Contrasting rebuilds: Sunderland -v- Halifax

Thursday 7th November 2024

It’s taken me a while, but my travels finally enabled a catch up with two public transport infrastructure developments. The £27 million rebuild of Sunderland station’s southern entrance which opened last December and Halifax’s newly rebuilt £20.5 million bus station which fully opened in July after a partial opening a year ago. And yes, you read that right – £27 million for a new station entrance, yet £20.5 million for a whole new bus station. Let’s take a look at what seems a bargain basement price tag first.

Halifax’s new bus station

It’s been a West Yorkshire Combined Authority project with an Outline Business Case approved in October 2019 and a Full Business Case passed in August 2020 with planning approval granted the following month. Work started in September 2021…

… with a partial closure of the old bus station…

…which moved across the site as the new build took shape.

As you can see from these aerial shots taken from a promotional video, the new building is divided into two segments in a V-shape giving 19 drive in, reverse out departure bays and a separate parking area for layover buses.

The passenger area has been made very airy and a pleasant place to wait…

…but as with many bus stations these days, there’s not a lot of room for passengers once they start queuing back from each stand…

… on either of the two segments.

I’ve noticed that part of this problem arises because passengers don’t like to begin the queue by the exit door to the bus parking area as it might appear they’re pushing in front of those taking advantage of the (only) eight seats, thus rather wasting the space between the seats.

Rather than having a screen showing the next couple of departures above the door no expense has been spared with a screen to the left of each door large enough to show up to the next five departures. This is in addition to a long departure list across two back to back screens hanging from the roof in both V-shape segment circulation areas. The two things missing are listings telling you which departure bay a bus route leaves from by route number, particularly useful for visitors who know their route number but not their bay number, and an alphabetical listing of places served with route and stand numbers for the visitor who knows nothing. There’s plenty of wall space where these could be posted.

And, of course, as one would expect these days, there are no timetables on display but there are static departure time listing by each bay.

Annoyingly the roof hanging departure listings switch to other messages from time to time…

… but luckily only the right hand screen, which has later departures, so not as bad as having to wait for an imminent departure to be displayed.

There’s a ‘Travel Centre’ located at the join between the two V-shape segments on the concourse.

It comprises two people working behind secure glass answering enquiries and selling tickets.

It was good to see it was staffed on a Saturday afternoon.

Sadly, West Yorkshire Combined Authority make a charge of 20p to use the toilets…

…and only coins too (no contactless), but on my visit it was on ‘free vend’ and being extensively used by passengers.

There’s also an accessible toilet, baby change room, staff toilets and a changing places room.

It’s not easy these days to find tenants for retail spaces and so far only a small unit has been let, but it seemed to be doing a good trade.

Other spaces for renting out remain empty.

One of the great things about the newly rebuilt bus station is the way the neighbouring historic and rather lovely buildings have been incorporated into the design.

This is the rather splendid entrance on the east of the site…

… and although the doorway and corridor is rather narrow for a large bus station…

… it soon opens up into the wider concourse…

… and there are other entrances and exits for pedestrians to use.

These fine structures to the south of the site…

… have also been retained.

The first entrance shown above also has room for retail but no takers so far.

Another unique aspect of the site is the exit for buses being up a very steep slope. leading on to Northgate, which is controlled by traffic lights.

Traffic management works currently in progress are causing some delays with the road ahead blocked from time to time.

As you can see the bus station is used mainly by First Bus, but also Team Pennine and Arriva.

It’s a great improvement on what went before and West Yorkshire Combined Authority have done a good job, not least, if it’s true, that the cost has come in at just £20.5 million. After all, you can’t get a basic two platform railway station with a footbridge and lifts for that these days. And talking of spending lots of money on infrastructure on the railway takes us to Sunderland….

Sunderland station’s new southern entrance

Costing £27 million, Councillor Miller, leader of Sunderland City Council reckoned “it is stunning … a demonstration of the ambition we have to transform this city into a place we can all be proud of”. It’s certainly a transformation of what went before…

… but £27 million for what inside is basically a large empty space with 16 seats, two ticket machines…

… a ticket office in the corner, two sweet/drink/snacks vending machines and three electronic departure screens left me scratching my head wondering … why?

The promised retail outlets – both inside the new concourse area and fronting on to the street are still empty with To Let signs trying to muster up interest.

Meanwhile down at platform level it’s as dingy as ever, although the lighting does help to make the best of a bad job…

… and there is a well lit, enclosed waiting area on the island platform.

I’m guessing blowing £27 million on the southern entrance meant there’s no money left over to do something about the two northern entrances…

… which are rather grim, both outside and…

… inside, although it is very practical with stairs down to the platform and a lift.

Metro passengers have two ticket machines while Northern passengers have just the one, that is, if they realise the illuminated advert on the front is hiding a ticket machine behind it.

While in Sunderland I also visited the city’s bus station where you’ll find 21 departure bays…

… to a rather interesting layout, compared to Halifax, as you can see in the diagram on the poster photographed below. The benefit being each bay is ‘drive in and drive out’, with no reversing needed. But it does make for a slightly confusing layout for visitors to get to grips with.

And that’s it. A tale of two rebuilds.

Roger French

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