Rail passengers have ‘received an early Christmas present’ today (12 December 2011) with the launch of an additional 1,500 seats a day on East Midlands Trains’ services between Nottingham, Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool.
The improvements have been made possible as a result of East Midlands Trains working with the Department for Transport to secure four additional trains for its network.
The introduction of these trains means that an additional 10 trains every weekday on the busy Nottingham-Sheffield-Liverpool route will be strengthened to provide double the seating capacity.
From today, which marks the start of East Midlands Trains’ new timetable, some services will be strengthened from 2-car to 4-car trains.
In addition, and following passenger and stakeholder feedback, the 13.52 Liverpool to Nottingham service will be extended through to Norwich.
Rail Minister Theresa Villiers said:
“These extra carriages are great news for passengers. The Government is determined to tackle overcrowding and provide better, more comfortable journeys, which is why we are funding this extra capacity.
“We are now embarked on one of the biggest programmes of rail capacity expansion since the Victorian era. In total we plan to introduce 2,700 new rail carriages on to the network by May 2019.
“These vital improvements will support economic growth and make life better for passengers.”
David Horne, Managing Director of East Midlands Trains, said:
“We’ve already made some significant improvements for passengers using services on our Liverpool to Norwich line, with refurbished trains, additional seats and an improved timetable.
“This has all helped to improve customer satisfaction on this line, with the most recent independent passenger survey showing that 92% of passengers are satisfied with their service.
“However, we want to continue building on that success and are therefore very pleased to be launching so many extra seats for passengers travelling from Nottingham and Sheffield through to Manchester and Liverpool.
“We would like to thank our passengers and stakeholders for their steadfast support in helping us to bring about these improvements.”
David Brown, Director General for the South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive (SYPTE), added:
“We have long argued for more seating capacity on these key routes to make the journeys more enjoyable for those people wishing to travel.
“These additional seats will create much required capacity to enable people to travel in comfort between South Yorkshire, Nottingham, Manchester and Liverpool.”
East Midlands Trains joined forces with Northern Rail at an event in Sheffield earlier today to mark the introduction of the additional seats being provided by both train operators.
