Transport User Voice – You and your train company November 2017

25 October 2017

East Midlands consultation

We‘ve been out and about to hear your views on future East Midlands rail services ensuring it delivers what passengers want.

Over the past couple of months we have been heavily involved in the Government’s consultation into the future of rail services, as part of the process for the next franchise. Our research forms the basis of our understanding into what passengers want from the next franchise and helped shape our engagement with the consultation.

We presented our passenger research at all 11 events across the network to hear what they wanted from future services. In total, around 900 people attended the events to discuss important issues in the consultation such as changes to services on the Midland Main Line to and from London.

We are pleased to see passengers have engaged with this process and encourage the Government to build on this in future franchise consultations. We have responded to the consultation with our views based on the experiences of passengers, as set out in our research. You can read our response here.

We will now work closely with Government and potential bidders to ensure the passenger voice is at the heart of plans for future services as they develop.

Wales and Borders rail services

Transport for Wales has issued its final invitations to tender to bidders for the rail service. We provided evidence to help shape the content of the documents, emphasising the need for the passenger voice to be firmly at the centre of plans.

We are also working with the bidders for the contract, helping them to understand what passengers are saying through our extensive programme of research. We want to ensure that their plans are centred on the things that are important to passengers.

Keeping passengers at the heart of services elsewhere

Our work on franchising continues at pace. We are expecting the invitation to tender for the South Eastern franchise to be published shortly and are working with bidders to help them ensure their plans are focused on improving the experience for passengers.

Plans for the West Coast Partnership (combining existing West Coast Main Line services with the preparation and early stages of HS2) are developing. We’re concerned with ensuring that passengers on existing services are looked-after, as well as planning carefully for any disruption due to the building works. Meanwhile we are leading the thinking about what passengers will want from the new, HS2 services when they begin.

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