New Street in Birmingham is the latest station to get a new look and smart retail spaces, but some say glitzy projects are not the best way to invest

To cut the ribbon on a major railway station is a minister’s joy. To open a second one in a month – the day after a rousing speech to warm up the Conservative party conference for the chancellor – must have left quite a smile dancing on Patrick McLoughlin’s face. The transport secretary officially reopened the refurbished Manchester Victoria, the city’s northern portal, on Tuesday. Three weeks ago, Birmingham New Street’s £750m transformation saw McLoughlin leave the stage as a troupe of dancers in Network Rail hi-vis outfits, moved to appropriate words from the Black Eyed Peas: “Let’s live it up. I got my money. Let’s spend it up... “

In a world of controversy over high-speed rail, high rail fares, and the slashing of support to local bus services, revitalising a rail hub wraps politicians in a warm glow. This is spending of which virtually all seem to approve: a tangible improvement for relatively little pain. No wonder the projects keep coming.

Big railway stations have, of course, become much more than places where you simply board a train – London St Pancras is the modern British exemplar. In a well-rehearsed opener to his speeches, McLoughlin likes to recall how, as a Midlands MP, he would catch his train when neighbouring King’s Cross was no place to linger. Now the two adjoining stations have become destinations in their own right, and helped turn a no-go area into new offices, homes and public spaces, sealed recently with that badge of respectability, a Waitrose store.

What they also show is that while transport links have always fuelled economic development, better stations can in themselves spur regeneration. Rapid growth in passenger numbers meant some work was vital anyway: Birmingham New Street’s 1960s buildings were designed for 60,000 passengers a day; now around three times that number pass through its gates. But the commercial and civic imperative was at least as great. Spending by the Department for Transport and Network Rail was bolstered by the city council and the Department for Business, with £35m from John Lewis, now the flagship store in the shopping centre that surrounds New Street’s dazzling new atrium.

The name of that new 42,000 square metre shopping centre – Grand Central – is not insignificant, says Tony Travers, director of research group LSE London: “It’s an interesting conscious reference to New York – it shows a desire to use railway stations in a way beyond railway stations. Railway stations have become part of the regeneration story of British cities, paid for by investors as symbols of commitment to the economy.”

As a “destination station”, like King’s Cross-St Pancras, the redrawn New Street will, the council hopes, be a catalyst for regeneration of the city centre to the south. Until now, the station was not just unappealing but a physical block in the heart of the city, cutting off the flow of people – and money and investment – to Birmingham’s south side.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The new concourse at Manchester Victoria. Photograph: Network Rail/PA

Station redevelopment around the UK has ranged from expensive but necessary refurbs, such as the £130m of work at Edinburgh Waverley, to symbolic statements, such as the new plaza in front of Liverpool’s Lime Street station, completed in 2010 to befit a European Capital of Culture. Regional and national funding contributed to the £35m spent on sprucing it up and making passengers feel they had arrived at an open gateway to the city. In Bristol, Network Rail is to spend £100m on transforming Temple Meads, the grand old station that felt curiously remote from the centre. Now, as a focal part of an urban regeneration zone, its surrounding space is being reshaped.

Some projects are still driven by transport rather urban needs: work at Reading was all about curing one of the worst bottlenecks in Britain’s commuter belt. Other work has been done to boost shopping within the stations. According to Network Rail, retail income at stations has grown by 4.5%-6.5% annually over the past five years, while high streets have stagnated. “This is when and where people want to shop, on their way,” said a spokesman. There’s also a new mezzanine level at London Euston and a balcony at Waterloo, “to get the retail clutter off the concourse”.

As rail historian Christian Wolmar puts it: “Stations are very visible expressions of the grandeur of the railways.” McLoughlin lauded the Manchester Victoria terminus as “no longer a symbol of northern neglect, but proof we are building a northern powerhouse”.

The spending on Victoria’s new roof is a fraction of the hundreds of millions more going on electrifying tracks and upgrading connections in the area, but unlike that work it is visible to Mancunians whether they travel out or not.

Travers, though, is not convinced. “You can see why politicians like them. Big edifices are very important: you can cut the ribbon and get national coverage. The same money spent on lots of little road or rail schemes wouldn’t get mentioned at all. It’s indicative of our centralised country: national government likes to make decisions at its scale, rather than more useful little bits of track or signalling systems. You want things you can see from a helicopter.”

The huge sums spent on stations have been good for the cities, he admits. “But whether it is as good for them as spending it on mobile communications, railway tracks or signalling – or on roads for that matter – is an interesting debate.”

Or indeed, railway lovers might say, on trains. The grandeur of St Pancras lets Britain look askance at Paris’s Gare du Nord – and if stations are the new high street, it befits a nation of shopkeepers to have the best. But the Eurostar trains that run between them were built by – and are now run by – the French.

Signal successes?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The new concourse at King’s Cross station, London. Photograph: Iain Masterton / Alamy/Alamy

King’s Cross-St Pancras

The redevelopment of the two adjoining stations was the catalyst for the rapid and ongoing regeneration of the once-notorious district to the north, including new plazas, art schools, the future Google UK HQ and Kings Place, home to concert halls as well as the Guardian and Observer. The £800m overhaul of St Pancras was completed in 2007 to make it the new home of Eurostar and high-speed trains, as well as the hub for East Midlands trains. Its boulevard of shops, along with the high-end bars of the St Pancras hotel, earned it the description of the first “destination station”. The dramatic western concourse of King’s Cross was opened in 2012, and the dingy 1960s addition to its imposing facade was removed to create a new entrance and public square a year later.

Birmingham New Street

Five years of work costing £750m to transform the busiest interchange station outside London was completed last month, flooding its once-murky depths with light via a glass-roofed atrium. The notional capacity of the station is now five times what it was when first designed, while new escalators and lifts and refurbished platforms make it much more accessible. While the station proper will now house dozens more retail units, the most obvious addition for many will be the Grand Central shopping centre and an enormous John Lewis store, opening on to a new central concourse the size of a football pitch.

Manchester Victoria

The biggest of the city’s stations after Piccadilly was labelled the worst in Britain in a 2009 Department for Transport report. Two years of work costing £44m culminated in its official reopening last week. As well as restoration of its once-proud Victorian buildings, an additional Metrolink platform, more shops and the electrification of lines, the most visible part of the work was the replacement of the old roof with an Eden Project-style transparent ceiling, transforming the look and feel of the station, and freeing up space.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest New escalators at Reading station, where the priority was to ease congestion on the tracks, rather than on the concourse. Photograph: Network Rail

Reading

One of the biggest, most complex projects of the last decade for Network Rail, the new station was opened in 2014 as part of an £895m revamp of the surrounding rail infrastructure as a way of removing one of the worst bottlenecks on the railway. While the Queen still turned out to open it, Reading’s striking modern overhaul was largely driven by the railway’s operational requirements, rather than by redevelopment goals. Reading’s architectural signature is an enormous footbridge with sweeping new escalators, now connecting 15 platforms. More will be added to cope with annual passenger numbers that are forecast to rise to 30 million by the end of the next decade.

On its way: London Euston

The £2.25bn redevelopment of Euston has been forced by HS2 and has become something of an embarrassment for champions of the high-speed rail project. While the current station now looks severely dated next to St Pancras et al, the money and political will for a proposed mega-Euston has dried up, leaving a bolt-on extension by 2026 as the current blueprint for London’s future high-speed hub. Adding the platforms for HS2 will see hundreds of people forced out of their homes, and will spell disruption for passengers using the station for conventional trains for years. Meanwhile the eventual wider plan for Euston has yet to be decided.