Reaction from Southeastern, Thanet District Council's leader and a passenger to the opening of the new Thanet Parkway railway station on Monday, July 31st
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00:00 I think Thanet Parkway is a unique proposition because no other station has 293 parking spaces
00:06 that allow people to turn up, park here, join the railway with a fully accessible station
00:14 and then get to St Pancras in 70 minutes or Ashford in around 30. So we believe this will be
00:19 popular in the local area. Well I think in railway terms it's the only place that you could have had
00:25 the station and I think it's going to be a great opportunity for Thanet. I think that we've seen a
00:31 very large amount of national public money invested in the district which has got to be good news and
00:35 it's all about the future now. It's about whether it can trigger the economic growth that we
00:39 desperately need in Thanet. We've got a lot of deprivation here, we need to bring more money
00:43 into the district and I think this is an opportunity and we've got to make the best of it. I think the
00:46 station's really about the future. I think you're going to see development over the next five or
00:50 ten years in this area but it already serves the village of Cliffsend. Previously people have had
00:55 to drive to the station in Ramsgate, now they'll be able to walk to the station so that's an
00:59 improvement for a start. There's going to be a lot of residential growth. We need people to come and
01:03 live here, we want to make Thanet more accessible, we want day trippers to come here, we want to
01:08 think about the possibility of bus connections to our beaches and to relieve some of the congestion
01:13 around the seafront because we have particular problems with parking there. I think there are a
01:17 lot of opportunities. It's very, very convenient because it's very difficult at the moment to get
01:21 on at Ramsgate especially with nowhere to park, cycling there can be a bit tedious because of the
01:25 hills in that part of Thanet. This station is a lot more convenient for me to go to London.
01:29 There are more railway stations in Kent than any other county and we brought another one on board
01:35 today and the good news is that this is a parkway station and the good news is that this is a fully
01:41 accessible station.