UK: A joint venture of Farrans and Sacyr is set to begin main works on the Belfast Transport Hub as enabling works by Graham near completion and railway works by Babcock are underway.
The Transport Hub will replace the existing Great Victoria Street railway station and Europa bus station, providing additional capacity with eight platforms and 26 bus stands, as well as enhanced walking and cycling links. This will free land for regeneration part of the Weavers Cross development.
The scheme ‘is one of the most significant railway infrastructure projects carried out in the UK in recent years’, said Steven Bell, Rail Systems Director at Babcock. It includes major signalling design and construction works, extensive track works and the first phase of centralising railway signalling control.
Visiting the site on February 15, Northern Ireland’s Infrastructure Minister Nichola Mallon said the project was ‘an economic, social and environmental game changer’, which would produce ‘the largest integrated transport facility on the island of Ireland, bringing together many aspects of how we travel including greener and cleaner travel by bus, rail and cycling’.
Construction is expected to take around four years.
