Cast your mind back to 2019. Life was (vaguely) affordable, Covid wasn’t a word anyone knew, and Virgin ran the train service between Glasgow and London. Simpler times. Today, of course, that same route is run by Avanti West Coast, which isn’t exactly the best-loved of Britain’s rail operators.
Since taking over five years ago, Avanti has been criticised by loads of people, including Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham, for being unreliable and ‘in a perennial state of chaos’. Virgin Trains, which lost the contract due to its business partner Stagecoach not meeting government guidelines on pensions, has said it plans to return to the rails better than ever, on its own and under what’s called an ‘Open Access’ licence.
Basically, when train operators get into contracts with the government, they claim certain subsidies from the state. Under an open access licence however, the company doesn’t get any support from the state and runs as an independent company, taking on both the full risk and reward of the venture. Virgin has said they believe that running the service under this type of contract will, ‘[increase] consumer choice and competition both of which Virgin has always supported’.
As well as going all the way to Glasgow, Virgin has suggested it’ll apply to run services from London Euston to Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, and Preston. We don’t know yet if the company be successful in its applications, but someday soon we could have functional train services between our major cities. Ah, we can only dream.
Trains in the news
We at Time Out like to keep up to date on the latest in the world of UK railway news. For instance, did you see that you can currently get cheap £35 Eurostar tickets? Maybe you missed that the Tyne and Wear Metro is getting swanky new carriages, or that a brand-new steam train museum has opened in Wales? We also keep up to date with latest information about ongoing strikes with our national industrial action hub.
Did you see that a brand-new £100 million train station is coming to Liverpool?
Plus: UK cities are getting loads of free Olympic fan zones this summer.
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