Kevin Foster, the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Torbay has welcomed the new franchise agreement with First Great Western, bringing the most significant upgrade of infrastructure and rolling stock to the Great Western line for a generation, benefitting people and businesses across the bay.
The agreement will bring more seats, more services, and two new fleets of state-of-the-art trains on to the line – benefitting passengers across the west of England, Thames Valley and South Wales.
As part of the agreement there will be a major increase in capacity, with about 3 million extra seats a year by 2018, and 4,000 more seats a day into London during the morning peak. New trains on the line will also help to deliver more frequent services, and faster journeys.
People in Torbay will particularly benefit from seeing a new fleet of modern trains on the main line to London Paddington and improvements at Torre Station
Kevin commented: “This is excellent news for businesses and visitors to Torbay, giving us a truly Great Western Railway. I am particularly pleased to see that we can look forward to a new fleet of modern trains replacing the aging 1970’s fleet we currently rely on for our key services to London.”
“Delivering investment in our railways is a key part of My Plan for Torbay and as this agreement shows the Conservatives Long Term Economic Plan is bringing real improvements for the bay. This has only been possible because of the difficult decisions we’ve taken to reduce inefficient and ineffective spending elsewhere.”
“On 7th May voters in the bay will have a choice: between a competent, strong Conservative team, that will deliver the investment we need in our roads and railways, or the chaos of Labour, propped up by the SNP & Lib Dems, repeating exactly the same policies that got our economy into a mess before and saw our roads and railways under invested in.”