As Virgin Trains celebrated its 10th birthday, it announces that the number of passenger journeys made on its routes has risen by a staggering 61.5%, easily outstripping the national average of 40%.
There are two Virgin Trains franchises - Virgin West Coast and Virgin CrossCountry. In the last 12 months more than 42m passenger journeys have been made with Virgin Trains ” 16m more than when the company began in 1997.
Virgin CrossCountry has seen massive growth of 75% since 1997, with passenger numbers up from 12m to 21m, while on Virgin West Coast passenger numbers are up 39% from 14m to 19.4m.
Managing director Chris Gibb said: "We've taken a route that had ageing trains, infrequent services and long journey times and turned it into a modern, high-speed service with brand new trains and a turn-up and go timetable. Everyone at Virgin Trains has worked really hard to improve our service and we are proud that our customers now rely on us to deliver them to their destination on time and in comfort."
Virgin says that customers have been enticed back to rail following the introduction of two new train fleets, the Voyager and Pendolino fleets and a vastly improved timetable. The number of Virgin CrossCountry weekday services has been increased to run half-hourly from Birmingham to Newcastle, Reading, Manchester and Bristol and hourly to Edinburgh, Carlisle and Plymouth. The Virgin West Coast timetable has been improved with the Manchester ” London service revamped to run every 30 minutes. In the last three years the rail share of the London ” Manchester air/rail market has risen dramatically from well under half to nearly two thirds per cent to 61 per cent.
Virgin Rail Group is owned 51% by Virgin Group and 49% by Stagecoach Group.