Birmingham Hbf

[LLivery]

If the railway had an unlimited amount of money, would you be for building a totally new Berlin Hbf style station for Birmingham?

Instead of three stations: New Street, Moor Street and Curzon Street, build a new multi-level station on the site of the current Moor Street station and future the Curzon Street.

Rough proposal, 28 NR platforms in total + 2-4 for the Tram:

Upper Level:
Shops, railway or other offices.

Ground Level:
Midland Metro, shops, restaurants & tickets.

Lower Level 1 (Chiltern & Snow Hill):
6 platforms (4 through, 2 terminating from the south). 4 track southern approach, 2 track northern.

Lower Level 2 (New Street & HS2 Routes):
6 HS2 platforms - 2 through, 4 terminating. Allowing HS2 trains to Wolves and Shrewsbury if ever electrified.
16 classic platforms - 8 track approaches both east & west. New tunnels bored west until Granville St/St Vincent St. 4 track the route until Soho.

All would be encased in a glass roof giving natural light, with no horrible bare concrete!

Ban diesels and electrify routes in the surrounding area - Chiltern & Snow Hills, Moseley, Sutton Park and Cross Country route. Use bi-modes for Wales & CrossCountry.

New Street/Grand Central site could be redeveloped into new offices, flats, and an expanded Bullring. The only real loss would be a beautiful Moor Street station.

 

[Gareth]

It would be far more preferable to the messy situation offered by HS2.

That said, I can't comment on the practicality of your suggestion.

 

[Ianno87]

Berlin Hauptbahnhof worked because there was room for a new north-south line (in the space roughly where the Berlin Wall and associated no mans' land left vacant) where it interescts the main east-west line, in reasonablly close proximity to the overall centre of Berlin (walkable to the Brandenburg gate)

 

[gordonthemoron]

Berlin Hauptbahnhof worked because there was room for a new north-south line (in the space roughly where the Berlin Wall and associated no mans' land left vacant) where it interescts the main east-west line, in reasonablly close proximity to the overall centre of Berlin (walkable to the Brandenburg gate)

and didn't involve demolishing much, other than the old S-Leherterbahnhof

 

[gordonthemoron]

OTH Berlin Sudkreuz which was rebuilt at the same time, probably involved a bit more than demolishing S-Papestrasse

 

[HSTEd]

You might be able to build a full sized underground railway station in central Birmingham but it would be very very expensive.
And they don't let us demolish half a city centre any more.

 

[The Planner]

New Street/Grand Central site could be redeveloped into new offices, flats, and an expanded Bullring. The only real loss would be a beautiful Moor Street station.

I won't comment on the rest of it at the mo, but your new station would require pretty much most of the current New St, the east end throat isn't much more than 250m from where the Snow Hill lines cross.

 

[LLivery]

It would be far more preferable to the messy situation offered by HS2.

That said, I can't comment on the practicality of your suggestion.

I know, it's probably very impractical and would take an enormous amount of planning.

You might be able to build a full sized underground railway station in central Birmingham but it would be very very expensive.
And they don't let us demolish half a city centre any more.

I imagine the cost would be astronomical and they'd never go for such huge demolition. But if it was possible?

Berlin Hauptbahnhof worked because there was room for a new north-south line (in the space roughly where the Berlin Wall and associated no mans' land left vacant) where it interescts the main east-west line, in reasonablly close proximity to the overall centre of Berlin (walkable to the Brandenburg gate)

True, this is a total idealist proposal. If we could, would it be worth it?

I won't comment on the rest of it at the mo, but your new station would require pretty much most of the current New St, the east end throat isn't much more than 250m from where the Snow Hill lines cross.

I was more thinking the new station would start at Moor Street and go east, with new approaches built from further east. So the station would look more like this from above: \-- rather than +. Excess land required would be taken from the south to avoid demolishing the Uni and the New Street site would then be totally redeveloped. From the west of what's now Moor St, the routes would run underground, emerging around the current tunnel portals at the Arena and around Five Ways.

I know this is totally a mad Sim City idea, but it's just interesting to see opinions on it.

 

[xotGD]

A covered travellator link from New Street to Moor Street would be enough for me.

 

[The Planner]

I was more thinking the new station would start at Moor Street and go east, with new approaches built from further east. So the station would look more like this from above: \-- rather than +. Excess land required would be taken from the south to avoid demolishing the Uni and the New Street site would then be totally redeveloped. From the west of what's now Moor St, the routes would run underground, emerging around the current tunnel portals at the Arena and around Five Ways.

I know this is totally a mad Sim City idea, but it's just interesting to see opinions on it.

How do you deal with all the junctions at the east side of New St?

 

[LLivery]

How do you deal with all the junctions at the east side of New St?

Ideally, everything would go into a tunnel alongside Landor Street. Duddeston would probably require closure and a new tunnel approach built to reach the western approach earlier than currently.

A covered travellator link from New Street to Moor Street would be enough for me.

That would be useful.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's not really much further to walk than from Manchester Picc concourse to P13/14. The main issue is that the pedestrian subway is dingy and unsafe-feeling.

 

[@ndy]

If the railway had an unlimited amount of money, would you be for building a totally new Berlin Hbf style station for Birmingham?

Instead of three stations: New Street, Moor Street and Curzon Street, build a new multi-level station on the site of the current Moor Street station and future the Curzon Street.

Rough proposal, 28 NR platforms in total + 2-4 for the Tram:

Upper Level:
Shops, railway or other offices.

Ground Level:
Midland Metro, shops, restaurants & tickets.

Lower Level 1 (Chiltern & Snow Hill):
6 platforms (4 through, 2 terminating from the south). 4 track southern approach, 2 track northern.

Lower Level 2 (New Street & HS2 Routes):
6 HS2 platforms - 2 through, 4 terminating. Allowing HS2 trains to Wolves and Shrewsbury if ever electrified.
16 classic platforms - 8 track approaches both east & west. New tunnels bored west until Granville St/St Vincent St. 4 track the route until Soho.

All would be encased in a glass roof giving natural light, with no horrible bare concrete!

Ban diesels and electrify routes in the surrounding area - Chiltern & Snow Hills, Moseley, Sutton Park and Cross Country route. Use bi-modes for Wales & CrossCountry.

New Street/Grand Central site could be redeveloped into new offices, flats, and an expanded Bullring. The only real loss would be a beautiful Moor Street station.

No way!

I had the exact same thought! and I thought I was crazy

I did think of one critique though.

I'm pretty confident that expanding New Street or getting any new lines to New Street, probably isn't going to happen, simply because the area is saturated and there's no more space that won't end up costing a fortune to purchase.

So the first big question is, will closing New Street and moving it somewhere fix any issues? or will it just move the problem about 500 - 600 metres down the line? because realistically, unless you are planning on building more than 13 platforms, are you really gaining anything significant, that would offset this kind of cost.

So here is a slight suggestive tweak to your well received plan good sir. what if you didn't close New Street?

What if, instead, you just reduce its capacity by about 50%

So you are probably thinking, how does that do anything other that make the situation worse.

Well, what I mean is, if you were to re-prupose the 4 central lines of track, to be used only for pass through, i.e. mainline / no stopping, you effectively create bay platforms, with the desired effect of:

> speeding up traversal through the centre of birmingham.

this would take out, im not sure, maybe around 4 - 6 platforms at New street, but the remaining platforms could continue to operate as normal. New Street is after all in a really good position. plus trying to convince BCC to move all of New Street after its 600 million? renovation would be a tough sell

This would hopefully spread the passenger footfall further down the line to the new site and hopefully improve train times by reducing congestion at New Street.

It also provides the benefit of allowing manipulation of the footfall demographic, so services can be further atuned for decongestive purposes.

Which is a really fancy way of saying, if New street is no longer the main station, then have West midlands railway services / local services / commuter services stop here. Then your cross country services / london northwestern services can use the new main station.

I think the location is great as well. the 'knee bend' on New Bartholomew St is where the new street lines start dipping below street level,
- so all services using those lines can stay lower level 1 (important because this would effectively be under part of curzon street station)
- HS2 can remain as is, at street level, with tram connections
- Moor street and snow hill lines, by comparison, are above street level. So I would use floor 1 for those services.

Which yeah, gives you a Berlin HBF style station, which would look great and is already in a fantastic location for buses/taxis and right next to Birmingham's Bull ring shopping centre.

With some rail engineering wizardry you could probably get a few more platforms in Moor street too, to allow terminal services from snow hill. So they dont have to sit on the lines running through the station.

28 platforms, isn't that now the largest train station in the UK?
Plus it comes with the toys-r-us promise. "everything under one roof"