Govia

London Midland’s new trains bring extra capacity and faster journeys
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date 29 February 2012
source Govia
type Press release

London Midland has ordered 10 new trains to be delivered in the Summer of 2014. These new units will go towards addressing continuing passenger growth into and out of London and Birmingham.

Through the Department for Transport's HLOS funding, seven of the new trains are earmarked for London commuter services providing 4,474 extra seats each weekday. There will be an extra 3 services arriving in London during the morning peak and an extra 5 departing from London in the evening peak.

More trains in peak hours will be made possible by increasing the maximum speed from 100 mph to 110 mph. This will generate additional paths on the West Coast Main Line without any significant impact on other operators or performance. The West Coast Main Line between Rugby and London Euston is one of the most intensively used lines in Europe and this innovative approach from London Midland makes the best use of scarce network capacity at an affordable price.

Journey times between London and Northampton will reduce by up to 10 minutes and between Milton Keynes and London by up to 7 minutes. This speed increase will see the Crewe to London Euston service journey times improve by up to 25 minutes as well as additional services on Sundays.

The remaining three new trains will be used to provide extra capacity on the Cross-City line in Birmingham. They will be used to increase the weekday frequency of peak and off-peak services between Birmingham and Redditch from 2 to 3 trains per hour from December 2014. Network Rail has a plan to extend the electrification of the CrossCity line from Barnt Green to a relocated and improved Bromsgrove station which will enable an extended service to commence from late spring 2015.

Patrick Verwer, Managing Director of LondonMidland said: 'We are very excited at the prospect of introducing higher speed services for our customers. These new trains will create significant extra capacity for our customers travelling into London Euston and the West Midlands. Their acquisition demonstrates our commitment to continue improving capacity, performance and customer satisfaction.'

Railhub Archive ::: 2012-02-29 LON-001