I'm willing to give the new Sunderland Station a chance - but please stop that terrible 'music'

Sunderland's new £27million railway station finally is in use, but isn't yet complete.

That information seems remarkably easy to absorb, so it's almost as if certain parties are pretending they haven't grasped it to serve their own agenda; and it's not just the usual rent-a-whingers either.

Obversely, the smiley photo opportunity taken by sundry big cheeses to laud the opening was naïve and susceptible to glib criticism. We repeat; the work isn't finished yet. Start boasting when it is.

However, we suspect that criticism of the new station was written, at least mentally, before its detractors had even seen it. Have all the scoffers actually been in it yet?

No compos mentis person could conclude that it isn't a vast improvement. The previous station, built in 1966, looked as though it had been smuggled out of East Germany in 1965. The new place was never going to be worse.

What's it like? Well hosanna, it has toilets for the first time; 57 years being a long time to sit cross-legged. It also, after some national silliness, has a functioning ticket office.

What it doesn't have yet is any retail. But it's coming, meanwhile passengers can buy anything reasonably required for rail travel at some or other shop only metres away.

The station currently has a 24 seats at street level. Paltry. Yet one councillor inflated the issue somewhat, saying it's "ridiculous for a city with more than 250,000 people"; as though, right now, half-a-million buttocks are desperately seeking respite there.

The space is (presumably) needed for what follows. It is bare, although artwork is coming. It's cold too, but which railway station isn't cold in December?

I'm still not thrilled; particularly by the excruciating "music" being piped out to innocent train users.

But try to keep an open mind. If, when it's all done people remain genuinely unimpressed, then fair enough. However, we are currently seeing a rush to judgement that would turn the head of even an incoming Sunderland manager.

Still, more investment is surely possible. The Department of Transport is now, bewilderingly, bragging about "£235m to improve roads in London, made possible by re-routed HS2 funding".

These are the roads in London they don't want cars on. If more "re-routing" is forthcoming, they know where we are.

I think.