Whiff of ‘third world dictator energy’ off Belfast’s vast, impressive and expensive new station

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/comment/whiff-of-third-world-dictator-energy-off-belfasts-vast-impressive-and-expensive-new-station/a725466179.html

There comes a time in the career of every self-respecting third world dictator when their thoughts wander to monument-building. A desire for the self-perceived greatness of their nation (and themselves) to be made tangible through concrete, glass and steel.

This third-world dictator energy often finds expression through the creation of vast public structures. Shiny new airports are a popular choice. Another favourite is buildings which confer bragging rights — as the biggest, tallest, most expensive etc. And for others it is the arena of sport that provides an ideal avenue for broadcasting their nation’s alleged importance, modernity and wealth.

All are designed to distract attention from the fact that their nation is in fact a badly run and barely functioning entity. And all whilst its down-trodden citizens — particularly those located furthest from the gleaming capital city — toil in over-looked penury a million proverbial miles from such faux grandeur.

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At 5am on Sunday September 8, Northern Ireland unveiled its very own display of third-world dictator energy. Belfast’s ‘Grand Central Station’ is a vast new glass and steel facility (complete with Italian marble flooring, no less), and is the largest transport hub on the island.

Designed to cater for 20 million passengers a year, it is a truly vast and impressive facility — larger even than Kings Cross Station in London, which has a mere 70 million Tube and 23 million rail annual users. Grand Central’s grandeur has come at a significant cost of over £340m, however — way over its original price tag. And it opens at a time when the rise of remote working has seen rail passenger numbers in Belfast as a whole (a city with 11 rail stations, the highest per-capita of any regional UK city) decline by 6%. Great Victoria Street Station, which Grand Central has directly replaced, catered for 4.9m rail passengers in 2023-24 (an 8% fall post-Covid).

Amid constant reminders from Stormont and Westminster that money is tight, and with the vast majority of the All-Island Rail Strategy’s recommendations unlikely to appear for at least 10 to 20 years from now, it is unclear where Grand Central’s hoped-for 20 million bus and rail passengers will actually come from. But who cares when you can marvel at the scale and audacity of the place, and speak Italian with its marbled floor.

It is the combination of Grand Central’s scale, price tag and extravagantly questionable architecture which bestows this gleaming new temple of transport that undeniable whiff of third-world dictator energy. Because whilst many in Belfast applaud the addition of such a genuinely impressive facility, the rest of NI looks on in bewildered frustration — wondering what it has done to be so scorned by its glorious leaders.

The new Grand Central Station

Large swathes of the proverbial ‘west of the Bann’ are essentially public transport deserts, with the last registered sighting of a train in Tyrone or Fermanagh being 60 years ago. In July Infrastructure Minister John O’Dowd published the All-Island Rail Strategy, and declared that Fermanagh was unworthy of the £400m needed to restore rail to the county. Yet within weeks he was cutting the ribbon on just one new transport facility in Belfast which has cost almost as much.

He has also decided that essential work to replace the ageing Derry-Coleraine rail track — originally supposed to happen in 2013, delayed repeatedly ever since, and scheduled to start next summer before the Minister took office — should instead be pushed back by a further two years to 2027.

As a result, trains which should travel at 90mph must instead trundle at just 40mph to reduce stress on the “life expired” track.

The new Grand Central Station

O’Dowd is also point-blank refusing to end the blatant timetable discrimination suffered by the three rail stations west of the Bann on the Derry-Belfast line — which sees them receive 2,600 fewer trains a year than stations in the east on the same line, and less than half the number of services on a Sunday. These are timetable choices which could be addressed for a sum as low as £300,000 — loose change in infrastructure terms.

Yet the Minister refuses to do so on the grounds of cost. The same Minister who has just shovelled another £45m at Grand Central to cover its ballooning over-spend. It seems that when Belfast wants something, the chequebooks come out. But when the west needs something, the excuses come out.

By the year 2050 there is a real risk that Northern Ireland will have a public transport network that looks largely unchanged from today’s. Its heart will still be dominated by the vast hubris, largesse and third-world dictator energy that represents Grand Central Station, whilst its western limbs remain largely disconnected, under-served and neglected. By which stage the minds of the monuments men in Translink and the Department for Infrastructure will no doubt drift again to the possibility of an even-grander CV-boosting statement building for the Belfast area.

Steve Bradley is Chair of Into The West – The Rail Campaign for Derry, Tyrone, Fermanagh & Donegal