Villa Park Redevelopment

[Nev]

I still haven't heard a decent argument why the shuttle service model for Edgbaston isn't suitable for Villa Park.

[Axl Rose]

West Ham sold their soul when they moved to the Olympic stadium.  Aston Villa should stay where they are.

This, over and over again. If you haven’t seen a game at the London Stadium, go and do it and see if you’d fancy that for us every other week.

True, but then again, not every move to a new ground necessarily has to be to one as bad as that, ie to a stadium already in existence, built for another sport.

You could equally say, anyone who fancies moving to a new ground, go to the Spurs stadium as see how much you'd fancy that.

I found the Spurs stadium equally soulless. The lack of atmosphere made by 60,000 people was hard to believe. A flashy stadium, looks like it made primarily for the NFL games with its three layers of flashing advertising boards etc.

Mind you, Chelsea at SB was probably the quietest set of fans last season - maybe football is just heading that way regardless of the stadium.

Spot on, fella

A giant 'no' to a new stadium.

Would like to see a fan vote, yes or no, however.

[LeeB]

Has anyone advocating a city centre site tried travelling around there on a Saturday afternoon? It's a nightmare as it is without another 60,000 people descending on it

[Simon Page]

Has anyone advocating a city centre site tried travelling around there on a Saturday afternoon? It's a nightmare as it is without another 60,000 people descending on it

I can't  think of any part of Birmingham that isn't a nightmare to get to, from or around. It's like someone has chosen it as the punishment for being the world's greatest city.

[itbrvilla]

Has anyone advocating a city centre site tried travelling around there on a Saturday afternoon? It's a nightmare as it is without another 60,000 people descending on it

How many times a season do we play at home on a Saturday afternoon? I reckon less than half our home league games were on a Saturday afternoon.

[Paul.S]

I can remember there being 48,000 plus at Villa Park and when you came out there were lines of buses outside waiting after the game. I never had a huge issue getting on the number 11 because there were enough of them.
There were obviously less cars in those days so what’s gone wrong? Would todays privately owned transport companies view it as financially viable to lay on extra buses or trains for a few hours every other week? Are our expectations too much these days and do we expect just to walk straight on a train and not wait at all? Could the club put on buses at a reasonable cost afterwards and would they be used and if they did? Would building a new ground really end all of these issues?
Getting away from a lot of grounds can be a nightmare. 40 to 50,000 people leaving a venue at the same time means there will be bottle necks no matter where you go. I’m not saying there doesn’t need to be an improvement and the Council really do need to think about how an extra 10,000 people every other week would benefit the local economy.
Surely between the club, the council and transport companies there has to be a way of improving things. Where there’s a will there’s a way.

[eamonn]

Leaving Finsbury Park last night after seeing Pulp FC hammer the opposition 5-1 (they grabbed a consolation for the way the wind bounced the sound around at times) with a similar sized crowd to a full Villa Park; made me think of the crap experiences getting away from VP except it was a lot worse! One exit with the Seven Sisters Road absolutely chocka block all the way to Finsbury Park Station and a queue of over an hour to enter. Fcuk that!

[Ger Regan]

I still haven't heard a decent argument why the shuttle service model for Edgbaston isn't suitable for Villa Park.

I work in public transport here in ireland, but we operate a different model to that in Birmingham, particularly on the bus side, where my organisation are a bit like TfL in london. We are responsible for PSO services that getting a subvention from the state for socially necessary (but not commercially viable) services. There's a serious shortage of staff to allow us to introduce the increased services we want to implement, never mind deal with any regular large scale events such as games at VP. I'm not familiar with Edgebaston but presumably they're reasonably irregular (fewer than the 19+ games we'd have), so more likely to be manageable with overtime for existing staff for the likes of National express. It wouldn't be viable to do that for an event every fortnight, and wouldn't make commercial sense to hire drivers for something that only occurs every couple of weeks. For events such as concerts, it's up to the event organisers to arrange an appropriate traffic management plan for the event, which would generally include engaging with a private operator to provide transport before and after. Other than some scope on the rail, we've had to be very firm in not being able to offer additional capacity on our bus services, as otherwise it would impact on the operator's ability to deliver their normal services.

Ultimately, the club could arrange something, but it would be costly, and either they'd have to swallow the cost themselves or it would get passed onto the supporters (as with the trial at the end of the season). Does anyone know how that went, actually?

[London Villan]

30 buses per match would cost the best part of £50k to hire.

[olaftab]

30 buses per match would cost the best part of £50k to hire.

During my school days free (to users) buses ran from Dale End to Church road and back to Dale End after the match. There was never any shortage of buses to hop on.  How did that work?

[astonvilla82]

Think the bus services were run by Birmingham council with other councils from the West Midlands participating also,of course with government cuts it affected the bus services provided

[olaftab]

Well that's a job for Andy Street to sort out if he cares.

[maidstonevillain]

30 buses per match would cost the best part of £50k to hire.

Half the weekly wage of one squad player. Every 2 weeks.

[pauliewalnuts]

30 buses per match would cost the best part of £50k to hire.

During my school days free (to users) buses ran from Dale End to Church road and back to Dale End after the match. There was never any shortage of buses to hop on.  How did that work?

Public owned bus services rather than the rag-tag shitty mess of private ownership we have now.

[London Villan]

Add £5 per ticket for the hospitality seats to cover the cost and it’s free for anyone with a match ticket who wants to use them. Each bus does 3-4 trips, thats 6,000 seats.