The £1.7 million refurbishment of Longbridge station is now complete, with the upgrade providing an improved experience for rail passengers locally.
As well as a new entrance, glazed roof and cladding transforming the outside of the station, rooms inside have been removed and replaced with a larger concourse, with new automatic doors, flooring, ticket office and accessible toilet.
The project – delivered by Network Rail as part of Britain’s Railway Upgrade Plan and funded by Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) – certainly provides an improvement to the frontage.
‘Bright and modern’
Harpreet Singh-Moore, scheme project manager at Network Rail, said: “This major overhaul of Longbridge station is a huge improvement for the tens of thousands of West Midlands Trains passengers who use the station each week.
“[…] the new facilities create a bright and modern transport hub for an area which is being regenerated by new business, leisure and housing developments.”
‘Improved experience’
Francis Thomas, head of corporate affairs for West Midlands Railway, said: “It is great to see new investment in Longbridge station. Travelling by rail in the West Midlands has never been more popular. This redevelopment has significantly improved the experience for our passengers. The concourse area is now much brighter and spacious and also more accessible, thanks to the installation of adjustable ticket office counters and a new accessible toilet.”
‘Welcoming gateway’
Richard Burden, MP for Birmingham Northfield, said: “Along with other local stakeholders I have been pressing for years for the transformation of this station both to provide today’s Longbridge town centre with the welcoming gateway it deserves and to create a modern public transport hub serving local residents, businesses and Bournville College. These improvements are an important step towards achieving those objectives.”
Future improvements
The investment for the project came from the £70 million National Stations Improvement Programme (NSIP) which is helping to transform railway stations across the country.
Mr Thomas, West Midlands Railway, said: “Passengers using the Cross City Line will see more improvements over the coming years as we invest £1bn into upgrading our services across our network. This will include new trains for Longbridge commuters, with more capacity on this popular route.”
Mr Burden added: “The next stage of the improvements to Longbridge station will come with the opening of a new multi-storey Park and Ride car park next to the station which will be much bigger than the surface car park that has been there until now. As the new car park will be on the same site as the old one, the downside of the project is that Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) – who run the car park – have had to close the old one while the new one is being built. The new Park and Ride car park is scheduled to open in spring 2020.”
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Why didn’t they instal barriers
In actual fact the station is far from complete. There is no lift on the Redditch direction platform.
I agree with Mr Griffin entirely.
It’s nice to have a smarter looking station but why can there not be any seating in the large entry space? There is seating on the platforms but they are open to the cold winds which blow around Longbridge and are not at all pleasant in bad weather especially when there is a long wait, which happens often, because of a cancelled or delayed train.
There really should be a lift on the Redditch direction side. It’s quite a haul for less physically able people to go up the long ramp especially if carrying heavy bags. It is hard to understand why the planner of the station changes could not see how important a lift there would be.
A large amount of money was spent on this facelift but improvements of really practical benefit to train users have been completely overlooked.
Finally it would be helpful if some trains travelling further afield could stop at Longbridge. It is very time consuming to have to go all the way into New Street from a Longbridge if going to the West Country only to find that you’re passing Longbridge again about an hour later and journeying to Worcester or Hereford means having to change at Bromsgrove on a bleak station platform where again there may be a long wait if the connecting train is delayed. Longbridge serves a large population in south west Birmingham and further afield and making it a parkway station as in Bristol, Warwick, Stratford and elsewhere would be a help to many people.