Fans will be treated 'like royalty' at the new Wembley

Football Association promises improved access, better view and more leg-room as part of English national stadium's radical redesign

Spectators will be treated like royalty at the new Wembley stadium, the Football Association has promised. Leg-room, one of many sources of discontent at the old ground, will be greater in every one of the 90,000 seats than in the old Royal Box. About 15,000 of those seats will be for corporate hospitality, but that should enable ticket prices to be kept within reach of the average fan, the FA has pledged.

What will await them at the first England international of 2006, which has been provisionally designated as the grand re-opening event? Greatly improved transport and access is the first promise, especially if supporters either leave their car at home or make use of park-and-ride facilities dotted around the North Circular road. The old car-park in front of the Twin Towers will disappear, but coach parking remains.

Some £43m is being spent on upgrading Wembley Park, the underground station at the end of Olympic Way, which will be capable of handling 40,000 passengers per hour. Wembley Central, 20 minutes away, combining underground and overground trains, is being redeveloped, and Wembley Stadium station, the venue's best-kept secret (it is nine minutes on a commuter line from Marylebone in central London and three minutes' walk from the ground) will also be improved. Moving the pitch 40 metres further north means that a concourse can at last run the whole way round the stadium, instead of on three sides only.

"Access is a key point that has to be focused on over the next three years," said Trevor Brooking, the outgoing chairman of Sport England. "The London Development Agency have a key part to play in that. We don't want a full house turning up on the first night and not being able to get in."

Long before arriving at the stadium, visitors will notice the steel arch, 133 metres tall and 315 metres long, that is the central feature of Norman Foster's design. As well as providing a landmark to replace the Towers, it has a structural purpose in supporting the north roof, ensuring that there are no pillars inside to obstruct the view.

In order to to allow adequate sun to reach the pitch, part of the roof can be retracted. "One of the criteria originally set by Ken Bates [the chairman of Wembley National Stadium Ltd] was that we had to provide grass equal to or better than the quality of the existing Wembley turf," said Rod Sheard, of the architects HOK Sport, who jointly designed the stadium with Foster & Partners, having already been responsible for the impressive new grounds at Cardiff, Bolton and Huddersfield, as well as Sydney's Stadium Australia. "The only way we could do that was with a retractable roof. The other important criterion was that there should be no shadow on the pitch during the FA Cup final. At Cardiff we couldn't quite manage that but we have here."

The roof can also be moved to ensure that all spectators are under cover in the event of rain. It does not close altogether like the Millennium Stadium, but the FA believe the atmosphere will be excellent nevertheless. Their chief executive Adam Crozier said: "The atmosphere in the stadium is one of the things the designers have worked most closely on." Their brief was to make the stands higher, and closer to the pitch, than the rather laid-back old Wembley, with its shallow gradient in the lower tiers providing such a bad view that spectators constantly stood up. The belief is that atmosphere and sight-lines have been greatly improved at the same time.

The model on display at FA headquarters in Soho yesterday shows three tiers, the lowest of which would be partially covered by a special prefabricated platform for any athletics event. Although it will take 11 weeks to put in and six weeks to remove, football or rugby league could still take place during that four-month period, with the capacity reduced from 90,000 to 70,000.

Football has guaranteed its main events – England home games, the FA Cup final, League Cup final and play-offs – will be at Wembley for 30 years, and rugby league, keen to build up a national profile, will return the Challenge Cup final to the stadium where it was held from 1929 to 1999. It may be, however, that not much athletics is seen there. No warm-up facility has yet been agreed with the London borough of Brent, and UK Athletics regard the stadium as too big for anything other than a World Championship – which London had to pull out of for 2005 because of the lack of a venue – or a European Championship.

Music promoters are more enthusiastic. "Wembley really used to rock and this town has missed a venue like it," one said yesterday. "You just can't use other football grounds, which are too close to residential areas." The Stones may yet roll into Wembley once again – if they can stagger on until 2006.