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Birmingham New Street the worst UK station?

H

Harpo

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CharlieSpotted said:
This is seriously hyperbolic - it's not even true. There are loads of problems with New Street and many of them are at the platform level, but it objectively is not as dark as it was before. There is more lighting, it's much brighter (no doubt partly due to improved technology) and on some platforms there is natural light in areas coming through from the concourse above.

It was said above that some of these comments demonstrate that people never used the old New Street, or have perhaps forgotten what it was really like, and this is a prime example.
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I can only go back about fifty years on my use of New Street. Yes, it may have a touch more lighting but I still find it dark, horrible and cramped.

The photo in post #211 perfectly illustrates the grim lived experience of New Street. To arrive into that at the A end and then need to fight your way through the crowd to reach the B end to change via a single escalator. It is not a station designed for the user.
 
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WillC

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TT-ONR-NRN said:
I will say, and I might be offering a hot take here, but I firmly believe Birmingham New Street is easier to navigate than Edinburgh Waverley.
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Yes Waverley has 'hidden' platforms and might offer a great location for kids hide and seek. But, it is light and airy and quite grand. New Street however remains dark and smelly (Voyagers), though as some folk have pointed out, it's not *as* dark and smelly as it once was.
 
The exile

The exile

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WillC said:
Yes Waverley has 'hidden' platforms and might offer a great location for kids hide and seek. But, it is light and airy and quite grand.
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Though the challenge of accessing all in-use platforms on one platform ticket (pre Open Station) would now be unachievable!
 
B

Bald Rick

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sprunt said:
When rebuilding a station, a successful outcome is the creation of a good station, not just one that's marginally less bad than before.
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of course. But evidently, what some people writing here define as ‘good’ differs from mine !

There is no way that New St is the worst staion in the UK, on any sensible balance of measures.
 
DarloRich

DarloRich

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Harpo said:
Still dark (to me), still unfriendly (to me) still a shothole (to me).
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Ok that's your view and you are welcome to express it - but you are wrong by any objective rather than emotional criteria. Sorry to be blunt.

EDIT - lets try and add some context. Compared to the old station:

  • Much more circulating space for passengers
  • A much bigger concourse area
  • A much lighter concourse area
  • Lighter platforms with a much better ambiance ( if still underground!)
  • Platforms that are easier to access ( lifts/escalators)
  • A fantastic choice of refreshments
  • Easier access to the city
  • Tram interchange
  • Much better facilities for less mobile passengers.

It is to all intents and purposes and underground station and I think the improvements are immeasurably better than what we had before. I think a good job has been done with a difficult/constrained site AND a limited purse. There seems to be a view here that the centre of Birmingham should have been knocked to create the platinum on gold plated exemplar of best in class. That simply is not realistic.

I maintain the biggest problem for posters here is that new street isn't a traditional station and most critically you aren't expected to wait on the platform therefore you cant see the trains!
 
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B

Bald Rick

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Merle Haggard said:
At first, i thought that was the one being referred to, and then wondered whether the poster was old enough to remember it.

From what I remember it had natural lighting and a footbridge that gave access direct from street level to all platforms. There were ticket collectors at the top of each staircase.

No sushi bar, though. How did we cope???
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According to my dad, who used it daily, it was permanently filthy, confusing, congested, etc. The 1967-2015 version was much better, but he reckons the latest incarnation is much better still.
 
styles

styles

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New Street was improved but that doesn't stop it still being unpleasant for many passengers. Even with the new platform-level lighting I still find it feels dark, cramped, and often smelly. I don't find the new retail space attractive though it is an improvement; it's just not my style.

Regarding wayfinding, I suspect it is still confusing for many passengers, particularly if a group of railway enthusiasts who have used it enough times say even they find it confusing!

All that being said, I still wouldn't say it's the worst station. I used to live near a station which didn't even have shelters or a ticket machine, like 3 parking spaces, and if you dared to lock your bike up at one of the two Sheffield stands, you could guarantee it would be gone by the time you came home. People would congregate under the footbridge crossing the platforms if it was raining owing to there not being a proper shelter.

Even by category A station standards, I'd put Euston higher, owing to the shortage of seating and the last-minute platform announcements.
 
AlterEgo

AlterEgo

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New Street is far from the worst station. Very far. It is just a little disappointing for £750m or thereabouts given the improvements couldn't do anything to address capacity and didn't deliver a world class station.

In my view NR has done a few world class re-imaginings of stations you'd be proud to show any visitor. Queen Street, London Bridge and Reading come to mind.
 
B

Bald Rick

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AlterEgo said:
It is just a little disappointing for £750m or thereabouts given the improvements couldn't do anything to address capacity and didn't deliver a world class station.
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It did a lot for passenger capacity, which is what it was designed to do. It was never intended to do anything for track capacity. You can of course argue that it should have, but that was never in the remit. Nor would it have been fundable.
 
T

The Planner

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The waiting rooms on the end of the platforms in the old station were effectively open toilets. The place was grim. The pub was scabby and old school where you just stuck to the floor.
 
B

Bletchleyite

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AlterEgo said:
New Street is far from the worst station. Very far. It is just a little disappointing for £750m or thereabouts given the improvements couldn't do anything to address capacity and didn't deliver a world class station.
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A world class station within its physical constraints would have cost more than that and would have required disruption to the national network for a couple of years. Think Crewe rebuild plus, and that wasn't even that good, and had the advantage that hardly anyone actually wants to go actually to Crewe so alternatives could be more readily provided for the period.

AlterEgo said:
In my view NR has done a few world class re-imaginings of stations you'd be proud to show any visitor. Queen Street, London Bridge and Reading come to mind.
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The latter two had far looser space constraints. The former in my eyes is a massive disappointment, I don't like it at all, it's all glitz and no real improvement. And unlike New St hardly any retail! Central is a good large station, Queen St is not.
 
Dr Hoo

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Merle Haggard said:
At first, i thought that was the one being referred to, and then wondered whether the poster was old enough to remember it.

From what I remember it had natural lighting and a footbridge that gave access direct from street level to all platforms. There were ticket collectors at the top of each staircase.

No sushi bar, though. How did we cope???
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Being old enough to have commuted through the original station on steam-hauled trains and compartment stock I can assure you that it was far worse than that.
There were NO ticket barriers. Passengers on local trains had the pleasure of extended dwells at Vauxhall & Duddeston, Saltley, Adderley Park and so on for ticket inspection and the ceremony of Turning On The Lights.
Stairs up from the platform (only) onto the single bridge that acted as a link between all platforms of the two stations and a public right of way perpetuating what had originally been Peck Lane. More steps up to the Stephenson Place side, through the Queens Hotel or down steps to Queens Drive - infested with taxis and Post Office vans - or down to Station Street.
The former Midland side had kept its overall roof - encrusted in soot and grime; the L&NWR roof had been a casualty of WW2 so that side was a bit brighter but still a miserable prospect.
Some (non-public) parts of the station still had gas lighting.
I could say more but you’ll get the idea.
 
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Purple Train

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I recently used New Street for the first time on my own (somehow I've always managed to avoid changing there when going north). I've never quite been able to understand until now what makes it so difficult, as the plan makes perfect sense on a map. But it's just that there is no platform-level signage whatsoever. The first thing I found was a completely empty footbridge. There was a small symbol on it that I guessed meant "emergency exit" but which might not have done. So I turned back and blundered into an escalator, which also had zero signage associated with it. Somehow I appeared in a long corridor with all the platforms on it. At this point I had a choice - did I want the 16.03 to Sheffield or the 16.07 replacement bus from "outside TK Maxx" to Coleshill Parkway? I figured trying to find an exit, let alone the correct one, would be a stupid idea and so got to play a game called "Standing All The Way To Derby".

I haven't used Edinburgh Waverley since I was about nine but I certainly don't recall it being anywhere near so bad. Though maybe that's the next trip settled...
 
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Bletchleyite

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yorksrob said:
Each to their own I suppose. Reading looks too much like a spaceship to me. I far preferred the old one (maybe with a wider footbridge and some extra platforms).
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Old Reading was a bit more British, though the "roundhouse" was unpleasantly 1990s. New Reading looks distinctly Swiss, I reckon, though does have the typical British issue of being a bit mucky and rusted because we like building nice things in the UK and not maintaining them, unlike the Swiss.
 
yorksrob

yorksrob

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Bletchleyite said:
Old Reading was a bit more British, though the "roundhouse" was unpleasantly 1990s. New Reading looks distinctly Swiss, I reckon, though does have the typical British issue of being a bit mucky and rusted because we like building nice things in the UK and not maintaining them, unlike the Swiss.
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Yes, we could do with painting things more often.
 
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The Pelican

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London bridge switched from 9 terminal platforms and 6 through platforms to 9 through platforms and 6 terminus platforms- so although the station site didn't enlarge much, it had lots of space to add through platforms.
 
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cats_five

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When I used New Street, many years ago, what I wanted to see on the main indicator, was what platform for the first train to International.

PS I remember the time two XC trains left for Edinburgh at the same time, the WCML one arriving before the via Leeds train, and a woman in the carriage had a ticket for the other one and would be late...
 
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S

sprunt

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DarloRich said:
They are actually both very constrained sites. You cant easily widen the site at London Bridge either.
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There was clearly enough space to do everything they wanted to given that the footprint of the station doesn't fill the footprint of the buildings that were demolished to allow the extension.
 
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