East Midlands Trains has today confirmed plans to continue running two commuter services from Nottingham to Bottesford when its timetable changes in December.
This announcement follows talks held between East Midlands Trains, Leicestershire County Council, Alan Duncan MP and Bottesford residents where concerns were raised over the train service provided in the new December timetable.
Commenting, Tim Shoveller, Managing Director for East Midlands Trains said:
“We’ve listened to all the concerns raised, and have subsequently carried out detailed counts of the number of passengers using our services to travel home from work in Nottingham.
“These updated figures do show that an increasing number of residents rely on the 17.50 and 18.45 services, and for that reason, we have made the decision to put them back in the December timetable.
“As a company, we encourage feedback and are willing to re-look at plans and be flexible where we can. Whilst last minute changes to the timetable can have an impact on factors such as performance, the strength of feeling from the commuters has been such that we wanted to do something at the earliest opportunity.
“We’ll be keeping a close eye on the performance of these services over the coming weeks to ensure that these last minute, un-timed changes do not have a detrimental effect on other services. And, we’ll also be trying to encourage even more Bottesford residents to give the car a miss and travel by train!”
“On a final note, we’d like to thank everybody who has given us such detailed feedback, we hope that today’s announcement demonstrates that East Midlands Trains is a company who does listens to the views of its passengers”.
David Maxwell, Director for East Midlands Trains who attended a meeting of residents on 27 November said, “It was great to go to Bottesford and meet some of the passengers that use these services regularly. They were obviously very pleased that we have listened, and are now planning to continue running these two services. In fact they were so pleased we even got an unexpected standing ovation!”
In addition to the timetabled 17.34 service from Nottingham to Bottesford, East Midlands Trains will also be running a 17.50 service and an 18.45 service from Nottingham to Bottesford from 15 December 2008.