In the 20 years Virgin Trains has been running the west coast service, we’ve seen our share of challenges. Not least of these was the closure of the route at Lamington at the start of 2016, cutting off one of two arterial rail routes connecting Scotland to England.
For seven weeks, customers travelling between Glasgow and England had to take a scenic route via Kilmarnock and Dumfries to Carlisle – though our quick work with the ScotRail Alliance did at least avoid the need for replacement buses.
Fast forward a year and we were ready to see in the Virgin Trains’ 20th anniversary year with a bit more to celebrate. The number of passengers crossing the border on our west coast route was again soaring, punctuality had hit a record high and we’d delivered our latest industry-leading innovation in the shape of BEAM: an entertainment app that allows customers to stream more than 200 hours of entertainment straight to their device.
Our recent passenger figures confirm this success: in the 24 weeks to March 31, there were just shy of 300,000 passenger journeys between Glasgow and London, up 28% on the same period two years ago.
This followed the news over Christmas that our east coast route had seen one million passenger journeys between Edinburgh and London for the first time after seeing 8% annual growth.
As with any story about business success, those headlines represent a lot of hard work by our people to deliver a service that customers want to keep coming back for.
Our punctuality on the west coast route has improved a full eight percentage points since the start of privatisation, with 89% of our trains now arriving within 10 minutes of schedule. That sort of improvement doesn’t come overnight but has resulted from working in partnership with Network Rail and other industry partners since 2009.
We’ve built a reputation for innovation, from delivering tilting trains to delay compensation that automatically goes into your bank account – without a form being filled. BEAM is the latest instalment in that legacy, allowing customers to instantly stream Hollywood blockbusters, TV box sets and documentaries while zipping along at speeds of up to 125mph.
We’ve also doubled the booking horizon from the industry standard of three months and made m-tickets available across all our west coast services.
And we’ve made sure that price is no barrier by making £30 fares between Glasgow and London widely available for customers who can book in advance, ensuring that more of them choose train over plane.
The upshot of all that work is that we’re delivering what Virgin is best known for: happy customers. The latest independent survey of this by rail watchdog Transport Focus found that 90% of customers on the west coast route were satisfied with the service. The only operator within the franchised long distance sector to perform better was Virgin Trains’ east coast route.
That’s not to say we can rest on our laurels. If our 20 years’ experience of the railways has taught us anything, it’s that more challenges wait around the corner. But challenges are there to be overcome.
