Make arriving by train a transport of delight

Many of the buildings look old and careworn. There is little space for buses or taxis and the layout is confusing. There is a sleazy feel about the area, particularly at night.

No one should doubt the importance of Brighton Station to the resort. It is the busiest station in the south east outside London with more than seven million passengers a year.

Look at Blackpool, Bournemouth and Torbay, Brighton’s chief rivals, and you will see nothing like the same density of trains. There are at least four fast services to London every hour and frequent services along the coast, both east and west.

First impressions can be vital, which is why the city council and rail authorities have been hard at work making improvements to this gateway.

The interior of the station is much better than it was with more space for travellers and a better layout. Lift your eyes and you can appreciate the beauty of the enormous train shed, one of the finest in Britain.

Some improvements have also been made to the area outside the station and this gives a better view of David Moccata’s outstanding terminus building, which has for far too many years been partially hidden by later alterations.

The idea is to create more room for passengers as they move into the city centre by bus, bike, foot or taxi. Some much needed greenery is being provided in the form of street trees. The taxi rank will look less forbidding.

Work to replace the paving is taking place this week, which means that taxis will be moved temporarily from their traditional site.

For a while they will be waiting on the south side of Terminus Road before swooping down to pick up passengers.

This is what the trade should like to see as a permanent solution to the problems caused by scores of queuing cabs at the station.

We will have to see what happens this week but I think Terminus Road will be an unsightly and unpleasant place for cabs, causing a late night nuisance for the many people who live nearby.

Where taxis are concerned in Brighton there is always argument and I don’t doubt that cabbies will be vociferous in support of their cause.

But I hope the council will stand firm in support of neighbours who already put up with plenty of noise from the station, which is open much of the night. Abandoning them would be a rank injustice.

Taxi use is high in Brighton, a city with low car ownership and large numbers of visitors. The station rank is particularly lucrative. You have only to see how many people hail cabs after arriving on packed trains to appreciate this.

A great opportunity was missed when the New England Quarter was built on the east side of the station, mainly on former railway land.

Part of this area would have been ideal for a city transport interchange where people could wait in comfort for buses and cabs.

Brighton must be one of the biggest cities in the country not to have a proper bus station and instead drivers have to use all sorts of roads to turn buses round, such as Regent Hill and Palmeira Square.

It is also surprisingly difficult for buses to reach the station’s main entrance from the east with the railway lines and the low bridge over Trafalgar Street restricting access.

When they do leave the station heading southwards down Queen’s Road, they usually find progress is painfully slow thanks to a series of traffic lights, not all of them necessary.

Station approaches are often seedy and I recall as a boy how tatty Praed Street near Paddington used to be. It is not a lot better now.

I hope that the improvements currently taking place in Brighton will start lifting the whole area. There are already faint signs that this is happening with the opening of more shops, restaurants and coffee bars.

Although the east side of the street is undistinguished, there are a few handsome buildings on the west side such as the masonic temple and there is an attractive raised pavement.

Arriving at the city by the sea on trains should be a pleasure, not a pain – a veritable transport of delight.