Achievements
- In December 2008, London Midland began operating more services, with more seats, including introducing direct services between London and Birmingham and a new service connecting London, Northampton and Trent Valley stations.
- For December 2009, the introduction of the Watford shuttle - extra peak-time services for passengers travelling into London from Watford, Bushey and Harrow. This will also mean that our longer distance services into London can be quicker and have more available seats.
- Better stations - we are investing £11.5 million in improving our stations. Work has already started on extending car parks, increasing security, and keeping them cleaner and tidier.
- New trains - our new fleet of four-car state-of-the-art Class 350/2 Desiro trains is just part of our investment of £250 million in rolling stock.
- Responding to passengers - as well as our fortnightly Meet the Managers sessions at London Euston and Birmingham Snow Hill stations, a Passenger Panel has been set up to enable you to feed your ideas and concerns into our planning.
Better services
London Midland's new services between London and Birmingham, along with a number of other key services which the franchise is based around began in December 2008. Key features of the timetable included:
- Direct London Euston - Birmingham services
- New direct services connecting stations along the Trent Valley, Staffordshire and the north west with London
- A new timetable for the Birmingham-Northampton route
- Liverpool became London Midland's northern focus with trains operating half hourly between Birmingham and Liverpool including Saturdays
- Extra evening and weekend services in the West Midlands
- More carriages for commuter trains into London Euston
- Improvements to the connections to the West Coast Mainline from the Abbey and Marston Vale branch lines
- Extra services from London Euston to Crewe
- Increased off-peak and evening frequency on the Walsall - Rugeley line, plus direct links at Rugeley Trent Valley to the new London Midland London services along the Trent Valley
Better stations
- Refurbishments to all of our stations, including major upgrades at Milton Keynes Central, Northampton, Watford Junction and Birmingham Snow Hill as part of our £11.5m investment
- A start made on providing more than 3,000 extra parking spaces
- Better electronic information boards
- Ticket machines and help points at all our stations, connected to a 24-hour information centre
- More cycle storage at 22 stations
- A significant increase in stations being made more accessible for wheelchairs, part of our annual £250,000 investment
- 80% of our customers will travel through our stations that have Secure Station Accreditation, meeting police-approved standards
- New CCTV systems at 29 stations
- Introduction of the London Midland Task Force, a combination of London Midland staff, security personnel and British Transport Police to target crime and disorder across the network
New trains
- Our new £190 million fleet of four-carriage Desiros is at the heart of our new West Coast Main Line service.
- We have refurbished most of our existing fleet of trains – Class 153s, Class 323s, and Class 170s – to make them smarter and more reliable.
- Almost all our trains use regenerative braking, recycling heat from brakes, saving energy and helping the environment.
- We are in talks with the government over many of the trains we will receive when it redistributes rolling stock between companies.
Responding to passengers
- Meet the Manager sessions at main stations so passengers can meet company Directors to make their views known.
- The roll out of our Passenger Panel.
- Loading sensors on our trains, so we know immediately where more carriages are most needed.
- Information at stations on how busy specific services are.
- Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) for passenger-facing staff, keeping them informed.
