New £56m University station, Birmingham, shaping up
REDEVELOPMENT of one of the West Midlands’ busiest railway stations, University, on the busy Cross-City line, is moving towards completion later this year.
The £56m project to vastly improve passenger facilities at the station – first opened in May 1978 – is being driven by expansion at both the University of Birmingham and the nearby University Hospital Birmingham as part of regenerating the surrounding area. Situated just 2½ miles from New Street station, it is the seventh busiest station in the West Midlands.
Originally designed to handle around 400,000 passengers annually, in 2019/20 the station saw 3.97m passengers, almost ten times what was envisaged.
The project to redevelop the station was first announced back in 2017 when the Government pledged up to £10m to help combat overcrowding, as part of the Government’s Midlands Engine Strategy.
The new and vastly redesigned station, first revealed in 2019 will be able to cater for 7.2m passengers annually. On each side of the line is a large building and these are connected by a new footbridge which also spans the adjacent Worcester and Birmingham canal to provide a new pedestrian link to the university.
Platforms will be wider to accommodate more passengers safely, there are new lifts, a new ticket office, the new platform canopies are in place, and there’s space for a retail unit.
When construction began, the target was to have the new facilities open at the end of 2021, well ahead of the start of the Commonwealth Games on July 28. However, like so many projects, the Covid-19 pandemic and material shortages has badly affected progress, and it may be touch and go whether the work is actually completed by the Games start date.