Liverpool City Region Metro Mayor will begin his takeover of the physical Merseyrail network by taking control of 12 stations – a move that could see a major redevelopment of Liverpool Central. Tony McDonough reports

 

Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram is close to agreeing a deal to take over ownership of 12 Merseyrail stations.

This would be the first stage of a bigger project that would see the Combined Authority (CA) take over the whole network, including stations, track and signalling. Those assets are currently owned and managed by Network Rail.

LBN reported in August 2021 that Mr Rotheram was in discussions with the DoT over the move. Since then there has been a change of Government with Labour taking power in July 2024.

Now the final details are being hammered out for the process to begin. Among the stations will be Liverpool Central. That would offer the potential for a major development in that part of the city centre.

Prior to the financial crash of 2008 there were plans worth more than £100m to redevelop the land that sits between Central Station and the former Lewis’s department store. It would have included shops, restaurants, apartments and an Odeon cinema.

Those plans came to nothing but LBN understands Mr Rotheram is keen to put a regeneration programme for Central, a major gateway between the main city centre and the Knowledge Quarter, back on the agenda. It could include apartments or a hotel.

In May 2024 the CA released images of how a revamped Central Station could look and announced it was putting together a masterplan for the transformation project.

Taking control of the Merseyrail network is part of Mr Rotheram’s wider ambition to create a fully-integrated London-style public transport system in the city region. 

In 2026 the first phase of his bus franchising model – reversing the 1986 deregulation of buses – will begin in St Helens, followed by Wirral, before rolling out across all six boroughs by the end of 2027.

In 2028 the 25-year Merseyrail franchise held by Merseyrail Electrics will come to an end. A joint venture between Serco Group and Transport UK, the company reported record pre-tax profits of £43.9m in its last financial year, giving shareholders a bumper £42m windfall.

That franchise could be renewed beyond 2028 but the Mayor is insistent that the city region will get a greater share of the revenues to be reinvested back into the transport network. He added: “We want a greater share of the fares.”

Next year Liverpool Liverpool city region will be in the first wave of devolved regions that will receive an Integrated Settlement – single pot of money across housing, regeneration, local growth, local transport, skills, housing retrofit, and employment support.

That will give Mr Rotheram more control over spending on things such as infrastructure. But Everton supporters looking for a new Merseyrail station, or a remodelled Sandhills, to serve their new docklands stadium, will have to be patient.

He insists such a project would cost in the region of £100m. Projects of more than £50m have to get Government approval and Mr Rotheram says the current business case would not stack up.

However, with Homes England ploughing £56m into Central Docks at Liverpool Waters to enable their building of up to 2,350 new homes, that would create increased demand for public transport that could change the equation.

“The more people that are living in that area, the stronger the case for investment – but we are nowhere near that at this moment in time,” he said.

 

 

Despite grumblings from Everton fans following two test events at the new stadium, Mayor Rotheram believes Sandhills can cope with the volume of passengers with the right queuing system in place.

In an interview with the Liverpool Echo last week he admitted the scope for putting on extra train services on matchdays was limited.

“We can squeeze a little bit more out of the infrastructure that we’ve got, but it’s an analogue signalling service, so we couldn’t do all of the lines.

“We just haven’t got the digital infrastructure and that would cost £200m or something ridiculous that Network Rail have said for us to convert over and cause huge disruption for an awful long time.

“Something’s going to have to happen because one; we can buy more trains so we can do that and I’d commit to doing that and we can get more trains running, but the actual analogue system won’t allow us to put more trains across the whole network.”