Metro trams reach New Street station

Trams are now running right up to Birmingham New Street station for the first time, after the latest stage of the Midland Metro's city centre extension opened on 30 May.

The new Grand Central tram stop sits on Stephenson Street, outside the station's main entrance, giving passengers a direct link from New Street to Snow Hill and on to Wolverhampton.

Through the heart of the city

For nearly two decades after the Metro opened, the line between Birmingham and Wolverhampton ended at Snow Hill station on the edge of the city centre, using one of the old railway platforms. The line runs mostly along the trackbed of the former Great Western Railway route between the two cities, which closed in stages between 1972 and 1992.

Work on the extension through the city centre began in June 2012, when the transport minister Norman Baker launched the project. The first dig took place at the junction of Corporation Street and Bull Street, where water pipes and power cables had to be moved before track could be laid.

In December 2015, trams began running on the first part of the extension, as far as Bull Street. The opening of the route along Corporation Street to Stephenson Street now takes the line into the heart of the shopping district and to the country's busiest station outside London.

A new Snow Hill stop on the through route is also due to open within days, with trams now running through Snow Hill rather than ending there.

A long wait

When the Metro was first planned, it was meant to be the first line of a much larger network. A second line to Chelmsley Wood and Birmingham Airport, and a third line linking Wolverhampton, Walsall and Dudley, were proposed, but neither was built. In 1997, the transport authority accepted that it could not find the money for them and adopted a strategy of expanding the system in smaller stages, with the city centre extension as the first priority.

The trams on the line are also new. The original fleet of 16 Italian-built trams has been replaced by a fleet of modern CAF Urbos 3 vehicles.

What it means for passengers

The opening means that passengers arriving at New Street by train can step out of the station and on to a tram, and those coming from the Black Country can travel straight into the centre of the shopping area without changing at Snow Hill.

The stop, which takes its name from the new Grand Central shopping centre above the station, is for now the end of the line. Further extensions westward towards Centenary Square and Broad Street are planned as part of the next stage of the network.

For a city that tore up its original tram network in the 1950s, the sight of trams gliding along Corporation Street is a striking change, and after years of roadworks in the city centre, shoppers and businesses will be hoping the disruption has been worth it.