Birmingham New Street will see increased rail services to London return as part of Avanti West Coast's "recovery plan" after a number of routes were axed over summer. There will also be extra services run by the train operator from Birmingham to Wales and the north.
From next week, September 27, Avanti West Coast will introduce four additional trains a day (two in each direction) on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays from Birmingham New Street to London Euston.
Following that in mid-December, the train operator has revealed it will continue its "significant step up of the timetable". This means that in addition to more services on the London to Birmingham route, there will be extra trains from Manchester, Liverpool, London and Scotland.
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Avanti have said that tickets for the new services from Birmingham New Street to London will be available for purchase over the coming days. The remaining additional services will be introduced as soon as possible.
Further additional services will be added to Manchester, Birmingham and North Wales as well as maintaining regular services to Liverpool and Scotland. Overall, there will be more than 260 services a day on weekdays, compared with around 180 a day before December and 245 in May 2022.
The company have said that extra trains will be provided in a "reliable and sustainable fashion." The services are being targeted at the busiest routes and times and are not dependent on overtime working.
They also take into account nearly 100 new drivers who have joined the network.
An Avanti West Coast spokesperson said: “We know we’re not delivering the service our customers rightly expect and we apologise for the enormous frustration and inconvenience this is causing. The decision to reduce our timetable in August was not taken lightly but our customers and communities deserve a dependable train service, so we’ve been working hard to rebuild our timetable in a resilient and sustainable way.
“Resolving this situation required a robust plan that allows us to gradually increase services without being reliant on traincrew overtime. We are now in a position to start delivering this incremental increase in services, followed by a further increase in December. We’ll continue to review our timetable beyond December with our industry partners.
“We’re working with our people, their union representatives, and industry partners to match the resources we have to demand, so we can deliver reliable services across our network to all our customers and communities. We would like to thank our customers for their patience and understanding during this period."
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