LNER services between Bradford and London more than triple
UK: The opening of an additional platform at Bradford Forster Square has enabled LNER to increase services between the 2025 City of Culture and London from two to seven trains a day from the May timetable change.
The £35m project, which included improvements to the station infrastructure to ease congestion for passengers, was delivered in 16 months and will enable LNER to provide an additional 1·9 million train seats a year. Prior to the timetable change the first LNER train from London did not arrive at Bradford until 19.29 but the first arrival now is at 09.52, enabling visitors to make a day trip to the city.
Platform 0 was officially opened on May 19 by Minister for Local Transport Simon Lightwood, who said the additional services would ’not only create a more reliable and comfortable journey, but bring an estimated extra £4m into the local economy each year’.
Speaking to Rail Business UK, LNER Managing Director David Horne explained that the step-up in services had originally been a Virgin Trains East Coast franchise commitment, and delivery had been taken on by LNER. He said a two-hourly service between Bradford and London ‘was always part of the plan for our Azuma fleet’, but ‘when we came to work out how to introduce the service we realised that we would need a new platform’.
Horne paid tribute to Network Rail for the speed of construction, noting ‘what an achievement to get a new platform designed and constructed in the space of 16 months in a pretty constrained site. Some of the early discussions were about having to excavate some of the rock face and all sorts; it sounded like it was a project that was perhaps never going to happen. So to be able to depart from the new platform this morning with it all done and dusted is absolutely brilliant.’
The services are worked as extensions of existing trains between Leeds and London, which can be delivered without any additional pressure on the Azuma fleet or capacity challenges on the congested East Coast Main Line. Many drivers already signed the route but some additional training has been required.
Horne said the services would have an economic and social benefit. ’We identified Bradford as a city and a region that absolutely needed transformation and regeneration; in terms of economic value we estimate that our extra services will generate an additional £4m a year in economic value to the Bradford area. That’s really important; it’s not just the regional and national connectivity improvement, it is the extra money into the local economy which is a real key factor in this.
‘In addition we’ve shifted our recruitment in the West Yorkshire area, which used to be really targeted in and around Leeds, and we’ve broadened that out to the whole West Yorkshire region, because we’ve recognised that we were missing markets in Bradford in terms of where we were going for recruitment. So we’re doing much more now in terms of the Bradford district, Keighley and so on, as areas to recruit from as well. So this is this is all how rail can make an impact in the economies that we’re part of.’
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