Birmingham New Street Station presents a particularly demanding navigation environment. Positioned underneath Grand Central Shopping Centre, the station presents a challenging GPS environment — making it exactly the kind of complex indoor setting where conventional navigation approaches break down and infrastructure-free navigation demonstrates its clearest advantage. Its multi-level layout, underground platforms, and sheer scale create genuine difficulty for first-time visitors and passengers with disabilities alike.
University Station, the second deployment site, offers a simpler layout spanning approximately 120,000 square feet with two overground platforms — providing a complementary data point in a single interconnected navigation system that extends to outdoor areas throughout central Birmingham.
Project objectives
The WMCA deployment had three core objectives: to enhance independent navigation for passengers with visual impairments and mobility challenges; to improve passenger flow and reduce congestion at Birmingham New Street; and to demonstrate a scalable model applicable to major rail stations across the UK.
A secondary objective was the promotion of sustainable mobility — by improving the experience and confidence of public transport users, the project was expected to encourage an increase in public transit usage, supporting a reduction in carbon emissions from private vehicles and taxis.
Waymap's deployment at Birmingham New Street and University Station forms the centrepiece of a comprehensive interconnected navigation system. The system encompasses live transit data integration and extends to outdoor areas throughout central Birmingham — creating a multimodal experience that connects rail stations to city landmarks and surrounding areas through seamless step-by-step guidance.
Infrastructure-free accuracy
The technical challenge at Birmingham New Street is significant: GPS is effectively unusable throughout much of the station due to the building above it. Waymap's infrastructure-free approach — using smartphone inertial sensors and AI algorithms rather than GPS, Wi-Fi, or installed beacons — was the only viable solution that could provide reliable indoor navigation in this environment.
Testing conducted at Birmingham New Street demonstrated significantly higher location accuracy using Waymap than GPS-based navigation alternatives — a gap most pronounced in complex underground environments where GPS cannot function reliably.
Live transit data
The deployment integrates live train schedules, ensuring passengers can time their journeys effectively even when facing unexpected delays or disruptions. Outdoor navigation across central Birmingham enables users to navigate seamlessly between train stations and city landmarks.
Testing conducted among diverse user groups at Birmingham New Street demonstrated strong user satisfaction across all user groups, with particularly positive responses from users with visual impairments — who reported increased confidence in navigating the station independently.
Media coverage
Shortly after deployment, Waymap was featured in a highly positive article in the Sunday Times — highlighting the app’s ability to provide precise navigation within the UK rail network, including in underground stations without internet connection.
National implications
The Birmingham deployment has set a new benchmark for accessibility in the UK rail industry. By enabling independent travel for passengers with visual impairments and other disabilities, the system aligns with national goals of creating an inclusive and sustainable public transport network — and providing a replicable model for major rail stations across the UK.
- Waymap internal deployment data — WMCA Birmingham, 2024.
- West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA). wmca.org.uk
- Waymap location accuracy comparison. Birmingham New Street Station, indoor testing, 2024.