From Monday 5 September London Midland will treble the number of trains on its Birmingham and Coventry to London Euston route.
London Midland trains will now run up to every 20 minutes Mondays – Saturdays, with a brand new hourly service on Sundays. Journey times will also be up to 20 minutes quicker.
The current hourly service between the two cities was introduced in December 2008 as a cheaper alternative to Virgin Trains and Chiltern Railways, with walk up fares starting at just £19 return.
The popularity of the service has seen an 80% increase in customers over the past 12 months.
The increase in service is also good news for those living near Marston Green, Hampton in Arden, Berkswell, Tile Hill and Canley stations as they will also see direct trains to the capital, 7 days a week.
Alex Hynes, Commercial Director at London Midland, said:
“This is a great leap forward for our Birmingham to London service. The improved frequency and quicker journey times mean customers will no longer have to compromise on convenience to get great value fares.”
To mark the start of the 20 minute frequency, London Midland is offering a 20% discount on all Birmingham to London tickets (which also includes the London Midland train journey into Birmingham from the Network West Midlands area) bought online for the first 20 days of the new service here.
Competition is good and I applaud Midland for offering affordable walk on fairs but to clog up the system with piddling short trains every twenty minutes when longer trains every thirty minutes would be acceptable is just giving Government an excuse to waste £Billions on HS2. If passenger numbers have risen 80% in a year with an hourly service, again every thirty minutes should be sufficient to continue growth.
Where are the extra carriages coming from to cope with this amount of growth and what is the forecast growth? Here in the North we have had average 90% growth on many lines, not just one, but cannot find enough carriages to cope with 50% forecast growth and the Minister will not give us new trains for ten years. How can Midland cope and Northern can’t?
Is this more inequality in the North/South divide?