Domestic travellers switching to rail

Fifteen per cent more passengers have used Virgin Trains since the start of a high frequency service on the West Coast mainline a year ago.

The company carried a record 25.4 million passengers in the 12 months, helped by 30% rise in train frequency and faster journey times.

The share of the rail/air market on the Manchester-London route is more than 80%, and on Glasgow-London has doubled to 17% as travellers switch away from domestic air travel, Virgin Trains claims.

Overall passenger numbers at weekends have grown by 36% and the average price paid per mile has gone down by 8.4%, according to the company.

Routes from Manchester and Birmingham to London Euston have seen train frequencies increased to every 20 minutes, and average journey times in the case of Manchester cut to as little as two hours and five minutes.

The number of direct trains from London to Glasgow increased from nine to 13 a day while Chester has been linked to the capital by an hourly service since January. Liverpool received extra peak period trains to and from London.

The company claimed a "steadily improved" service performance over the year after initially disappointing punctuality in the early part of 2009.

A programme of increasing car park spaces at stations is now nearly complete, with some 2,800 spaces delivered and extra capacity of 1,000 spaces at remaining stations to be available during 2010.

Virgin Trains' CEO Tony Collins said: "After a year of operation it is clear that VHF (Virgin High Frequency) works. The intensive use of the network and of our trains is vital if the UK is to gain maximum benefit for the investment in the West Coast."

With permission from Travelmole