Virgin Trains has unveiled what it is calling its vision for the station of the future at Birmingham International.
Over £1m has been invested in to the new ticketing area, with the traditional booking office window replaced by a welcome desk supported by individual “service pods”.
Other features include more user friendly information screens, improved ticket machines and touchscreen information points.
Virgin Trains says that “With more staff presence on the concourse, floorwalkers armed with tablets to assist with onward travel requests, the £1m plus investment has also seen the introduction of wireless charging for customer devices, cashless payment up to the value of £30 at the car park barriers to reduce queues, free station wifi and the refurbishment of concourse toilets”.
Commenting on the pilot project explained Natasha Grice, Virgin Trains General Manager for the West Midlands route said:
“We’ve never been afraid to challenge traditional thinking. We are committed to innovation and the ‘Station of the Future’ project is just another example, coming on the back of the launch of Beam, our free onboard content service, the introduction of Automatic Delay Repay and the roll out of m-tickets including our new web to wallet facility.”
“More importantly these changes are being driven by our customers. In the last year alone we’ve seen a fivefold increase in the number of customers using paperless tickets. More and more are now arriving at the station having bought their tickets.”
Stagecoach and Virgin work in partnership to operate the East Coast and West Coast inter-city routes under the Virgin Trains brand.