Press release -
Extra Compensation for London Northwestern Railway and West Midlands Railway Customers
London Northwestern Railway and West Midlands Railway will provide additional compensation to its customers following a drop in train performance since May.
West Midlands Trains commercial director, Andy Camp, said:
“Performance since May has not been as good as it should have been, and we apologise to all our customers. While we have started on a vigorous programme to improve performance, working with industry partners including Network Rail who run the signalling and tracks and the West Midlands Rail Executive, we are taking this extra step to compensate our passengers. This is on top of our £1 billion investment programme.”
Any compensation will be in addition to our delay repay scheme which has paid out £2.5 million since May and any season ticket compensation will recognise the planned national fares increase scheduled for January 2020.
The train company is discussing the best form of compensation and the best way to give this to its customers and will publish details very shortly.
London Northwestern Railway and West Midlands Railway will make some changes to the timetable in December to improve reliability and bring 40 extra carriages on the network to create more capacity. The timetable changes in May created capacity for 150,000 extra passengers but meant that any disruption to services was much harder to remedy and more passengers became delayed.
West Midlands Trains is investing £700 million in new trains that will see capacity increase by 25% by 2021. The first of the brand new trains is already in testing and the first of the new trains is due to go into service in the second half of next year.
Ends
Notes to editors
The new timetable will benefit from the arrival of 16 extra carriages ( 4 four-car Class 350/4 trains). A further 24 carriages ( 6 four-car Class 350/4 trains) will arrive early in the new year ) . West Midlands Trains also has 413 brand new carriages on order. The new trains will begin to arrive at the end of 2021.
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About West Midlands Trains
For further information on this release, call our press office on 03300 955150 or email press.office@wmtrains.co.uk
West Midlands Trains operates both West Midlands Railway and London Northwestern Railway services.
- London Northwestern Railway services operate between Liverpool and Birmingham, and on the West Coast mainline to and from London Euston.
- West Midlands Railway services operate to destinations across the West Midlands via Birmingham New Street.
For more information on these services visit westmidlandsrailway.co.uk or londonnorthwesternrailway.co.uk
The West Midlands Trains franchise started on 10 December 2017 and will run until 2025/26.
West Midlands Trains operates 1,300 services a day, manages 150 stations and provides over 70 million passenger journeys a year. Over the course of the franchise, West Midlands Trains will be investing £1 billion into the rail network to deliver new trains, improved routes and station upgrades. This will include 400 new train carriages across the network and space for an extra 85,000 passengers into Birmingham and London at peak times.
The franchise is a joint venture between Abellio (70.1% share) and East Japan Railway Company / Mitsui & Co., Ltd (29.9% share in a 50:50 split). Abellio is the international passenger transport subsidiary of the Dutch national railway company, Nederlandse Spoorwegen. In the UK, Abelllio operates ScotRail and Greater Anglia train services, Merseyrail services in a joint venture with Serco and buses through Abellio London. For more information visit www.abellio.com
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