Hat trick of awards for milestone Centro projects

Centro is celebrating a hat-trick of awards for two milestone projects.

The new £7 million Stourbridge Interchange landed two top awards just 12 months after opening.

The sleek glass and steel bus station was awarded the Best Large Highway and Transportation Project by the West Midlands Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT).

Judges were impressed by the project’s provision of usable, quality, real time information through an inspiring and contemporary building.

The Interchange, built by transport authority Centro with Amey, Interserve and Mott MacDonald, has also won the Institute of Highway Engineers’ (IHE) Mercia Branch Special Project award.

The IHE also awarded the Large Project of the Year to Centro for the Birmingham City Centre Interchange project (BCCI), carried out in partnership with Birmingham City Council.

This was the massive operation in 2012 to remove buses from Corporation Street and install key interchanges around the city centre to pave the way for the Midland Metro extension.

Cllr John McNicholas, the chairman of Centro, said: “I am delighted that the hard work of Centro and its partners has been formally recognised.

“These projects play a key part in our determination to create a world-class public transport network in the West Midlands fit for the 21st century.”

Centro’s Stourbridge Interchange project manager Anthony Johnson said: “Winning these awards recognises the achievement of building a world class interchange.

“We hope it will not only promote Stourbridge as a place to visit and do business but also serve as a showcase for the standard of facilities we are striving to build throughout the West Midlands.”

The Interchange was officially opened by the then Secretary of State for Transport Justine Greening in May last year.

It offered a major improvement on the former bus station, with fully enclosed and comfortable waiting areas and cutting edge passenger information systems.

The contemporary design boasts a modern station building and concourse complete with toilets, a Spar convenience store and electronic passenger information screens showing passengers when their bus is due.

Other features include eight, spacious bus stands allowing easy passenger circulation with doors that automatically open only when the bus arrives.

CCTV, help points and an internal public address system were also installed throughout the site.

A focus was placed on improving walking routes into the town centre with a new covered walkway linking the station building to the existing subway from Foster Street.

The subway itself was refurbished to become much more open and bright.

Better links were also created to the innovative People Mover connection to Stourbridge Junction railway station, allowing for easy interchange.

The BCCI project in July 2012 saw the pedestrianisation of Corporation Street and its ten bus stops relocated to six new points, backed up by a major public information exercise.

The changes pave the way for work on the Metro tram extension linking Snow Hill Station to New Street Station, which itself is undergoing the £600 million Gateway rebuild.

The tram extension, which along with the Gateway project is due for completion in 2015, will feature a stop in Corporation Street, delivering more than 3.5 million passengers a year directly into the heart of the shopping district.