Belfast Grand Central Station at Weavers Cross will host its first service, a 5am bus to Dublin, on Sunday and it will eventually become the largest integrated transport hub on the island.
The plan is for it to open in phases over the next year, with train services to come and public realm works aimed at transforming the once forgotten area of Belfast to continue to 2025.
This will include an hourly Enterprise train service from Belfast to Dublin due to start later in the autumn.
The hub will replace the Europa Bus Centre and the former Great Victoria Street Station.
Grand Central is expected to see around 20 million customer journeys each year as the main transport gateway to Belfast, reports The Hearld.
Chris Conway, Chief Executive of Translink, said: “We’re really pleased to welcome everyone to Grand Central Station, it’s a world class facility which I think everyone will appreciate when they get into it, and it’s an opportunity to be a game-changer for public transport in Northern Ireland,” he said.
“This will connect towns and cities right across Northern Ireland, give us the capacity to increase the frequency on our bus network and rail network, but also connectivity across the island of Ireland with our new hourly Enterprise service coming in later in the autumn and obviously all of our bus connections between Belfast and Dublin here as well. It’s an opportunity to grow public transport.”
John Glass, director of infrastructure and projects at Translink, said the hub had been in the planning before construction for more than a decade.
He said it was the largest infrastructure project in Northern Ireland and one of the largest in the UK, and had faced challenges including increases in the cost of materials and the coronavirus pandemic.
“We started just before Covid, so we had that to deal with which brought with it price increases and material shortages, and then other international events such as the war in Ukraine, and prices were further hiked and materials in short supply,” he said.
“But five years ago, we said we’d open in autumn 2024, and we will open in autumn 2024.”
PIC-BELFAST CITY CENTRE MANAGEMENT
