Project summary
A large transport interchange and park and ride site promoting sustainable transport journeys within East Lothian and beyond.
Background
The Wallyford Journey Hub brings together convenient parking, electric vehicle charging and links to local bus and rail services. There are several facilities within walking distance, including sports facilities and a community centre.
The Hub is an extension of East Lothian Council’s involvement in the 2023 Workforce Mobility Project. This initiative identified the main bus stops in the region, creating a list of focal points for sustainable transport in towns and villages. As a result of these findings, East Lothian Council have sought to take a joined-up approach to sustainable transport, creating park and ride sites in high-profile locations.
These sites, called journey hubs, provide travellers with public, shared and active travel options alongside access to community facilities. Other journey hub locations include Brunton Hall, Tranent South and Pencaitland.
Rationale
The Wallyford Journey Hub was upgraded in 2022 from its original Park and Ride format with funding from the Transport Scotland Low Emission Zone (LEZ) Public Transport Fund. Introduced to mitigate the impact of Edinburgh’s LEZ, the fund was made available to all neighbouring local authorities. This increased the amount of destination charging for cars & vans from three to 16 and added two journey chargers for HGVs & PSVs up to 12m long.
East Lothian Council aimed to deliver charging infrastructure that supports a wide range of BEV types and user needs, helping to demonstrate to private chargepoint operators what is possible. By significantly increasing the level of destination charging – of which a proportion is only accessible to Blue Badge holders – they would also provide an example of best practice for other large car parks.
The council also secured Transport Scotland’s Switched On Fleets fund support to install a dedicated charging area for ecoaches.
Project overview
The components of the installation are:
Charging infrastructure at 15% of the 323 parking bays, including:
- Two 15m long charging bays.
- 15 double outlet 22kW AC chargepoints.
- Two double outlet DC chargepoints.
Dedicated ecoach charging area with two DC chargepoints.
The primary purpose of the longer bays is to give drivers plenty of space to access devices – hatched lines on either side create further space. These bays also provided the additional benefit of increasing the site’s accessible infrastructure.
Progress so far and challenges faced
It was identified at the design stage that the longer parking bays would be constrained for space, though only for one bay, and only in the rare scenario where both bays were occupied simultaneously. This was considered acceptable, as fully mitigating the issue would have been costly and would have required removing several existing spaces.
Furthermore, the site was only meant to be a stopgap until the market provided equivalent charging facilities. MFG have since upgraded a nearby lorry park with HDV charging on a condition set by East Lothian Council.
Other challenges included grid connection costs limiting where additional destination charging could be installed and circulating traffic causing friction – particularly at the DC chargers. East Lothian Council looked at creating a bypass lane to improve traffic moment. They also looked at including an overhead gantry with real time information to manage queues, but funding wasn’t available for this. If necessary, the council may remove nearby spaces to make room for queueing.
Cost considerations and the need to maintain access for taller vehicles prevented the addition of solar or green roof canopies.
A public bike hire scheme couldn’t go ahead despite securing funding because there were no suitable suppliers and similar nearby schemes weren’t proving financially sustainable. However, ambition to improve cyclability remains strong. With the area’s improving cycle-hire and active travel network, the Wallyford Toll Roundabout redevelopment works and a plan to introduce a street vendor food trailer at the site all helping encourage multi-modal journeys.
Finding space for these interventions has been challenging, with the local geography preventing road widening. However, reprioritising space to the west of the site has enabled the introduction of safe, on-road cycle lanes at the railway crossing.
High connection costs for mains water meant a drinking water supply could not be included on site.
Ambition
East Lothian Council have discussed incorporating more high-power DC charging infrastructure at the site as these chargepoints have come down in cost. Such a change could see the Wallyford Journey Hub providing enough 100kW DC chargers to host 36 cars or light vans.
East Lothian Council continue to affirm their commitment to providing infrastructure for longer vehicles at the site. The council is interested in developing charging bays for motorhomes and has discussed the viability of having an area for vehicles to charge overnight.
Future developments being considered for the Wallyford site include:
- Expanding the charging provision for electric buses.
- Battery energy storage systems.
- Micro-renewable energy generation.
- Bike hire stations.
- A coffee or snack shop.
- Real time information displays.
- Local area information boards.
- Improved wayfinding signage.
- Additional facilities (roofed canopy, toilets).
Improvements to the adjoining cycling and walking network are underway and will be complete by March 2026. These will enable easy access to the journey hub on foot or by bike from the nearby towns of Prestonpans and Wallyford. High quality active travel links from Tranent and Musselburgh are also in development.
Key lessons learned
With this project, East Lothian Council has created a hub where travel options for EV drivers, active travel users and public transport passengers are all provided in one place. This first‑of‑its‑kind facility therefore supports all types of journeys.
The hub shows a viable way of addressing a shortage of charging infrastructure for vans and other longer vehicles. While also providing charging infrastructure at a range of speeds, with bays designed to fit vehicles of all sizes.
By demonstrating what is reasonably practicable, East Lothian Council hope to inspire other local authorities across the country to follow their model.
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