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Virgin Trains users have voted with their feet as the main inter-city service from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow became the first rail company to admit to falling passenger revenues.
Virgin Rail, co-owned by Sir Richard Branson and the Stagecoach transport company, said today that in the 10 months to the beginning of March, its like-for-like revenues fell 0.6%.
While train companies have been warning for months of falling growth figures as job cuts mean fewer commuters, Virgin is the first rail company to admit it is going backwards.
Virgin - which handles 22 million passengers a year on what is arguably the most important rail network and certainly its most expensive after a £9 billion upgrade - put its hands up over the level of service passengers have had to endure.
"Passengers had a truly awful year," Virgin admitted.
"We had huge disruption last year and there were 120 days when there was disruption on the line due to the Network Rail upgrade."
The massive upgrade of the West Coast Main Line is supposed to transform the performance of the Virgin railway into and out of Euston and Branson has attacked the doubters promising "huge changes in performance this year".
However, there was continued disruption in the first two months of the year after Virgin high-speed tilting trains were blamed for dislodging overhead wires around Wembley, causing massive delays in January, followed by cancellations and delays due to the snowstorms that month.
A new timetable was introduced in January with faster trains and the ability to carry one-third more passengers as the number of services to Birmingham and Manchester increased from two to three an hour.
That and the fact that after the Network Rail upgrade it should be able to run undisrupted services over weekends, has Virgin targeting growth of 9% to 10% this year.
That is lower than expected because of the economy, which Stagecoach's wholly-owned South West Trains admitted today was slowing growth.
Its Waterloo-based services have suffered a 6.7% fall in revenue growth in the 10 months to the beginning of March, compared with 8.2% in the six months to the end of October.
Reader views (7)
The overhead line problems were nothing to do with Virgin Trains and were entirely the responsibility of Network Rail.
- Kg, Glasgow, UK
Cramped uncomfortable trains with minimal catering, smelly loos, scandalously high walk-on fares, reduction in through services from stations other than Euston: the surprise is that the figures arn't even worse. But they will be!
- Michael Gerald Weinberg, Milton Keynes
Hang on there - none of the problems in the write up was Virgins fault.... Virgin gives a good services..... well done virgin!
- Graham Grimshaw, Ruislip Uk
Are we surprised, it's Virgin!!!
- Samantha, Stonehouse,UK
Hardly surprising when the service given is so poor anyway-maybe this will give Branson a jolt to improve,but i doubt it.
- Harvey Lawrence, London
Travelled to London yesterday. Flew by BA. Even though the return was slightly delayed, received wonderful service both ways, on such a short flight. Try to get a train from up north at a reasonable cost and time on a weekend and you can't, even after I was promised better availability by Virgin in their emails after the west coast line was upgraded. Virgin and Stagecoach are crying wolf, to try to elicit higher subsidy from Govt. Let them use some of their own savings from hedged fuel costs and wonderful divideneds paid to directors to reduce the fares. Give the public and me a SERVICE and I'll use the trains. The last time I travelled by train to London was Dec 08. Drove 54 mile to Newcastle to use National Express. Far better service, far quicker.
- Alan, carlisle uk
I just do not understand why Virgin Trains offer such a poor service. Whilst travelling from Euston to Manchester last week we experienced very unpleasant smells on the train and were told by the ticket collector that this had been a problem for months. It really does need to be sorted out.
- Stephanie Williams, London
