New Street s new beginning

摘要

Birmingham New Street will complete a ￡600M overhaul next autumn, providing significant added passenger capacity and a more attractive station in which to spend time. Britain's busiest railway station outside of London and the country's most well used interchange is Birmingham's New Street, frequented by 140,000 passengers daily and where a train arrives or departs every 37 seconds. It is said that from New Street passengers can reach 95% of UK stations with no more than one change of train. Certainly a convenient place to find yourself but until now not a very pleasant one according to Network Rail's Chris Montgomery who is leading a project to transform the station, which completes in September. "The first impression many people have of Birmingham if they arrive by train is of a horrible, dark, dingy concrete box that is New Street station," he says. "It carries more than twice the number of people it was designed for, is no longer fit for purpose and finding your way around can be awful.