With a few weeks remaining until the end of the Arriva Trains Wales franchise, the train operating company is celebrating 15 years and are thanking all passengers.
The launch saw Arriva Group CEO Manfred Rudhart join Assembly Member Mick Antoniw Town Mayor Cllr Linda Davies and Arriva Trains Wales MD Tom Joyner to say “Diolch” (Welsh for Thank You) to its passengers.
Arriva Trains Wales took over the franchise in 2003 and have been running trains across the Wales and Borders ever since.
Since 2003, more than 400 million journeys have been made, on 4.5 million train services.
Arriva Trains Wales facts:
- Ran more than 4,500,000 passenger services
- Carried more than 400,000,000 passengers
- Increased daily train services from 620 to more than 1,000
- Improved punctuality year on year with 81% arriving within 5 minutes of schedule in 2004 to 92% in 2017 whilst Right Time performance has jumped from 57% to 83%
- Invested more than £33 million in improvements across the network despite only being asked to spend £400,000
- Installed Customer Information Screens on 168 extra stations to ensure every station on our network has public information
- Grown colleague numbers by more than 500 despite operating during one of the worst recessions in living memory
What did the officials say?
Managing Director Tom Joyner said:
“We are proud that we have well and truly defied all expectations, growing customer journeys from 18 million to 33 million.
“We've overseen major investment in stations and played our part in some of the world's biggest sporting events.
“There have been mistakes along the way and difficult situations, but we've come through them and come out stronger as a result and we are proud to be leaving the Wales and Borders network in a far stronger position than when we started in 2003. Our new Welsh language scholarship shows we are proud to continue our investment in people right up to the end of our franchise.”
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Farewell Arriva Trains Wales.
Arriva could also be losing the Chiltern Railways franchise in a few years or will Arriva extend the franchise to 5-6 years. And possibly to order some new trains as or retain the older stocks as they got enough rolling stocks to provide services in the Chiltern, Cotswolds, parts of West Midlands and serving towns & cities such as Warwick, Oxford, Aylesbury, High Wycombe, Birmingham, Stratford-upon-Avon, Banbury, Gloucester, Cheltenham, Hereford and serving counties including Buckinghamshire, Herefordshire, Warwickshire, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire to & from London Marylebone.
I think Arriva Trains have done North Wales Proud
Thank You Arriva Trains Wales for your commitment over the last 15 years.
Having used Arrive every month or so since 2009 to go to Cardiff from Manchester and back (and various other journeys) I can safely say I have not had many issues and none serious, the staff have always been spot on trains need updating but so do many, living in an area that is mostly serviced by Northern Rail I can appreciate how good Arriva Trains Wales have been, they have their haters like any company when people are using them everyday to go to work etc which is to be expected but they have certainly been better than Northern Rail