Ethos Public Relations Manchester

The Age of the Train (Again)

by Shaun

It was great, travelling down to London last week on the train from Chester, to be able to get to the capital in two hours. The new service is excellent - just not sure why the train was so long and there were so few people on it. (Price perhaps?) A revamped Chester station also helped.

However, it still takes about an hour to get from Chester to Manchester - only 50 miles away. Surely it's time to speed up that route too? You can be in London in the time it takes to get from Chester to Manchester and back...

It's good news that proposals have been put forward to introduce a new high speed rail line for the West Coast line (some time in the future!) but even better news that new high speed trains will be able to run on conventional track, speeding up journey times sooner. This will not only open up access to the North West, improving prosperity, but will of course, get more cars off the roads.

Using existing infrastructure to improve existing train services is the approach of Go! Co-operative. Go! argues that we should be getting trains to stop at more of the stations? that currently exist and are aiming to provide new services to places like Melksham, Frome and Yeovil, which all have existing stations but a poor service.

In summary, it's time to make better use of the rail infrastructure we have.

Posted at 9:25am on 10^th September 2009