We love a good concrete pour and following on from the recent activity in Blackpool, the West Midlands Metro has joined in on the act with work taking place on the Wolverhampton City Centre extension. The concrete pour has taken place on Railway Drive and comes ahead of the planned track laying later in August.
The Wolverhampton City Centre extension will leave the current Metro line just before St George’s terminus running down Piper’s Row via the bus station and then onto Railway Drive with a terminus outside the railway station. Previously tracks were laid on most of the route but the last section in front of the railway station had to wait for the redevelopment of the station to be completed.
Andy Street, Mayor of West Midlands, said: “It is brilliant that just a few weeks after opening phase two of the new railway station, we’ve been able to press on and make significant progress on the city centre Metro extension. Not only will this extension provide a further improvement to public transport services within Wolverhampton, but it also means that residents in the city will be able to travel seamlessly across the West Midlands. Infrastructure projects such as these are key to the region’s economic recovery from the pandemic as we help create and protect local jobs, and I look forward to seeing continued progress over the coming weeks and months.”
The complete extension is being built without overhead and features two new stops – the terminus at the railway station and one on Piper’s Row adjacent to the bus station. When it opens services from Birmingham will run on both this extension and Wolverhampton St George’s with the exact timetable of how this will work still to be revealed.
Paul Brown, Midland Metro Alliance Construction Director, said: ““It was brilliant to celebrate a real-step forward for this project with today’s concrete pour. I am sure that those who are now using the revitalised railway can now see how much closer we are to opening the Metro line, too. We continue to work closely with our partners at City of Wolverhampton Council, Wolverhampton Business Improvement District, Network Rail, West Midlands Trains and Transport for West Midlands to keep local people informed.”