More questions than answers at today's public hearing held by West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner as train companies West Midlands Railway and Network Rail don't dare to show their faces after weeks of overcrowded trains.
Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) David Jamieson started the hearing by talking about his reasons for calling the meeting, he said that he himself was a regular user of the train services in the West Midlands and described the situations that he has witnessed.
"what I saw before Christmas was seriously crowded trains...I saw pushing and shoving...that was almost leading to altercations" -PCC David Jamieson
Another reason why David called this meeting is due to his employment of police officers for the West Midland area and that the officers can't be late for their duty as the criminals "do not hang around waiting for them"
Last evenings (20th February) incident was also mentioned in the hearing, where there were many cancellations and delays of trains for both New Street and Snow Hill Station around peak times, this led to many more complaints from the public asking for an explanation.
West Midlands Railway posted on their twitter account that these delays were due to "staff shortages" but since then no word has been heard.
However, although West Midlands Railway was invited to the public hearing, along with many other companies such as Avantis and Network rails, all of them declined the offer to defend and explain themselves in front of the public voices which had arrived to voice their concerns.
The overcrowding of the trains have been the main concern for many passengers that have used the train, this can be seen through the call for evidence conducted by David Jamieson himself which he opened on the 13th January. He said: "we had within days hundreds of people[responding]"
In total, they had 1,500 complaints that were almost all about West Midland Trains and nearly all the complaints were about what people thought of the safety of the train services.
After receiving 1,200 complaints an analysis was done on the data which presented that when passengers were asked "Due to delays or overcrowding have you felt your personal safety or personal comfort has been affected" 90% of them said yes.
"The trains are simply not big enough...They are having to stand their squashed[ or forced to stand the whole journey]" - Rebecca Parker, Mother to a child take takes the train every day for school.
All members of the public which were invited to talk at today's hearing were asked the same question on if they had been invited to the public meeting held by West Midlands trains the day prior, all members said that they were not aware that there was an event on and had not been contacted.
A letter was received by the PCC on the 10th February from Bernadette Kelly CB; the Permanent Secretary for the Department of Transport (DFT), in this letter she discussed that the performance of the West Midlands trains in the second half of 2019 was "not acceptable" but assured that members from the DFT are working with the Midlands railway to ensure an extra 12 million pounds will be invested by West Midlands Trains to "restore performance to require levels"
The sort of improvements which were listed in the letter included investing in day-to-day operations, staff shortages, timetable improvements and passenger compensation for the poor services. However, there was no representative of the West Midland Railway to assure this would be the case.
Although this was the case, there was a senior officer of the Department of Transport at the public hearing; Malcolm Holmes, though he wasn't able to give the public much information on what sort of themes were explored in the fortnight meetings they held with all the train companies, though he confirmed with PCC David that they will arrange to have the information on the meetings released when this will happen was not said.
Malcolm Holmes did, however, confirm that there will be even more trains coming in the future, with new additions to the Snow Hill Line which can be expected to be seen on the track Autumn this year and are currently being tested in the Czech Republic.
Malcolm also confirmed that passengers can expect "more substantial changes in the timetable" this May which are planned to improve the running times of trains even further. He himself admitted that the timetables that were in place October of last year were "too fragile" but believes the slight changes which were made December were a "significant improvement".
So what can we expect for the future of our public transport?
Linked below is an interview with PCC David Jamieson himself concerning some of the issues discussed in the hearing.