Video: Five years construction in five minutes

Network Rail has released a timelapse video to mark the one-year anniversary of the opening of Birmingham New Street station.

The video condenses five years of the station’s transformation into five minutes and highlights various construction milestones reached along the way.

The five-year £750M redevelopment project fully opened to the 170,000 daily passengers on 20 September 2015. Grand Central, the shopping and dining hub situated above the station, opened a few days later on 24 September.

The revamped station saw the creation of a huge passenger concourse, five times the size of London Euston’s, which is overlooked by the new atrium roof that floods the concourse with natural light.

The station’s platforms are now brighter and more minimalist, allowing for greater and easier passenger movement. Entrances to the city centre have also been improved.

New Street Station also features 40 shops at concourse level, with the Grand Central shopping and dining hub situated above it, which includes one of the largest John Lewis department stores in the country.

The original station was only designed to cope with 60,000 a day when it was last rebuilt in the 1960s. The redeveloped station can now cope with up to 300,000 visitors a day.

It is the busiest station outside the capital and is the busiest interchange station in the UK with a train leaving the station every 37 seconds.

Patrick Power, Network Rail’s station manager at Birmingham New Street, commented: “This has been a fantastic year for Birmingham and our station as a whole. Seeing passengers’ faces when they first walked into the new concourse and station for the first time was a real highlight and that look of surprise and being wowed by what they see still happens as more and more people use the station every day.

“The redevelopment has visibly given our city a lift and we now have a station everyone can be proud of. We continue to do all we can to make it even better so that passengers and visitors to the city get the best possible impression of the railway and Birmingham.”

Speaking at the opening of Birmingham New Station, Mark Carne, chief executive of Network Rail, said the station was at the “heart” of the rail network, describing the transformation as “stunning”.

He commented: “The station is now bigger, brighter and better able to meet the needs of the growing number of people who use it each day.

“As Britain’s second city, Birmingham deserves a station of this calibre and, along with Grand Central, the investment we have made will help support the local economy and regenerate large parts of city centre.

Mr Carne described undertaking the redevelopment whilst attempting to minimise the impact on passengers’ journeys as a “major challenge” that he was proud to have achieved.

He said: “That’s a significant achievement for everyone who has helped build this fantastic new station of which they, and all of Birmingham, can be very proud indeed.”

The area surrounding the station is also being regenerated, with investment being made in new shops, bars and restaurants. Planning permission has also been granted for the creation of a 26-storey hotel near the station’s Southside entrance.

Work is still ongoing on the transformation, as work continues on the redevelopment of the station’s 12 platforms. Platform 11 will be the last to be completed and will reopen to passengers in mid-October.

Work on the southern hub that will provide an exit-only feature to the station giving direct access to Hill Street from the Navigation Street footbridge will also be finished by the end of October.

A year on and Network Rail research shows that New Street station currently enjoys an 88% passenger satisfaction rate – a record high for the station.

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