No trams through Birmingham City Centre for three months

This article has been slightly updated since original publication.

There will be no West Midlands Metro services through Birmingham City Centre for three months from the end of July as work on installing the junction to the Birmingham Eastside extension at Bull Street takes place along with rail replacement work on Corporation Street. The work is due to take place for around three months until October 2021 and during that time all trams from Wolverhampton St George’s will terminate at Bull Street. The work will start with a late evening closure on Saturday 24th July before the full closure gets going the following night.

For around 11 weeks after the closure starts from 2130 on Saturday 24th July work will be taking place to both connect the new extension to Digbeth (known as the Birmingham Eastside extension) to the city centre line as well as undertake other general maintenance works on the tracks along Corporation Street.

While the work to connect the tracks on the current line to the first tracks for the Birmingham Eastside extension has been known about for some time, the fact that there will also be rail replacement work on Corporation Street is more of a surprise. The tracks here have only been in place for around five years but the opportunity the closure of the line affords has been taken to replace them now rather than have another period of disruption in the future.

Once the works are completed for both projects in October services will be able to resume through to Library again. Following this, testing will also commence on the second phase of the Birmingham Westside extension to Hagley Road, Edgbaston which is due to open in December 2021.

The following service changes have been confirmed for this period:

  • Saturday 24th July: After 2130 all trams from Wolverhampton St George’s will terminate at St Chad’s
  • Sunday 25th July: After 1900 all trams from Wolverhampton St George’s will terminate at St Chad’s
  • From Monday 26th July until October 2021: Trams will run from Wolverhampton St George’s to Bull Street only. There will be no trams from Bull Street to Library with the stops at Corporation Street, Grand Central, Town Hall and Library closed.

There will be alternative transport arrangements provided throughout the work with details to follow.

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