Map! Rant (Temporary Version)

Hamilton Square's been back in the news this week.  The works there have exposed some of the fine Victorian tile work - which will sadly be covered up again with new cladding - and also a load of old posters.  Many of these seem to be from the 50s and 60s.  (It would be remiss of me not to point out the one that says New Brighton is "gay").  You can view an excellent gallery of the rediscovered posters at the Echo website - here.  Or, if you'd prefer, here's a badly filmed video of the station done by me through a train window yesterday.

Please send my Oscar to the usual address.

The continuing closure of the station has resulted in a new, temporary version of the Merseyrail map.  My heart sinks just typing those words.  Merseytravel produce some fine display materials and some excellent posters, but for some reason, when it comes to the network map, they always fail.  It's as though they assign the work experience boy to those jobs, even though the map is one of the most important pieces of artwork they produce.

The closure of Hamilton Square is more inconvenient to passengers than the closure of one of the Liverpool underground stations.  Hamilton Square is at the heart of its own district, separate to the rest of Birkenhead.  There are Council offices, the Wirral's Magistrates Court, a police station.  A significant legal centre has grown up in the area.  There's a college nearby, not to mention the bus and ferry termini at Woodside.  In addition, Hamilton Square is the point where the Wirral Line splits north to the New Brighton and West Kirby lines and south to the Chester and Ellesmere Port lines.

Merseytravel have provided a bus service which travels between Conway Park (on the West Kirby line), Birkenhead Central (on the Chester line) and the Hamilton Square district to enable as many journeys as possible to continue uninterrupted.  The Merseyrail map needed to be adjusted to show both the closure of Hamilton Square and the alternative bus service.  This is how they did it.

That's not right.  In fact, that's so wrong, it actually hurts.

Here's a few basic rules of railway map design.  A solid line indicates a regular service.  A broken line shows an irregular or interrupted service.  A circle indicates an interchange between train services.  These are rules that have been established, at least since Harry Beck's Tube diagram in 1931, and probably before.

This map violates those rules.  The broken lines seem to say that Wirral Line services terminate at one of the three stations in Birkenhead town centre: Hamilton Square, Conway Park, or Birkenhead Central.  The broken lines hint at their former paths, but, for some reason, they can't go that way.  Your journey will be inconvenienced in some way.  The new map implies that there was a direct Conway Park-Birkenhead Central service, which there wasn't.  And Hamilton Square has exactly the same symbol as the open interchange stations.

Yes, there's a big green box at the bottom of the map saying Hamilton Square is closed.  But it's at the bottom of the map.  It's near Chester, in the spot that used to tell you about the bus service into Chester city centre.  It's not near Hamilton Square.  There's not even an asterisk on Hamilton Square to show that there might be something unusual going on.

Contrast with a similar situation in London.  At the moment, Embankment station on the Underground is undergoing escalator maintenance.  The escalators there are the only way to reach the deep level Bakerloo and Northern platforms, so the works mean those lines are no longer accessible.  Here's how TfL handled the change on their map:

It's abundantly clear what's happened there.  The brown Bakerloo and black Northern lines continue uninterrupted to Waterloo from Charing Cross.  The District and Circle lines at Embankment (which remain open) are still on the map.  And a dagger next to the Embankment station name shows you that there is something unusual about that station, and so you should refer to the box at the bottom for further information.  It's simple.  In fact, Merseytravel had it even simpler, because they didn't have the complication of only half the station being open.  Yet they managed to hash it up quite royally.

Here's what I would have done.  Now bear in mind: all I have to work with is MS Paint and my own clunky fists.  I don't have access to Photoshop and years of training and artistic skill.  So this is the best I could come up with, but it shows the principle.

The Wirral Line remains unmolested, so you can still take a train straight into Liverpool city centre.  Hamilton Square's circle is removed from the line completely, and an asterisk guides you to a key at the bottom of the map.  And the purple line shows the bus services, including the stop at Hamilton Square.  It's not perfect, of course - I had to get rid of the large BIRKENHEAD caption, and the purple line shouldn't go through the station name - but I repeat: I am not a trained graphic designer.  That revision shows there's something odd going on but most of your train journeys will be unaffected, and there's a bus route for those you who are affected.  (You could possibly add the ferry in as well, given that it effectively replicates the James Street-Hamilton Square portion of the line, but that would probably be over egging the pudding).

It's not difficult.  It just requires a little bit of thought from the designers at Mann Island.  They need to put themselves in the mind of an infrequent traveller, a foreign tourist who wants to get from Liverpool to Chester to visit the Walls and wants to know the quickest, easiest way of doing it.  I'd be put off travelling on the Wirral Line by that dotted section if I didn't know better.  It hints at hassle that doesn't exist.

Please, Merseytravel.  Try harder.

Goodbye To All That

If you want to use Hamilton Square station today, tough.  It's closed.  It's closed for at least six months, possibly more - Merseyrail are being vague about a specific opening date.  The reason?  It's time for Hamilton Square to lose all its 1970s trappings and start to look a bit more 21st Century.

I headed underground on Friday to have one last poke around the station before it's refurbished.  I wanted to take some pictures and preserve how it looked in its last days.

I did this because I'm massively two-faced and stupidly romantic.  When the new look Liverpool Central was unveiled, back in 2012, I was euphoric.  It was everything I wanted - clean, modern, efficient.  It updated the tired surfaces and made them fresh.

Familiarity has bred contempt.  As James Street and Lime Street undergrounds succumbed to the makeover, I began to feel affection for the original Merseyrail styling.  Brown and yellow and metal.  Harsh fluorescent lighting and rubber floors.

Of course it looks tired.  The finishes are literally as old as I am, both of us having been birthed in 1977.  We've both seen better days and could do with a nip and tuck to bring us back up to our fighting weight.  That's a given.

This is the future from forty years ago.  The designers did their very best to make the stations on the Loop tough and resilient but also attractive.  And they largely succeeded.  The off-yellow panels are a bit chipped, but they're still in one piece.  The tiles are stained and cracked but they could be rescued with a little care.

It's just dated, that's all.  And as I found on my trip down the Victoria Line in London, dated isn't necessarily bad.  It has its own charm.  It needs to be treated with sympathy and affection.

I headed down to the platform.  That's where the most famous part of the Merseyrail look is - those moulded brown plastic seats.  Uniform, repetitive, straight off a production line.

No-one would pick brown for a tunnel these days.  Far too dark and oppressive.  It's even worse on the Liverpool/Chester platforms, where they combine with the black of the tunnel and the tracks to make a cave like space.

Even the bright fluorescents above can't disguise the fact that they're black holes.  They're also pockmarked with the scratches of a thousand handbag clasps and belt scratches and bored teenagers with a compass.  The bin units, such a good idea until the IRA started leaving bombs in them, provide a place to lean but not to get comfortable.

But I'll miss them, dammit.  They're so distinctively Merseyrail.  They look like no other railway system in Britain.  The new seats in Central and James Street and Lime Street; they've been bought out of a furniture catalogue, the same one the Underground buys its benches from.  I've seen them before.

Hamilton Square will always be a bit of a mess.  It's a 19th century railway station with a load of modern features clamped untidily on it.  There are steep narrow staircases and little used side doors and even a closed urinal on one of the platforms.

It's all part of the station's charm.  That'll still remain, I hope, when the white walls come in.  I'd hate Hamilton Square to lose all of its personality in the refurb.  Look at the new, utterly bland and forgettable subway beneath Lime Street to see how not to do this sort of thing.

So basically I want it both ways.  I want Merseyrail to be modern and attractive.  I want it to look like a 21st century transport network.  I want new trains and information screens and travelators and holographic adverts that go "WOOO" as you walk past.

But I also want the stations to look just the same, and to retain that slightly grubby, dated, old-fashioned look about them.  Is that really too much to ask?

Of course it is.  I'm just being stupidly nostalgic.  Ask any commuter which they'd prefer, the current Hamilton Square or the future one, and 99% will plump for the new one.  They're right.  I'll just look to Moorfields - due for its makeover in 2015 - and treasure it.  You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.

A Festive Intervention

Inside Merseyrail HQ:

"It's Christmas!  Let's put some trees on the stations."

"What a lovely idea.  I'll get right on it."

The doors swing open, and the Colour Tsars burst in, wielding yellow spray guns.  "We've heard you want to put something into a Merseyrail station.  What colour will this tree be?" they demand.

"It's a tree, so it'll be green."

The Colour Tsars mull this over.  "I suppose we'll let that one past.  What about the decorations?"

"Bright colours of course!  Red, blue, silver, gold."

They shake their head.  "Sorry, we can't allow that.  Christmassy colours?  Are you mad?  This is Merseyrail.  We have standards to maintain.  Yellow and grey and black standards.  Nothing - not even celebrating the birth of Jesus - can interrupt this."

"That'll do."

Travel Advice

This weekend, the Wirral loop under the city centre is going to be closed.  It's to help with the works at Liverpool Central, so presumably they're up to something particularly exciting - is it too much to hope that we'll see some of the new cladding come Monday?

It does mean that James Street becomes the start and finish for the Wirral Line, giving us a rare opportunity to use Platform 2.  This is the old Liverpool bound platform, left over from before the Loop was built, and is probably the most interesting one on the network - not just because it was untouched by the 1970s refurbishments.

For this weekend only you can get up close to Dream Passage, Tim Chalk and Paul Grime's 1992 artwork.  This fascinating piece regularly catches passengers attention from the opposite platform, so you really shouldn't miss the chance to see it properly.  It's a fantastic work that rewards close examination - it's full of quirky details and ideas.  I got a good look back in 2009, when Network Rail were upgrading the Loop's track, and it was great.

Do yourself a favour and get on the train this weekend to have a look.  You'll have to buy a ticket to get down there, but for £2.80 you can have a good nose at a piece of rarely seen artwork, ride a Merseyrail train, and cross under the river and back - not bad value.  You could even treat yourself to a coffee and a sandwich at one of the lovely cafes at Hamilton Square (try Station, next door, or Home in the Ferry Terminal).  Make a day of it.

The King Is Dead

Lay out the lilies; shed a sad tear. He is no more.

For what's seemed like Millennia Paul McKenna has hung over the Chester platform at Hamilton Square. His book aimed at boosting your confidence through pseudo science (with a free CD) has been plugged on a poster for so long there have been whispers about devilry at work. Perhaps the former Chiltern Radio DJ had used his hypnotic powers to enslave someone at Rail House, ensuring that his poster remained long after all others died. While every other campaign withered and perished, replaced by a different push for the Mersey Ferries or the Young Person's Railcard, Paul carried on. His blank eyes stared. He WILL give you confidence. And perhaps feel you up while you're under.

No more. Paul McKenna's reign of hypnotic terror has ended.

Now we have a builder doing the 100 metre hurdles. Yes, it's for the Olympics, along with everything else in the country at the moment, but I welcome it. That man in the 2012 t-shirt represents freedom from tyranny. An escape from the yolk of a madman with a pocket watch and a weirdly soothing voice. We're free. FREE.

(The ad for cancer insurance is still there though).

Closure

Sadface.

It seems appropriate that my final journey started underground.  As you might remember from my forthcoming children's series, Hamilton Square is always feeling sad that it doesn't get to hang out with the cool kids; it's nice that I got to include it on this auspicious occasion.

Yep, this is the story of how I finished off the Merseyrail map.  Accompanying me, for the first time in ages, was the Bf.  He wanted to be there for this important moment, even though he never even reads the blog (he's not a big reader).  Hopefully - hopefully - there would be people at James Street to join in too.

Obviously I was terrified no-one else would turn up.  The Bf tried to console me, saying that at least he would be there, and wasn't he the most important person anyway?  Which shows that you can be with someone for fifteen years and they can still not know you at all.  I can see him any day of the week.

I wasn't disappointed.  Yep, there were people ready to join me on the trip.  Six people, which is actually a nice amount to have - it's enough that you can chat to everyone, not too many, and enough to momentarily boost your ego.  Who were these fellow travellers?

From left: Gareth, Darrell, Lorna (doing her best to hide), Jamie, Robert and another Jamie.  Introductions were done, photo taken, station collected, and so it was into the lift and off to catch a train.  (Incidentally, the Bf was behind the camera, and therefore is in none of these shots; part of my plan to keep him as the Maris Crane of this blog).

Here's what happened.  I was so busy being relieved that people showed up at all, and trying to keep things light and amusing, that I completely forgot where I was going.  I just instinctively wandered out of the lift and straight to the Wirral bound platform, as though I was going home.  Even more weirdly, everyone followed me.   It was only once we were stood on the platform itself that it was gently pointed out to me that we were going the wrong bloody way.  Not the best of starts.

We scurried back up the stairs, ignoring Robert's constant complaints about having a sore knee, and made our way through the labyrinth of corridors to the Loop platform.  Unsurprisingly we were the only people there.  I don't know why more people don't use it to get back to the Wirral - it only adds an extra five minutes or so to your journey, but it means you're much more likely to get a seat home than if you board after the train's been everywhere else in the city centre.

A quick scoot under the city streets and we were out at Moorfields.  This was, of course, the station in the very first Merseytart trip, so coming back gave the whole project a circular feel - a loop, if you will (do you see what I did there?).  We ignored the homeless man crouched at the foot of the escalators, hacking into his glove, and collected the station sign.

It was time to walk to the next station, Lime Street (lower level).  The main line station was collected during that embarrassing time when I was in the Liverpool Echo, in the only example of professional photography on this website; the underground station remained uncollected.  Ignoring Robert's continued whines about his sore knee, we marched across town via the Queen Square bus terminal.  It really was a beautiful day, one of those great Spring moments where there's enough sun for it to be pleasant and not sweaty.  The city centre was throbbing, probably still on a high after the National, and we mixed and merged with happy, laughing Scousers.  Damn, but I love this city.

I'd decided that we'd get our photos outside the St George's Hall entrance to the station, so we'd be in the shadow of one of the finest Liverpool icons.  There were two pensioners already waiting there, though what for, I have no idea; I like to imagine they were Merseytart groupies, just here to catch a glimpse of their idol, and possibly touch the hem of my garment.  Or maybe they were just waiting for a lift home.

And so, to the final section of the Loop, and Liverpool Central.  I didn't quite know what to feel as we stepped off the train.  The weird thing is, it was so familiar, it didn't feel special; I was here only last Thursday, with my friend Jennie, so it wasn't like I was stepping into a new world.  It was the same old,  knackered round the edges Central.  But as we rose up the escalators, it started to dawn on me.  That was it.  That was all of it over and done with.

There was no fanfare, no fireworks, no dancing girls to greet us.  It was just another day at the busy station.  There were crash barriers piled up against one wall, not to hold back the screaming fans, but a relic of the Aintree traffic.  We whisked through the gates and gathered in the shopping centre for the final picture.  (I decided that as that was the entrance to the station proper, that should be the location of the shot).

Cheese!

Nice to see that Jamie was overcome with emotion right there at the end.  Not that Jamie, the other one.

How do you close off such an experience?  How else: with alcohol (except for Darrell, who was still recovering from an extensive drinking session the night before and was sticking to water).  We headed up Bold Street to Bier, the great little alehouse tucked into Newington, and ordered pints of imaginatively titled beers.  The conversation swept round a variety of weird topics (Gus Honeybun!  Upgrading Doctor Who to Blu-Ray!  Fag haggery!  Hooch vs Two Dogs!) but it was friendly, convivial, fun.

As I sat there I realised: five years ago, I didn't know any of these people.  Well, obviously I knew the Bf, and I used to work with Lorna years back, but we'd lost touch.  Everyone else I knew just because of this blog.  We'd become friends - yes, friends - just because I'd looked at a Merseyrail map and thought "I'd like to go to all of those stations one day."  The Internet is a wonderful thing.  People are pretty wonderful too.

(Yes, I've just got an iPhone, so yes, I have Instagram, so yes, I had to take a couple of pretentious looking pics.)

I slipped to the loo and changed into the t-shirt Jamie had brought me (not that one, the other Jamie).  Emblazoned with the 1970s Merseyrail picture, it also had the dates of the whole blog on it: 17 June 2007 through to 15 April 2012.  It was a bit like wearing your own obituary.  He gave me some Merseyrail flip-flops as well.  I didn't put those on, because the toilet floor was suffering from a flood.

So, thank you.  Thank you to everyone who came - Darrell, Lorna, Robert, Jamie, Gareth, Jamie and obviously, the Bf.  Thank you to everyone who's read this blog over the years.  Thank you for commenting, suggesting, criticising, correcting, laughing and enjoying this project.  Thank you to Merseyrail and Merseytravel for tolerating my eccentricities.

I'm not going anywhere yet; there are a few more closing posts to come, and I've got a trip planned for a couple of weeks time.  But this is undeniably the end of an era.

And thank you again.

For What We Have Lost

After yesterday's post about the new MtoGo, I had a bit of a scour through my archives, and I actually found some photos of some of the old Mersey Bookstalls.  Think of this as the Merseyrail equivalent of those "In Memoriam" videos at the Oscars, only without the embarrassing bits where everyone applauds the famous people and ignores the studio execs.

This was the Lime Street stall.  There was a man on my commute who used to buy a cup of coffee from them every morning.  It came in a polystyrene cup, and I can't help thinking that it all tasted of styrofoam by the time he got up the escalators.

Here's the Moorfields Kiosk, and embarrassingly, it's not a Mersey Bookstall at all.  This area has now been replaced by a false wall and a shuttered area; before the MtoGo opened, they were selling tickets from there.  I wonder if there's a second ticket sales area for busy periods?  It can be annoying when you're queuing for a train ticket and the man in front is only buying a Bounty.

The only platform kiosk was at James Street.  I wouldn't be surprised if this is demolished during the station closure later this year, as it takes up valuable space for people to wait in.  I have never seen this one open, which is a shame, as in my imagination it's a real old-fashioned book store inside; very much like the early days of WH Smith.  Sadly the only periodicals Mersey Bookstalls ever seemed to sell were papers or pornography.

Bonus picture:

What sort of hold does Shelly have over Merseyrail?  James Street was closed for extensive refurbishment, but for some reason, they didn't build an MtoGo here.  Instead, Shelly's News and Food have continued to keep passengers in Pepsi Max.  Is she Bart Schmeink's secret daughter?  Does she know about Maarten Spaargaren's first wife in the attic?  Are there corpses buried under the ticket hall that someone at Rail House didn't want uncovering?  The public must be told.

Not pictured are the stands at Liverpool Central and Hamilton Square.  I didn't take pictures of them because that was back in the days when I would be embarrassed about waving my snapper around in a train station.  I'm over that now.

Down by the Riverside

You wouldn't know it to look at it, but Woodside in Birkenhead was once a thriving, hectic spot.  The square of land by the river used to host a multitude of transportation options, local and national, land and seagoing.

It's all very different now.  I headed down there on a crisp Thursday morning to have a look round.  Of course, Hamilton Square is still there.  At that time of the morning it was regularly pumping out commuters, dishing them out onto the street like a suited man vending machine.  It's a lovely station, Victorian enough to pique your interest, but modern enough to be efficient.

The underground station used to have a mainline neighbour, Birkenhead Woodside.  This impressive terminus was sited close by, and carried mainline trains to Chester and beyond - including daily services to London Paddington.  The trains tunnelled under the town, via a route I followed a couple of months ago, and emerged in a cutting below Church Street.  The tunnel entrance, now bricked up, is still visible:

It looks strangely sinister there, like the entrance to a troll's hole.  If you'd stood on the other side of the bridge fifty years ago, you'd have seen directly into the rear of Woodside station, with the platforms poking out of a twin-barrelled iron roof.  Today, you see this:

The former grand terminus was completely demolished in the sixties.  Dr Beeching - him again - decided that if people from the Wirral wanted to go anywhere beyond their borders, they could cross the river to Lime Street.  Mainline services were pulled out completely, while the local trains were cut back to Rock Ferry.  Now the tunnel's throat has become a bus parking area - a distinctly ignominious replacement.

There's still a tiny hint of the former grand terminus in the wall along Chester Street, the only part of the station that still remains.  The carved ornaments at the top are far grander than you'd expect for a place for bus drivers to have a fag.

The station used to go right down to the riverside, with a side entrance used for access to the ferry terminal.  Famously, this was a mistake; the railway company wanted the ferry companies to build their termini on the south side of the station, where there was a grand entrance and fancy waiting rooms.  The ferry companies refused to comply, though, so a minor back entrance became the way in and out of Woodside.  A bit embarrassing.

I stood by the Mersey Ferries building and tried to imagine what the station must have been like.  It's actually quite difficult to picture a bustling station filled with steam and passengers when you're staring at a couple of tedious red brick office blocks.

That's the HQ of the Child Support Agency, with the local Land Registry offices next door.  Not exactly the most prestigious tenants.  Wilfred Owen's father had been station manager at Woodside, and I pictured it in its turn of the century heyday, all women in big hats and smart porters.  The luggage would be carried separately to the ferry for shipping across the river, ready for transfer to the liners and hotels in Liverpool.  Moving down to the riverside, I was pleased to see there was a cruise ship docked across the way.  It's always a wonder to stare at the Liverpool skyline.

Passengers getting the Mersey Ferry across to Woodside must be horribly disappointed.  Yes, there's the German submarine at the terminal building, chopped up in three like a giant metal salami, but you don't want to go too far beyond.  The tram terminal is here, a couple of sad little buffers that promise a great deal but don't really deliver.

When Woodside terminal was here, a dozen tram routes also finished in this little square; in fact, I would have been able to have got a tram from here right to the bottom of my road without a change.  A number of Wirral bus routes still end up here, but few passengers ever alight.  Birkenhead has a much better central bus station next to the shops.  It's a step up from the draughty building in the centre of the gyratory here, with nothing in the way of passenger facilities - even the toilets are boarded up.

There's one final piece of railway architecture here.  If you've been paying attention, you'll remember I wrote about the Mersey Railway's pumping house, on Mann Island.  On the Wirral side is its much larger cousin.  (This is in the grand tradition of putting nice, neat little facilities on the Liverpool side and huge ugly ones in Birkenhead; see also anything associated with the Queensway Tunnel).

It looks like a superannuated version of the one across the river - almost as if they were born twins, but one ate way too much fast food growing up.  The pumping facilities are still here, keeping the tunnel safe.  For a while this was opened as a tourist attraction called The Giant Grasshopper after the nickname for the pumping engine.  Calling it that was just setting yourself up for a fall.  "Hey kids!  Let's go and see the Giant Grasshopper!  No, it's not a massive insect, it's a fine piece of Victorian engineering.  Stop crying."

It's not open any more, of course, as the cuts meant Wirral Council couldn't afford to run extravagances like museums and libraries and so on.  Then they voted for a cut in Council Tax.  I despair sometimes.

I followed the tram lines away, through the old entrance to the dock estate.  There are large freight warehouses here, which have been converted into offices.  Is there a more potent symbol of Merseyside decline than a warehouse, by a dock, which used to be occupied by Littlewoods Pools?

On the plus side, the building looks like it's being redeveloped (again).  Which is more than can be said for its close neighbour, the former Pacific Road Arts Centre.  Once the tram terminus, this was made into a performance venue at the turn of the millennium, and hosted music and comedy events.  Naturally, this sort of frivolity can't be tolerated, so the Council closed it down after a dozen years.  The rumour is that they'd decided to pump their money into the rebuilt Floral Pavillion in New Brighton instead, because of course a borough of 300,000 people only needs one arts venue.  Now it's just sitting there, awaiting a sale, while its assets are quietly shipped up the peninsula.

The tram tracks carry on past the new Twelve Quays hub for Wirral Metropolitan College, reminding me that they could actually serve a useful purpose if someone decided to use the trams properly.  Now that Merseytravel have backed out of taking over the line though, you're left to wonder if anyone else will bother.

While the tracks turn left for the Wirral Transport Museum, I turned right, to see the Egerton Bridge.  This is a bascule bridge, one which levered open to allow ships to pass underneath, and which was restored in 1993.  It's a fine piece of dockside architecture.

In what seemed to be an all-too depressing theme, this used to be open as a tourist attraction too, but was closed a few years ago.  Now it's just an over-elaborate road bridge, with its window broken and weeds growing over the steps.

Heading back towards Hamilton Square, I passed the most impressive piece of railway regeneration, the Cheshire Lines Building.  The massive goods warehouse has been sympathetically converted into a top-class office block...

 ...which was then occupied by Wirral Borough Council.  Something something noses something something trough.  It is a lovely building, though.

Which is more than can be said about Woodside in general.  It's just such an ignored district of town.  With Hamilton Square's Grade 1 listed magnificence just moments away, and the ferry and Merseyrail bringing a regular stream of Japanese tourists across, there should be so much more to it than a tram route past a sewage works that only operates weekends.  Part of the problem is that it's a dead district - there are a couple of pubs, including Britain's only pub/barbershop, but that's about it, and hardly anyone lives round here.  I've stood at the bus stops here on a Saturday night and not seen another soul.  Some good quality apartment blocks round here, cheaper than the big city ones across the water, but blessed with that magnificent view, would be a massive boon.  Build that and you could get a few decent restaurants perhaps (though the excellently-named Station, by Hamilton Square, is really good), a couple of cafes, that sort of thing.  The town centre's shifted away from here, down by the precinct, so this needs to have a different offering - a far more exclusive, boutique-y feel perhaps.

There should be some attraction here to get all those Americans taking the famous ferry to spend some cash.  Something better than a giant grasshopper anyway.  An aquarium perhaps, or a proper transport museum (or perhaps a well-funded arts centre).  Birkenhead should be the Gateshead to Liverpool's Newcastle, but the Wirral's far too caught up in its own petty dramas to even bother thinking about that sort of thing.  It might not be a transport hub any more, but it still could be important to the town.