Stourbridge Line User Group welcomes West Midlands Railway

West Midlands Trains Ltd, a joint venture between Dutch firm Abellio and Japanese partners, took over routes operated by London Midland on Sunday (December 10).

The Stourbridge Line User Group, which represents train passengers on the Worcester-Kidderminster-Stourbridge-Birmingham route, has welcomed the change which will see local authorities, who have come together to form West Midlands Rail, taking a leading role in supervising the new operator.

William Whiting, acting chairman of the rail group, said: “These new arrangements bring local rail strategy closer to the people of the West Midlands.

“It is a new concept, so we’ll be watching to see how well it works, but we certainly hope that it’ll deliver a better service for passengers over the next few years.”

The group says the new franchise will lead to several improvements for Stourbridge line passengers and a spokesman for West Midlands Trains confirmed: “The new franchise will see almost £1 billion of investment.

"This includes more trains, more services and more capacity to carry 85,000 passengers each day. Part of the investment includes more money being spent on stations and feasibility studies into developing new stations in the West Midlands such as Brierley Hill and West Midlands Safari Park .”

Sunday services between Snow Hill and Stourbridge will also increase from two to six trains per hour.

Mr Whiting, of SLUG, said: “We’re very interested in the proposals for extending train services to the Brierley Hill and West Midlands Safari Park areas, and happy that there will be better evening and Sunday services on the Stourbridge Line.

“Most importantly we’ve established good relationships both with the new operators and the local transport authorities who will be overseeing them, so we look forward to engaging positively in the development of our local train services through these contacts.”