COMMUTERS and holidaymakers will soon be able to breathe a sigh of relief when a York rail company adds extra carriages to its busy routes.

Last August, The Press reported how the Department for Transport (DfT) had published a White Paper laying out the Government’s strategy for coping with increased demand on the railway.

It included plans to add between 60 and 90 carriages to the network around Leeds between next March and 2014.

Now we can reveal that Transpennine Express, which operates the service running from York to Leeds and Manchester Airport, will receive 42 of those carriages.

With carriages costing around £1 million, the scheme represents a substantial investment of more than £40 million for the company.

A spokesman for Transpennine Express said a DfT document released last month named the company in the first phase of the scheme. “From our perspective, the fact that we’re down for the first phase is promising,” he said.

“We’re now in discussions with the DfT.

“We run a pretty frequent service and the capacity on the network is already under pressure.

“We’ll use the extra carriages on existing services.”

He said the majority of the extra rolling stock would be used to increase the York to Manchester Airport via Leeds service from three carriages to four during peak periods.

He said the company had 51 trains operating three times an hour on the route, carrying thousands of passengers a day.

“Given the bigger-than-expected growth in passenger numbers, we’re finding the trains are very busy,” he said.

“We badly need extra carriages. We’re very keen to get these trains as quickly as possible.” The company also operates some routes in the north west.

A spokesman for the Department of Transport said: “It is expected that Transpennine Express will introduce additional new vehicles to strengthen existing services and provide additional capacity in many regional conurbations.”

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