Map To The Stars

Last week I went to see Robert, because I'm a gracious person and sometimes you have to bring joy to the little people.  We were heading into town from Aigburth station and I spotted something on the line diagram on the platform:

Do you see it?  Computer, zoom and enhance.

The map has been printed with Liverpool Baltic station already on it.  According to Robert the sticker covering it keeps being ripped off, an act of vandalism I absolutely support.  A two minute journey time from Central seems about right for an inner city service, and has me eyeing that four minute gap between Moorfields and Sandhills that happens to pass the new Everton stadium.  This comes as the planning application for the station was lodged with the council.  All wonderful news, apart from the fact that they've still not built it, which is the main annoyance.  Get on with it!

Gleaming The Tube

Yesterday Merseytravel sent out a press release about Baltic station.  No, they're not finally building it, don't be silly.  They were in fact beginning a consultation process to get people's opinions on the new design and get on with it.  This is why there's a housing crisis in this country; everything takes twenty years to build because they're consulting and engaging with stakeholders and get on with it.  Is there anyone who thinks this station is a bad idea?  No.  Is there anyone going to be disturbed by building work?  No; it's all industrial units and commercial properties around there, apart from the people who live in the flats further down Parliament Street, and they literally overlook a six lane highway.  Is there anyone whose life is going to be made fundamentally worse by this station?  No.  Get.  On.  With.  It.

Anyway, along with the consultation they released some fancy new CGI representations of what it'll look like.  As a reminder, this is what they produced as indicative of the design:

The new look is ever so slightly different.

Suddenly it's bronze.  Suddenly there's artwork and a pedestrianised square.  Let's take a look from above, shall we?

Incredible.  This is what a station in the centre of a major city should look like.  It should impress and invite you in.  It should declare its presence.  It should be large and accommodating.  It needs to cope with increasing development.

Inside we've got a ticket hall - with a ticket office! - that's in nice earth tones, natural light, fully accessible.  Plenty of gates, which I hope are future proofed to accept e-tickets when Merseyrail finally gets round to introducing them sometime in 2077.  

Platform level isn't quite as impressive - they've limited space to work with I guess.  Robert pointed out that the departure board has Ormskirk listed as a destination, which may be a designer getting overambitious, or may be an indication of future services.  Certainly it doesn't matter so much if the platforms are a little narrow if you've got eight trains an hour streaming through to sweep up the crowds.  There are still escalators, too.

The accompanying press release giveth and taketh away.  The consultation is starting in June, and promises a VR walkthrough, but it also says they're hoping to get spades in the ground in 2025.  That'll give an opening date of 2027, ish, which is frankly ridiculous.  The first time I wrote about reopening St James station on here was in 2008: sixteen years later and all we've got to show for it is some designs that solely exist in a computer at Mann Island.  I'm also cynical enough to imagine that all that fancy wood and bronze and art will be value engineered out of the project long before it's built.  Until it's actually under construction I'll be waiting for the news that the clock tower has been cancelled and there aren't any ticket offices and actually would you mind lowering yourself down onto the platform with a rope and pulley and then we don't have to build any stairs at all?  Thanks.

The press release also mentions that My Close Personal Friend Steve Rotherham has plans for three more stations: Woodchurch on the Wirral, Carr Mill in St Helens and Daresbury in Halton, "with work to begin on all three by the end of the decade".  Wow, stop, you're really spoiling us.  No mention of anything to serve the new huge Everton stadium at Bramley Moore Dock, even though the Northern Line passes within half a kilometre of it; no further info on how and when they're going to sort out Liverpool Central.  

Part of this is political; the press release says when all they're completed there will be a new station in every Liverpool City Region borough (Headbolt Lane in Knowsley and Maghull North in Sefton having already opened).  Never mind farming out crumbs to the provinces, Steve-o, build what's needed.  I wish there was ambition in our regional mayors.  I wish they were standing there and promising genuinely transformative projects - new lines, new ways of getting about, opening up public transport to everyone.  Instead they're colouring in the margins, working with what we've got, making do.  It's so depressing.

Still: lovely pictures.  Now get on with it.

Giving Headbolt

The novelty of the new trains hasn't worn off yet.  Admittedly, part of that is because there's still a very good chance that you'll end up on one of the old ones; the rollout hasn't exactly been speedy.  But still, it's cheering to be stood on a platform and see people's faces literally light up when that white M bursts out of the tunnel.  

I was finally heading out to Merseyrail's newest station, Headbolt Lane.  This was actually my second try at getting to it.  The first, with Robert, had been foiled by a broken down train on the Ormskirk line which caused ripples of uselessness throughout the network.  Our first train was cancelled, then our second vanished from the board, and we were told to simply get on the next train and change at Sandhills.  This was more of a measure to get us off the busy platform at Central as once we got to Sandhills there was no sign of a train and there was a vague muttering about bus replacements.  We managed to get a train back into town where we were forced to console ourselves.

Real suffering, I'm sure you'll agree.

I was in town with a little time to spare before I met someone so I decided it was an opportune time to go out to the new end of the line.  I hopped on board and found my new favourite seat.  One thing I was sad to lose with the retirement of the 507/508s was the little sideways seat, tucked behind the banks of four; as a frequent sole traveller I liked sitting somewhere I wouldn't be forced to be sociable or close to other human beings.  Fortunately the new 777s have a similar seat which I nipped straight into.

(Before someone pops up in the comments, no, this wasn't 777 007, as pictured above; I have no idea what number it was.  I was just pleased to see the 007 train, which Merseyrail are welcome to name after me any time).

The journey was smooth and unproblematic.  The wifi worked, which is the first time that's ever happened for me on one of the new trains.  We passed through Sandhills and Kirkdale, and then took the branch to Rice Lane.  One curiosity is that the automated announcement says "the next station stop" - "The next station stop is Rice Lane.  The next station stop is Fazakerley."  The scrolling displays, meanwhile, only say "stop".  I'd have gone with station, myself, what with them being actual stations.  

Kirkby was just another station now, though still with one platform.  Perhaps to keep costs down, perhaps because of the bridge over the M57, the extension hasn't also involved a doubling of the line.  The new track is double, but the old third rail remains as a single.  I listened out for any noises as we switched from electric to battery power, similar to when the pantograph is lowered and raised at City Thameslink, but there wasn't anything.  Instead we simply slid out of the station and on the last few hundred yards to the terminus.

Headbolt Lane was built for the future.  It's got plenty of space to circulate.  Its two platforms are carefully aligned with the Northern service to Wigan so that it can be extended if necessary, perhaps even to Skelmersdale now there's all that money swimming around after the cancellation of HS2 (lol not really).  If the battery trains are a success, perhaps they can go all the way to the end of the line, or at least as far as poor Rainford, which is technically under Merseytravel's jurisdiction but gets none of the advantages.  In the meantime, a fence has been put up between the Merseyrail and Northern sections of the station.

Note, by the way, the Metro rather than Merseyrail branding.  This has been slowly creeping out across the network but nobody seems to have acknowledged it.  I first spotted it outside Rice Lane station back in March, and the new trains also have the same logo.  I assume this is like when the Elizabeth Line wasn't finished, so the lines taken over by Crossrail were branded "TfL Rail" so they didn't tarnish the brand.  Presumably once it's all 777s, all the time, there will be a big comprehensive relaunch and Merseyrail will be retired.

Outside the station, it's still chaotic.  The main contractor went bust during the build (also jeopardising Anfield's new stand) so the car park is a mess of no tarmac and diggers.  The bus exchange is sort of finished, but I didn't see any buses actually using it.  

There's also a new station building.  Maghull North, the previous newest station, was a pretty dull affair, little more than a conservatory with a ticket office in it.  On the other hand Ainsdale, which got a comprehensive rebuild five years ago, is a triumph.  

Headbolt Lane is a compromise between the two.  It's a beast of a building.  It's open and welcoming, and it has plenty of space and light.

Inside there's seating and toilets and a ticket office with actual people in it, plus a machine for socially awkward losers like me who don't like talking to humans.  It's all very efficient, although it's not exactly inspiring.  The design is perfunctory but - elephant in the room - in this part of Merseyside, it's bound to be constructed for security above all else.  No point in building an elaborate glass chandelier if the local scallies are going to use it for target practice.

I hope they won't.  A big part of building this station out here on the fringe of the network is bringing opportunity to an area that didn't have so much before.  Headbolt Lane to Liverpool Central is now a twenty minute direct journey; the number 20 bus, which goes from County Road nearby, takes roughly fifty minutes to reach Whitechapel in the city centre.  That'll help the residents of an area where car ownership is incredibly low get new job prospects and travel options.  

I think I'll have to come back again when the station is properly finished.  See it in its glory; find that totem sign out front.  In the meantime, I've once again completed the Merseyrail map.  Now crack on with Baltic, will you?

The Baltic State

When I moved to the northwest in 1995, I would get the train from Ormskirk into Liverpool.  The Merseyrail map had, down near the bottom of the Wirral Line: Eastham Rake - Under Construction.

A couple of years later, the map was updated again, and there were two new Merseyrail stations stations marked as Under Construction: Conway Park and Brunswick, plus Wavertree Technology Park on the City Lines.

It meant that I got the impression that Liverpool's railway network was a constantly developing hotbed of excitement.  It turned out this wasn't true.  However, we do seem to be in the middle of another purple patch of new station thrills.  Maghull North opened a couple of years ago, Headbolt Lane is under construction, and the Skem and Borderlands extensions are glacially progressing.  And then we got some news about the new city station, on the site of the long closed St James.  A consultation about the name, plus a whizzy fly through video.

My first impression?  Wow.  A station fan in the United Kingdom has a certain in-built sense of disappointment.  We're used to being promised a fancy new line with beautiful architecture then getting a single stub with a bus shelter on a platform.  We're used to getting promised a massive high speed railway that will transform the nation then getting one branch lopped off and a new station in Manchester that is badly designed.  

Now all this is caveated with the design is not yet finalised and this video is indicative but that's a proper station.  I had been afraid that we would get a repeat of the rather disappointing glasshouses that have shown up at Maghull North and Headbolt Lane.  They're little triangular sheds that house the ticket hall and nothing more.  Here, Merseytravel and the Liverpool City Region authority have made a large, spacious building.

This is, after all, a city centre station.  More than that, it's probably the first station to be proposed that will encourage travel within the centre.  At the moment, few people would get a Merseyrail train from, say, Moorfields to Central; by the time you work your way from the surface to the platform, ride the train, then come back up, you may as well have walked.  

The new station, however, is in a spot that is just that bit too far to walk.  There's a reason why the Baltic has been slow to develop along with the rest of the city - it's too isolated away from the rest of the city centre.  It's almost a mile from Central on foot, and that's a walking route along busy roads and dodgy backstreets.  Putting a new station in this spot would open up travel for just one or two stops in a way that doesn't currently exist.  

The inclusion of a cycle hub adds real value to the site, making it a public transport interchange on a few levels.  Presumably they'll also stick in a spot to hire those whizzy e-scooters that are constantly being driven on the pavement all over Liverpool.  With any luck they'll also tame the roads around the station - Parliament Street is six lanes here; not exactly a pedestrian and cycle friendly environment.  

Head inside and you can buy tickets for CalTrain, San Francisco's commuter rail network, which is very handy I'm sure you'll agree.  Of course I'm joking; the CGI used is rudimentary but does the job, and you just have to ignore the blank unstaring faces of the commuters.  There's also a cafe in the ticket hall, with some tables set outside, which I'm sure will definitely happen.

It was when the flythrough went through the ticket barriers that I realised Merseyrail were taking this station seriously.  The station has escalators.  Escalators are expensive to install and maintain and so often get value engineered away - Conway Park lost its escalators before it was built and ended up with lifts only.  A station in a city centre should absolutely have escalators.  You want to whizz people to and from the platform as quickly as possible.  

At platform level, there's a pleasing mix of old and new, the 150 year old cutting walls complemented by new steel and glass inserts.  It's a bit like Liverpool South Parkway, the last really big project Merseytravel dealt with, right down to the over-track waiting area.  

The final piece of the puzzle is what to call it.  There are three options:

• Liverpool Baltic
• Liverpool Parliament Street
• Liverpool Riverside

Leaving aside the pointless "Liverpool" prefix (which will probably only be used in official documents, like how the underground station is Lime Street on the trackside signs and maps but Liverpool Lime Street everywhere else), it's clear that these names aren't equal.  We can rule out "Riverside" right now, because it's a daft suggestion, and the station's nowhere near the river.  Both James Street and Brunswick are much closer to the Mersey and you don't want tourists getting off at Riverside station looking for the Albert Dock.  "Parliament Street" is geographically accurate, but incredibly dull - naming a station after the road it's on is the laziest possible solution.  Also, Parliament Street becomes Upper Parliament Street at this junction, and Upper Parliament Street is a mile long; if you didn't know too much about Liverpool and wanted to get to the Women's Hospital you might get off at Parliament Street station and then face a very long walk.

So it's Baltic, really, the name that the station has been informally referred to for years, the name that describes the area it's in, the name that has fashionable cachet.  Even if the public voted for Riverside I suspect there'd be a Blue Peter-style fudging of the results to get the name the authority wants.

To summarise: this is a great proposal that could transform the city centre completely.  Please build it right now.  Thanks.

You can vote for the new station name here.  Please vote Baltic.