New in the West Midlands (2022 Edition) Part 2: Coventry (not a) Station

Another West Midlands transport infrastructure project that seems to have taken a very long time to open is the new station at Coventry.  It has this distinctive red façade around the multi-storey car park built above the ticket hall area.

It is linked to all platforms by  new overbridge.

Is the signage in the overbridge the new standard font for Great British Railways?

Nice wide stairs leading to the overbridge from the new ticket hall.

 

The new overbridge leads to a mezzanine level gate line.  First clue this isn't the new station is how lightly used this gate line is: on a Saturday Coventry is usually quite manic.

Looking down to the ground floor concourse - a vast empty soulless space.

Art designs covering the many empty retail units at ground level.

Going the other way (west) from the main  concourse leads down this broad passage to a new bus station.

There are two exits from the new station to the West. The upper one, at street level, has no direct access to the bus station but already two routes across the wasteland have been created. 

The bus station has a very poor stop design: with a bus on the first stop it will be difficult to swing to get level with the kerb at the next stop.  It's probably not going to be too much of an issue though as most local buses pass on the main road and don't serve this site.  The buses visible above were Commonwealth Games shuttle buses to Coventry (Ricoh) Arena.

Note - until a few years ago buses used to directly serve the [old] station front right outside the door. Now of course that space is given over to private hire and curiously, deliveries.

However anyone entering from street level isn't given a station name sign!  In an area with a higher than average visitor population for Coventry (it's on the bus routes to Warwick University) a decent sign would not go amiss.

View across the vast new ticket hall. Except it's not a ticket hall, it has a total of two Avanti West Coast vending machines (themselves selling a reduced range f tickets compared to the old Virgin branded machines that didn't need replacing) and no actual ticket office.

So they built a new station but kept the old one open. Weird, so I asked why when I went to buy my Centro (TfWM) Daytripper (nNetwork?) (because Avanti's new machines don't sell them and TfWM haven't discovered on-line/app retailing yet). Turns out the new station is not a new station at all, it's a multi storey car park that happens to have a gate line and over bridge linked to it.  The old, and I believe listed, Coventry station is set to remain open and remain the main facility for ticketing and customer assistance.