Richard Graham will today be asking the Leader of the House at Prime Minister’s Questions today to ask CrossCountry to make a solid commitment to extra services to Gloucester.
The MP has been campaigning for a number of years for an increase in stops at Gloucester on services between Birmingham and Bristol. CrossCountry runs 63 intercity trains a day between Birmingham & Bristol of which only 3 stop at the city of Gloucester.
Formal talks with the Department for Transport on a new franchise for Cross Country concluded in September 2016. Richard Graham met with Rail Minister Paul Maynard in November to discuss possible extra services.
A letter from the Minister confirmed that CrossCountry had indicated that two additional calls each day could be possible from December 2017 but they subsequently told the department this would not be possible due to lack of capacity and that these might be delivered from December 2018.
CrossCountry released a public consultation on 31 October on December 2017 timetable changes in which they state “we were seeking to add some additional station calls at Gloucester in our Manchester to Bristol services from December 2017. It will not be possible to achieve this as there is not enough track capacity to accommodate these services at this time. It is possible this may be achieved in December 2018, and we will work with Network Rail to review the situation. We will consult affected stakeholders on this proposal nearer the time.”
Richard said, “The current situation is totally unacceptable. While we continue to improve station infrastructure & gear up for more and better London route services, Cross Country treats the City of Gloucester as a sort of rail leper – doing anything to avoid more than 3 out of 63 Inter City services a day stopping at the City of Gloucester. Whatever the technical issues of eg electrification at Bristol train operators simply should not be allowed to avoid cities in the way Cross Country has done on this service. It’s time for Ministers to demand change.”
Richard will press the Leader of the House on this today. He has also written to the Managing Director of CrossCountry and is speaking to Network Rail.
