Nuneaton train campaigners say West Midlands Railway treat …
Angry Nuneaton train campaigners say West Midlands Railway treats passengers like 'second citizens'. The Nuneaton, Bedworth[1] and Hinckley Rail Community Group (NBHRCG) want West Midlands Railway and London Northwestern Railway to be forced to improve its service to the Trent Valley and Bedworth Line with immediate effect.
On top of the well-documented regular cancellations of the Nuneaton to Coventry line, the NBHRCG say that the impact of the ongoing rail strikes means that local services are suffering more. They claim that services on the West Coast Mainline south and Birmingham area are prioritised above everything else and Nuneaton is getting a sub-standard service.
"They basically decided to provide a service for other areas fully whilst those who use trains on the Trent Valley and the Bedworth line are treated like second class citizens," the group said. "We are publicly calling for the company to immediately improve their service to us or to hand back the contract."
West Midlands Railway statement
CoventryLive contacted West Midlands Railway about the claims and a spokesperson said: "We are sorry that there has been disruption to services between Nuneaton[2] and Coventry[3] recently.
"During industrial action, including the recent action short of strike (ASOS) by train driver union ASLEF, services are unfortunately at greater risk of on the day cancellations due to a shortage of available crew. Given the size of our network, we do need to make difficult decisions to ensure we can provide a safe, reliable and sustainable offering on strike days with the finite resource we have.
"The decision to provide rail replacement on the Nuneaton to Leamington line was to mitigate the level of disruption to passengers by ensuring we could provide reliable road transport during that period.
"We are also currently training more drivers on our brand new Class 196 fleet which is being rolled out on the Nuneaton to Leamington line. While this adds some short term pressure on driver availability, we hope this investment in services will significantly benefit passengers locally over the coming months."
Latest railway strikes
The latest rail strikes will see no services run on any London Northwestern Railway (LNR) on Friday (September 1). A reduced timetable will then be in operation on Saturday ( September 2) meaning services will run between the hours of 7am and 7pm only and some routes will not be served.
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