Likely to be the next but one extension of the West Midlands Metro to open to the public, the Birmingham Eastside extension saw the first major signs of work last year with the installation of the delta junction at Bull Street/Corporation Street in Birmingham City Centre. With trams not set to use the junction onto Lower Bull Street and then ultimately to High Street Deritend for a while yet (there still remains no official opening date – even a year – for the line but the way things go with WMM extensions that could well be sensible!) there remains a great deal of work to complete on the rest of the route and in this pictorial update we take a look at what has been going on in recent weeks. Ken Jones is the photographer.
The Birmingham Eastside extension will run for 1.7 km between Bull Street to High Street Deritend. There will be four new stops added to the Metro network at Albert Street, Curzon Street, Meriden Street and the terminus at High Street Deritend. It will provide links to Birmingham Coach Station and the planned HS2 station at Curzon Street. Its planned that trams will run every six minutes at peak times and 15 minutes off peak, although there is no information on where the trams will to and from – the delta junction will allow trams to come from both Corporation Street and Bull Street.
The main A34 through Digbeth and Deritend is now open for buses and taxis. This view is in fact taken from the top deck of the no. 6 bus. There are complaints from retailers in the area of the lack of apparent progress on construction.
Some work which has taken place is the laying of the first track on the extension (except for the delta junction). This is Meriden Street where it joins the A34. On the day of these photos very little work was taking place.
This building is due to be demolished shortly to allow more construction to take place. Now boarded up, demolition work is scheduled to start soon.
Lower Bull Street where the centre of the road is fenced off to allow construction works to take place. A temporary surface was put down for the Commonwealth Games but is now being removed.
The aforementioned delta junction with Corporation Street straight ahead (with House of Fraser on the right). The line from the right is coming from Bull Street. (All Photographs by Ken Jones, 10th November 2022)