her daughter, said: “It’s rubbish at the moment. They only did it up a few years ago but it’s very crowded.

“I welcome the expansion. It’s a busy station and the city attracts a lot of people internationally but I think it’s a very poor development if that’s all they can do.”

The new platform will reduce congestion congestion on the tracks through the station by removing the need for trains to shunt between the platforms and the carriage sidings at the north end, as well as allowing longer trains, with more seats, to be used in future.

Network Rail and Oxfordshire County Council, who will share the bill for the scheme, hope work will begin next year and be completed by early 2012.

Passenger Satish Krishnan, 30, from Cowley said: “I moved here two months ago and I expected the station to be something more of a landmark.

“I like the fact it’s getting bigger but they should do something more to improve it as well. I would encourage them to do more to make Oxford look beautiful.”

Nigel Spawton, a partner at GBS Architects, in Becket Street, said: “Oxford’s a world city and it really deserves a fine piece of architecture at the station but unfortunately there’s not much public appetite at the moment for gestures like that.”

Network Rail spokesman Russell Spink said: “Our plans for a new platform and the accompanying new pedestrian link will make a lasting difference to passengers in Oxford and pave the way for further improvements in the coming years.”

Chiltern Railways also wants to add two platforms at the station’s north end for its planned Oxford-London route, which it aims to launch by 2013.

  • CALLS for a striking station to form a gateway for Oxford are nothing new but the city has always missed out.

The existing station, opened in 1990, is the first brick-built structure on the site, replacing a prefabricated building dating from 1971.

Before that the Great Western Railway had provided timber buildings, as had the London & North Western at its adjacent Rewley Road station.

The city’s first station at Grandpont, which was used from 1844 to 1852, was also made of wood.

A grand design proposed by the Oxford Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway in the late 1840s came to nought due to the firm’s lack of money.