Obstacles to growth of the West Midlands Metro

The West Midlands Metro has been slow to expand. COVID and inflationary pressures have meant funding issues and delays.

In this article:

• The Midland Metro launched in 1999 with only Line One, linking Birmingham and Wolverhampton.
• Network expansion has been slow, with delays on Lines Two and Three due to costs and challenges.
• Despite delays, plans for extensions continue, focusing on funding and infrastructure improvements.

Launched on May 30 1999, the Midland Metro had been talked about for many years. A network of routes was planned by the then West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive, but getting the new lines funded proved more difficult than anyone had thought.

The day the line opened, a special tram carried scores of dignitaries and journalists, and special banners were broken as it passed through the three boroughs it served. Later, there was a celebratory meal at Birmingham’s International Convention Centre, with the event designed to give the first line a good send off and highlight the need for more in the future.

The first serious plans for a Metro had been talked about in the mid-1980s, in a report titled Rapid Transit for the West Midlands. It was an ambitious set of proposals for a £500 million network of ten light rail routes, predominantly running on-street. There were also plans for an underground section through Birmingham city centre. Some of the plans involved converting existing railways into tramways, similar to the approach taken in Manchester.

A bill to build the first line was deposited in Parliament in November 1988. A three-line network was initially planned.

Line One would run between Wolverhampton and Birmingham and would be built on part of the disused trackbed of the old Great Western Main Line, which ran from London’s Paddington through Birmingham Snow Hill into Wolverhampton Low Level station.

Line Two was planned to run from Walsall, through Wednesbury (where it would connect with Line One) and then run to Dudley town centre and on to Brierley Hill, while Line Three would run from Birmingham city centre, through east Birmingham and Chelmsley Wood to Birmingham Airport.

Line One was the first to be built and it was chosen partly because it linked two major cities within the conurbation, but also because it was relatively easy to build, as the vast majority of the old GWR line was still intact. An on-street section was required to access Wolverhampton city centre, with the line terminating at St George’s. At the Birmingham end, trams took over what was Platform 4 of the rebuilt Snow Hill station.

This first foray into modern light rail was built and operated by a consortium called Altram, which was originally a joint venture between Italian train builder Ansaldo and UK construction firm Laing.

Line One cost £145m to build with funding coming from a variety of sources, including the government, Europe and some local contributions.

Later, the biggest bus operator in the region, Travel West Midlands (now National Express West Midlands), was brought into the consortium to operate the tramway.

Getting the rest of the planned network built proved much more difficult than anyone expected.

The West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive, later rebranded Centro, was forced to accept that it wouldn’t be able to attract funding for the rest of the proposed lines, and that’s the way it remained for a further 15 years. In rfesponse, Centro adopted what it called a ‘bite-sized chunks’ approach with extensions of Line One being the priority.

The line was finally extended into Birmingham city centre in December 2015, with trams serving the newly revamped New Street station, which had become part of the Grand Central development. Later, trams reached Centenary Square, close to Birmingham’s new library, and Edgbaston Village in the Five Ways business district.

Around the same time, work began to extend the original route to Wolverhampton railway station. Opened last year, the extension not only provided a direct interchange with trains, but also had a stop at the nearby Wolverhampton bus station. When the extension opened, the existing terminus point at St George’s was closed for refurbishment.

The West Midlands Metro currently has 33 stops, but more will be added soon.

After more than 25 years of planning, part of the original Line Two from Wednesbury to Dudley is currently being built, as is part of Line Three from Birmingham city centre to Digbeth.

Clearly, the grand plans of the past have yet to be realised, and a second ‘bite-sized chunks’ approach has ben taken.

But even building the smaller sections of the two lines hasn’t been easy. Having secured funding for both new lines, recent events have taken their toll.

There have also been issues related to the construction of HS2’s Curzon Street station.

First to start construction was the line from Wednesbury to Dudley. Plans to build to the Merry Hill Shopping Centre and then to Brierley Hill High Street have been put on hold because of rising costs.

Like Line One, this route is being built on the route of an old railway line. In this case the South Staffordshire Railway to Dudley and the Oxford Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway to Merry Hill.

Phase One to Dudley will have nine new stops and will terminate at Flood Street. Construction of the line, costing £619m, began in 2020. It was due to open this year, but it was recently announced that the new section won’t carry its first passengers until 2025.

Anne Shaw, executive director of Transport for West Midlands (TfWM), says: “The construction itself will complete in the spring of next year, and then there’s quite a lot of work to be done to enter into service. Because we’re changing from a single line to a network, there’s a number of weeks in there for our operator to do all the driver training. Safety comes first.”

Progress on building the line has been steady, although Shaw admits that there have still been a number of challenges.

“We’ve inherited an old railway line and have had to fix a number of things that are part of what will support the Metro network as we go forward.”

Some bridges have had to be replaced, and new drainage systems designed and constructed. And the nature of the Black Country, with its industrial history, hasn’t helped either.

Tom Maplethorpe, project director at the Midland Metro Alliance, which is designing and building the line, says: “There was significantly more remediation work needed on the old rail corridor than was originally thought. There was a lot of historic mining that we encountered. The state of some of the existing bridge structures was worse than anticipated.”

Additionally, drainage along the old railway line has been a major issue.

“We found a number of historic outfalls of water onto the rail corridor that weren’t known about, so we have had to pick up a lot of additional capacity and flows of drainage as part of the Metro construction, which is a real challenge given the narrow site.”

The first phase of the line is now expected to open in the autumn of next year. The second phase is planned to have five stops and will cross the Parkhead Viaduct, which has needed multi-million-pound strengthening work.

Originally constructed in the 1880s, Parkhead is a vital piece of Dudley’s railway heritage. Designed by the renowned engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the viaduct played a crucial role in connecting the town to the wider railway network, but it fell into disuse after heavy rail services were halted on the line in the last century.

But while preparatory work on the viaduct is nearing completion, other plans within Phase Two of the line appear to be faltering.

In July, the West Midlands Combined Authority revealed that COVID and other factors had led to rising costs, making part of the second phase from Merry Hill to Brierley Hill ‘unaffordable’, with a £60m funding shortfall.

In an effort to secure additional cash from central government, the Combined Authority has had to refresh the business case. That process seems to have identified a weaker economic case, but the strategic case in relation to unlocking land for housing and employment development is still strong. That does seem to align with the new government’s thinking on growth plans.

TfWM is awaiting the outcome, having refreshed the business case.

The final section to Brierley Hill looks set to be on hold while further work is done to develop a broader plan with Dudley Council around wider benefits that will be released through its emerging growth plan.

Shaw says: “There’s been a review of the costs. The Brierley Hill extension started before we had COVID and other global events that have impacted labour and supply chain costs, which is not unique to this project. We phased the programme while we dealt with securing additional funding.”

Maplethorpe adds that because there’s so much development going on, including HS2, prices in the West Midlands are among the highest in the country.

He says: “You’ve got HS2 coming in here alongside other major infrastructure projects. And on the commodity side of things, there’s a lot of demand for things like concrete, rebar and aggregates. We are seeing price increases outstripping anywhere else in the UK. The West Midlands is a bit of a hotspot at the moment.”

A refreshed business case will now be sent to the Department for Transport. It’s hoped that construction can start on the Dudley to Merry Hill section of the line early next year.

Shaw says: “Funding that we have been able to provide, and the business case, allows us to take it to Merry Hill, and then there will be ‘passive provision’ in that construction. And that means when we get additional funding and subject to a further business case, we can extend it all the way through to Brierley Hill High Street.”

It’s hoped that construction of the next phase of the project will be quicker than for the stretch to Dudley.

Shaw says: “We’ve taken a lot of lessons from Phase One in terms of the methodology of construction for Phase Two. We’ve already done some advanced works including the Parkhead Viaduct. We’ve also done some early utilities works.”

Tram services are currently expected to reach the Merry Hill shopping centre by late 2026/early 2027, but no date has been set for the final section to Brierley Hill High Street.

With the business case for the whole line providing good value for money, some have suggested that by breaking the scheme up into different phases, and delaying the latter two phases, TfWM might have scored an own goal.

Shaw disagrees: “The original business case was signed off in 2017 for the whole line and we’ve had issues about affordability. But we needed to carry on and build to Dudley while we resolved what the additional financial requirements were.

“I can’t authorise a scheme to continue without having the funds to deliver it, so we have been working on what the additional funding needed is. Things have changed in terms of costs and it's right and proper that we make sure that for every penny we spend, we are still providing value for money.”

The Eastside scheme, which represents a short section of the original plan for Line Three, hasn’t been without its problems either.

The mile-long Eastside extension will run from a new delta junction in Bull Street and cross the busy Moor Street Queensway and the Curzon Street site before terminating at Deritend at the end of Digbeth High Street. It’s another line that’s been waiting for a number of years to be built.

While the line was waiting for Transport and Works Act approval and funding, HS2 moved onto the site of the Birmingham city centre station at Curzon Street.

The new Metro line would pass underneath the new station, with a tram stop designed to serve it.

However, there have been long-running discussions between Transport for West Midlands and HS2 about the costs and logistics of getting across the HS2 station site.

That’s now resulted in the new Metro line having to be built in two halves, with part of the line built but unavailable for use until 2027 at the earliest.

TfWM is also having to spend several million pounds installing a temporary tram stop and a special crossover so that the other half of the line from the city centre to Birmingham’s Eastside area can be used before that date.

Construction here hasn’t been without its issues. The route to the Eastside has had to be threaded through Birmingham’s narrow streets, and some buildings - including a McDonald’s restaurant - have had to be demolished.

In line with preparation for HS2, it’s also understood that the scheme includes exhuming scores of skeletons, as the line crosses an old graveyard. Other concerns have recently come to light relating to future patronage.

Recent reports from the West Midlands Combined Authority have highlighted a potential reduction in the value of borrowing from future Metro surpluses. They suggest that the descoping of the northern leg of HS2 could lead to corresponding Metro patronage reductions and hence lower farebox revenues.

TfWM’s Anne Shaw is adamant that other things happening should allow the negatives from the cancellation of HS2 northern leg to be negated.

“The original business case for the Metro had passenger numbers for people arriving from London, but also from the North. We’ve also had Midlands Rail Hub announced, which adds more passengers.

“Also, since the original business case, there has been a whole load of other regeneration projects that have come forward, so we’ve actually been able to add more to the business case than we had previously, which is quite positive for the Eastside extension.”

The additional costs and delays to not just the new West Midlands Metro lines, but also several new railway stations across the region, have led to the new Labour West Midlands Mayor Richard Parker launching what he called an “independent review” of transport projects currently being planned.

He also took a swipe at former Conservative Mayor Andy Street, suggesting that commitments and promises had been made previously without the resources to fund and sustain them. He expressed his concern about a number of “significant issues” regarding the funding, delivery and delay of major transport projects in the region.

Responding to the criticism, Street made it clear that when he left office, he had “bequeathed” to the new Mayor billions of pounds in devolved transport funding. He added that if the new Mayor was now taking a decision to scale back the plans, then the decision was up to “him and him alone”.

One Metro project that seems to be progressing well is the expansion of the tram depot in Wednesbury. There, TfWM is spending £43m on a redevelopment of the depot site. The on-site capacity will be more than doubled to accommodate the growing fleet of Metro vehicles and allow them to manoeuvre around the yard.

The development also includes extended and updated workshop and maintenance facilities, a tram wash, a new operations centre and staff facilities to accommodate a growing workforce.

An estimated 150 new jobs will be created as a result of the expansion of the network and depot.

Maplethorpe says: “Even with the extensions to the West Midlands Metro, the depot at Wednesbury remains the main hub for stabling and heavy and light maintenance. As such, we are having to increase the stabling capacity to facilitate the additional trams coming in. We have increased the stabling berths from 26 to 42 and that’s meant reconfiguring the track and the systems and other elements that facilitate the space for that.”

The depot will also have a new direct connection to the new line to Dudley and Brierley Hill. With trams currently having to join the line from Birmingham to Wolverhampton at Wednesbury Parkway, this new connection will assist in the operation of an efficient timetable.

Maplethorpe says: “It’s all about having a bigger fleet and being able to accommodate more maintenance.”

Construction of the new line to Dudley and Birmingham’s Eastside, as well as the depot expansion, is being managed through a unique partnership (now in its eighth year) called the Midland Metro Alliance, which consists of the West Midlands Combined Authority, a consortium of design experts from Egis, Tony Gee and Pell Frischmann, and rail construction specialist Colas Rail, with Colas’s sub-alliance partners Colas Ltd, Barhale, Bouygues UK and Auctus Management Group. The alliance was set up in 2016 to contribute to the economic and social regeneration of the West Midlands.

Alliance Project Director Maplethorpe says: “The reason that the client at the time opted for an alliance model was because there was a large programme of expansion and the alliance was deemed the best option. It was about bringing that knowledge and expertise of design, build and development of tramway schemes together and delivering it in a collaborative manner.

“The principle of the alliance is built around collaboration and openness, honesty and trust. It’s viewed as a bespoke form of contract that’s built around behaviours, rather than the traditional commercial approach.”

Centro, at the time, had a ten-year programme of works and it wanted to have the designers and contractors in one team working alongside its own Metro planning team. It means that all parties sit together to collectively deliver the Metro extensions. It’s also helped to install best practice and learn lessons that can be transferred to later schemes in the programme.

It seems to be working well, with extensions in Birmingham city centre and Wolverhampton as well as two track renewals already delivered by the alliance.

During the Metro’s 25-year life, things haven’t always been easy, with issues with the infrastructure halting services and, more recently, cracks appearing on the Spanish-built trams, which meant two lengthy shutdowns. Now, there are big issues with funding, leaving question marks about further expansion.

TfWM’s Anne Shaw is adamant: “Nothing is being cancelled, that’s the important point. We are just deferring some of the start times for the construction. They are still going through the design and planning stages.”

West Midlands Mayor Richard Parker has made it clear that he would deliver a transport network that works for the people of the West Midlands, and to do that, it would be crucial to invest in the infrastructure.

He says: “These projects need to be delivered, but they need to be delivered in the right way, which means working with real figures, with actual funding and realistic timescales, and not making promises that simply can’t be kept.”

 

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