Villa Park Redevelopment

[Crown Hill]

The Witton Station plans are part of the extra funding announced by the government that the Blose thought was all earmarked for Knotweed Park.  If Villa are contributing to improvements at Aston then that is fair enough, although much of the problem there comes from the attitude of the staff in control of the barriers as much as anything - they are still not letting enough people onto the platform, causing a bottleneck at the bottom of the stairs, a mad rush when a train arrives, and then trains leaving half-empty.

If the funding is there the Witton Station upgrade could be started surely? Is it that the funding is only proposed and not yet rubber stamped?

It hasn’t actually been allocated by WMCA yet.

The announcement by Rachel Reeves was pure spin. It was a reannouncement of what Rishi Sunak told the Tory conference that the HS2 money saved could be used for local transport projects.

Basically nothing has changed!

Emailed our Mayor/tiger and they have replied to basically say Witton Station improvement is still going ahead, Transport for West Midlands and Villa are in a working group implementing it.

Yep thats the one Andy Street announced! and the funding is the reannouncment.

[paul_e]

Pure spin is stretching it a bit, Street announced it was planned but without the funding being in place. Sunak announced that projects like this were possible to complete with the money saved from HS2 but didn't actually allocate any funds and then Reeves has put the funds in place to have the work completed. Seems perfectly reasonable to me, of those 3 the only one that seemed a bit pointless was Sunak trying to find some positive spin for cancelling the northern part of HS2 and thereby removing a lot of the main benefits it would've provided.

[AV82EC]

Pure spin is stretching it a bit, Street announced it was planned but without the funding being in place. Sunak announced that projects like this were possible to complete with the money saved from HS2 but didn't actually allocate any funds and then Reeves has put the funds in place to have the work completed. Seems perfectly reasonable to me, of those 3 the only one that seemed a bit pointless was Sunak trying to find some positive spin for cancelling the northern part of HS2 and thereby removing a lot of the main benefits it would've provided.

Spot on, this is exactly what happened. It would be nice for the Mayor to maybe let people know what’s going on though rather than jizzing his kecks over a stadium and associated infra that hasn’t even got planning permission. I’d also suggest the improvements at Witton station will in no way “solve” the issues of crush loading trains pre and post match unless Ive misread the scope of the works.

[Olneythelonely]

It won’t make a bit of difference to train capacity. However, it’s much better with the new trains on the Cross City now.

[maidstonevillain]

You could whack a corner on there, by going over the road. Have the lower Holte wrap properly with the middle/lower (or soon to be just lower) Trinity. There is a bit of a lower bowl at Villa Park anyway.

Looks easy in theory. But would probably require the whole roof to be rebuilt. A lot of work for the number of seats gained.

[AV82EC]

You could whack a corner on there, by going over the road. Have the lower Holte wrap properly with the middle/lower (or soon to be just lower) Trinity. There is a bit of a lower bowl at Villa Park anyway.

Looks easy in theory. But would probably require the whole roof to be rebuilt. A lot of work for the number of seats gained.

I’ve been banging on on here that the Holte needs redeveloping into a single tier super stand for sometime, the current Holte is a mess and its two tier nature isn’t great for either acoustics or capacity. Knock it down and rebuild the whole thing.

[IFWaters]

You could whack a corner on there, by going over the road. Have the lower Holte wrap properly with the middle/lower (or soon to be just lower) Trinity. There is a bit of a lower bowl at Villa Park anyway.

Looks easy in theory. But would probably require the whole roof to be rebuilt. A lot of work for the number of seats gained.

I’ve been banging on on here that the Holte needs redeveloping into a single tier super stand for sometime, the current Holte is a mess and its two tier nature isn’t great for either acoustics or capacity. Knock it down and rebuild the whole thing.

While I'm up for recreating the single seething mass of humanity that was the former Holte End the current setup allows for a bit of overlap between lower and upper meaning you can squeeze more people into the same space. The back row of the Holte is already quite a distance back from the pitch. If you had just a single tier you'd either be further away from the pitch on a shallow rake or higher up.

[AV82EC]

You could whack a corner on there, by going over the road. Have the lower Holte wrap properly with the middle/lower (or soon to be just lower) Trinity. There is a bit of a lower bowl at Villa Park anyway.

Looks easy in theory. But would probably require the whole roof to be rebuilt. A lot of work for the number of seats gained.

I’ve been banging on on here that the Holte needs redeveloping into a single tier super stand for sometime, the current Holte is a mess and its two tier nature isn’t great for either acoustics or capacity. Knock it down and rebuild the whole thing.

While I'm up for recreating the single seething mass of humanity that was the former Holte End the current setup allows for a bit of overlap between lower and upper meaning you can squeeze more people into the same space. The back row of the Holte is already quite a distance back from the pitch. If you had just a single tier you'd either be further away from the pitch on a shallow rake or higher up.

If Spurs can create a single tier stand that holds 3k more than the Holte then I don’t see why we need to limit ourselves with the current design. Knock it down and start again, a single tier , improve the acoustics and go over the road to fill in that corner and square it up.

[pauliewalnuts]

You could whack a corner on there, by going over the road. Have the lower Holte wrap properly with the middle/lower (or soon to be just lower) Trinity. There is a bit of a lower bowl at Villa Park anyway.

Looks easy in theory. But would probably require the whole roof to be rebuilt. A lot of work for the number of seats gained.

I’ve been banging on on here that the Holte needs redeveloping into a single tier super stand for sometime, the current Holte is a mess and its two tier nature isn’t great for either acoustics or capacity. Knock it down and rebuild the whole thing.

While I'm up for recreating the single seething mass of humanity that was the former Holte End the current setup allows for a bit of overlap between lower and upper meaning you can squeeze more people into the same space. The back row of the Holte is already quite a distance back from the pitch. If you had just a single tier you'd either be further away from the pitch on a shallow rake or higher up.

If Spurs can create a single tier stand that holds 3k more than the Holte then I don’t see why we need to limit ourselves with the current design. Knock it down and start again, a single tier , improve the acoustics and go over the road to fill in that corner and square it up.

What would be the point knocking down the Holte End (which generates way more atmosphere than that thing at Spurs in any case) and rebuilding for a negligible capacity increase when we have another stand way more in need of meeting the wrecking ball.

[IFWaters]

You could whack a corner on there, by going over the road. Have the lower Holte wrap properly with the middle/lower (or soon to be just lower) Trinity. There is a bit of a lower bowl at Villa Park anyway.

Looks easy in theory. But would probably require the whole roof to be rebuilt. A lot of work for the number of seats gained.

I’ve been banging on on here that the Holte needs redeveloping into a single tier super stand for sometime, the current Holte is a mess and its two tier nature isn’t great for either acoustics or capacity. Knock it down and rebuild the whole thing.

While I'm up for recreating the single seething mass of humanity that was the former Holte End the current setup allows for a bit of overlap between lower and upper meaning you can squeeze more people into the same space. The back row of the Holte is already quite a distance back from the pitch. If you had just a single tier you'd either be further away from the pitch on a shallow rake or higher up.

If Spurs can create a single tier stand that holds 3k more than the Holte then I don’t see why we need to limit ourselves with the current design. Knock it down and start again, a single tier , improve the acoustics and go over the road to fill in that corner and square it up.

Spurs South Stand holds 17,500 to the current Holtes 13,500. The top row is 35 metres above the pitch and while I can't find any figures for the current Holte I don't think it's too far off that. One thing that limits reworking the current Holte is that like the North Stand it's roof is supported on a big goalpost. The Trinity isn't.

So if you scrap the goalpost structure and rebuild the roof you could leave the lower as is and then widen the upper Holte over Trinity Road , at an angle and on the other side* (see below), filling in like the North Stand redesign is doing.

To me the Holte End is special and id be very happy for it to retake it's rightful place as the largest end stand in British football.

* Ultimately a lot of what you can do with Villa Park is held back by the dogs breakfast of the Witton Lane. Cramped, possibly dangerous and kind of embarrassing, it needs flattening and replacing with a mirror of the Trinity. The current structure holds back what you can do with the rest of the ground.

[SaddVillan]

The stands at Everton's new ground have a 34.99% gradient.
It's 34% at Spurs' south stand.

The legal maximum is 35%.

I've searched high and low but can't find anything about the Holte End for comparison purposes.

[IFWaters]

The stands at Everton's new ground have a 34.99% gradient.
It's 34% at Spurs' south stand.

The legal maximum is 35%.

I've searched high and low but can't find anything about the Holte End for comparison purposes.

I think the top tier might be close to that but the bottom tier is a pretty shallow rake.

[Percy McCarthy]

* Ultimately a lot of what you can do with Villa Park is held back by the dogs breakfast of the Witton Lane. Cramped, possibly dangerous and kind of embarrassing, it needs flattening and replacing with a mirror of the Trinity. The current structure holds back what you can do with the rest of the ground.

That’s where the real potential lies. Could be as iconic as The Angel of the North.

[SoccerHQ]

The Witton Station plans are part of the extra funding announced by the government that the Blose thought was all earmarked for Knotweed Park.  If Villa are contributing to improvements at Aston then that is fair enough, although much of the problem there comes from the attitude of the staff in control of the barriers as much as anything - they are still not letting enough people onto the platform, causing a bottleneck at the bottom of the stairs, a mad rush when a train arrives, and then trains leaving half-empty.

If they could just then sort getting trains back up to pre-pandemic frequency then it would make a massive difference.  With the new trains you could move 15,000 people per hour on the cross-city line alone if there were 6 trains an hour instead of 4.

The CC is going back to 6 trains per hour in the near future.

The most obvious thing to do with Witton is surely on Saturdays you re-route the Rugeley-Birmingham international trains through Witton/Aston and have them stopping at those two stations between 1-6pm? That would give a 15 minute interval. Don't really think half an hour is going to suffice with another 7k fans coming into the Aston area in the near future.

[dave.woodhall]

The Witton Station plans are part of the extra funding announced by the government that the Blose thought was all earmarked for Knotweed Park.  If Villa are contributing to improvements at Aston then that is fair enough, although much of the problem there comes from the attitude of the staff in control of the barriers as much as anything - they are still not letting enough people onto the platform, causing a bottleneck at the bottom of the stairs, a mad rush when a train arrives, and then trains leaving half-empty.

If they could just then sort getting trains back up to pre-pandemic frequency then it would make a massive difference.  With the new trains you could move 15,000 people per hour on the cross-city line alone if there were 6 trains an hour instead of 4.

The CC is going back to 6 trains per hour in the near future.

The most obvious thing to do with Witton is surely on Saturdays you re-route the Rugeley-Birmingham international trains through Witton/Aston and have them stopping at those two stations between 1-6pm? That would give a 15 minute interval. Don't really think half an hour is going to suffice with another 7k fans coming into the Aston area in the near future.

I'm not sure Proofhouse Junction could cope with even another two trains an hour.