Virgin signals millions of pounds for Wolverhampton train station

And new technology is being developed that will give people the cheapest possible tickets, even if they buy them on the day they want to travel.

Usually only people who buy tickets days or even weeks in advance get discounts with some people facing three figure sums to get to London if they buy their ticket on the day they want to go.

Tony Collins, who lives in Sedgley and runs the West Coast Main Line franchise for Sir Richard Branson, says that is set to change. And he has thrown the company's weight behind the long-awaited £96 million rebuild.

The pledge comes despite the company only having a four-year deal to continue to run the franchise following a debacle last year that resulted in the government having to refund tens of millions of pounds to rail companies bidding to run the line.

Money

In an exclusive interview with the Express & Star Mr Collins revealed that the company is prepared to invest in ticketing services, front of house and waiting rooms but admitted the bulk of the money would still have to come from the government.

And he has called for the government to protect Virgin's investment by making it a condition of the West Coast Main Line franchise that whoever gets the next deal in 2017 must pick up the bill.

But his pledge is welcome news for city council bosses and transport authority Centro who have spent years trying to get the long awaited Wolverhampton 'interchange' project off the ground.

Mr Collins said: "We are working with the interchange group – Centro, the city council and the developer, to see what we can do to invest in the station.

"There's an application for government funding and we are working with the Department for Transport.

"Four years is not long enough for us. It would take longer than that to do the work. We are prepared to start investment and deliver improvements.

"We would need the DfT to make investment part of the longer term franchise. "They are on board with this. The right thing to do is recognise that Wolverhampton station is in desperate need of development. It's right for us to be part of that development programme.

"Network Rail own the site. The sort of things we can invest in is ticketing technology, front of house and waiting rooms."

He said that the volume of people using the station was set to increase and that it was 'never designed' to handle the number of people who use it now."

His comments come as MPs are pressing transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin to allocate funding after he admitted to the Express & Star he thought Wolverhampton had an 'awful' station.

Mr Collins said Virgin's current management contract was 'not ideal'.

He said: "We want to invest. We are in discussions on a risk-based contract for investing in new ticket technology. We're hoping to reach agreement within the next few months.

"We want to make it easier to use our trains. We're looking at new trains as well.

"We're looking at setting up a service to Shrewsbury. We are waiting for the DfT and Office of Rail Regulation to agree to that new service along with one to Blackpool. We don't want to tread water for four years. There are an awful lot of systems that have to be talked to in order to get a ticket. There are 30 separate systems in railways. We need a way of pulling all that together.

"People want to get tickets from their mobile phones or iPads. They want real time information. We can target the cheap prices to where the seats are available on the trains. If a passenger wants to go in the next hour they can go onto our system, reserve a seat and get a cheap ticket.

"The passenger would have the choice of either paying an expensive fare to go on a busy train or to pay a cheaper fare to go on a train with more empty seats that might be leaving half an hour later.

"At the moment it's unsophisticated because we don't have a system that backs up what's going on with the trains.

"If we improve our ticketing systems we would expect over time fewer people to want to come to the booking office."

But he said that he did not expect people to be inconvenienced if ticket offices closed and said there would be more people selling tickets, not fewer.

"It's not about having a ticket office, it's about looking after people at the station."