What do you think abotu Virgin trains losing its franchise for the UK cross-country services?

Question

Apparantly they have been awarded to Arriva, who will start running services from November 2007. Any opinions?

I never had a good experience travelling on these Virgin trains, they were always about an hour or so late every time. Do you think Arriva will do any better?

Answer 1

It's going to cost you and me big money to repaint all those trains and rebrand any stations and marketing along the way, plus get new uniforms for the SAME STAFF. Arriva won't be providing any new trains in the near future, so the service won't get any better. The same signallers will be signalling the same trains on the same overcrowded and underfunded network. Ok, so there's a new management team. That's about it.

First Great Western run the entire Western region apart from Wales. Arriva now run the entire rest of the region. How can that be good for the customer when there is no competition?

Answer 2

Never has a problem, and they are usually cheap. Arriva on the other hand are always on strike; what does that say about the company?!

Not pleased

Answer 3

It doesn't matter who runs the trains. The trains can only run on time if their paths are clear. This would mean Network Rail, signallers and TOC control getting off their lazy backsides and working round problems, rather than running round like headless chickens trying to blame everybody else for the delay to the service.

What really needs to happen is renationalisation. Public transport is not a profit making business.

Answer 4

As Arriva are running most of the trains across the country already then things should get better as they in theory should link up connecting trains better. As it stood before there was perhaps 3 companies involved linked with connecting services and now you just have the 1

Answer 5

Personally i am dissappointed.

I think it would have been better for customers if it was virgin as richard branson seems to me like a competitive guy  who puts customers first.

Who owns/runs arriva? no one knows!

I am sure john armitt or whoever will have got a nice pay off from arriva.  Corruption runs this country.

Answer 6

Arriva were prepared to pay more than Virgin.  It's unlikely to make a great deal of difference.  All it means is they'll spend half a million repainting the trains, then the profits will go to someone new.

BTW Arriva is Italian for "it's coming".  Not much comfort when you've been waiting for half an hour.