Acocks Green Station Lifts Update

by Roger Harmer on 28 November, 2013

Acocks Green Station will soon be getting passenger lifts to allow those with disabilities or child buggies much easier access to the ticket hall and platforms.

This has been a project the local Lib Dem team has long been campaigning for. We made no real progress while we had a Labour Government but happily the Coalition has taken a more positive view and funding has now been provided, with the work to be underway this financial year.

Together with Councillor Iain Bowen and several other local residents, I attended an exhibition, earlier this week, at the Station with representatives of Centro, Network Rail, London Midland and the contractor J Murphy and Sons. They outlined the timetable for the work and showed the design.

First the timetable: The work is scheduled to start soon – in December with site set up and works to get underway. The foundations should be complete by February, the lifts installed in March/April, then the Footbridge installed and the lifts should be open to the public in June.

While the fact that this long awaited project will soon be underway is very good news, views on the detailed design were mixed. Here is Centro’s image of how the lifts will look from the station’s car park:

IMG00385-20131128-1850

The main concern about the lift towers is that while grey may blend into the typical November sky above Acocks Green, its not sympathetic to the local red brick architecture – which will soon hopefully be protected by becoming  a Conservation Area. Following tough questioning from Julia Larden of Acocks Green Focus Group, Centro agreed to look at changing the colour to fit in better with the rest of the station and also to look at capping the towers with a hipped roof – which would also be more sympathetic to the main station building. For more details you can look at the article on the Focus Group’s website here.

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