Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotheram has unveiled the trains and buses that will be hitting the Liverpool City Region’s roads and rails during the Eurovision Song Contest.
The contest coming to Liverpool has been made possible with the help of £2m of funding from Mayor Rotheram and the Combined Authority. As the eyes of the world turn their attention to the city region, the mayor has commissioned a new look for the region’s public transport to mark the occasion.
One of the region’s new publicly owned £500m trains has also been wrapped in Eurovision livery and will appear on the Merseyrail network from today.
New zero-emission hydrogen buses will also start appearing from today (Monday 24 April) draped in Eurovision’s colours. They will initially be used for driver training before entering passenger service in the coming days on the 10A route between St Helens and Liverpool.
Eurovision artwork will also appear at train and bus stations, bus stops, ferry terminals and tunnel entrances with the region set to welcome an estimated 100,000 extra visitors, while the contest itself is expected to attract around 160 million TV viewers.
Rotheram said: “The chance to host a global spectacle like the Eurovision Song Contest is an opportunity that doesn’t come around very often – especially for a city in the UK – that’s why so many cities bid for the accolade.
“I’m enormously proud of the investments we’ve made to deliver a publicly-owned, public transport network run in the interests of the public. We’ve commissioned these new liveries to celebrate this global spectacular coming to our region – it really is once in a lifetime.”
Eurovision is predicted to be directly worth around £25m to the city region economy when it takes over Liverpool next May and, looking at the impact on previous host cities, it could also increase tourism to the city by up to five per cent a year – which equates to over £250m extra revenue by 2026.
