Hopes for more trains on Birmingham's Cross-City South line set to be dashed

Passenger hopes that the southern part of Birmingham’s Cross-City Line could see a restoration in the near-term of its six trains per hour service appear to have been dashed.

Instead, West Midlands Trains looks set to use the spare capacity on the route for the new Camp Hill services.

The Cross-City Line runs from Lichfield in the north to Bromsgrove and Redditch in the south.

Prior to COVID, there were six trains per hour in both directions at all stations. The service pattern was reduced to just four trains per hour during the pandemic, and has stayed the same ever since.

West Midlands Trains (WMT) has now applied to the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) for access rights to use the spare slots on Cross-City south, to help serve the new stations at Pineapple Road, King’s Heath and Moseley that are currently being built on the Camp Hill Line.

It plans to run two trains per hour into and out of New Street to serve the new stations when they open next year.

The new services will be provided using Class 196 diesel multiple units which will terminate at one of the existing platforms at Kings Norton.

WMT’s application makes the point that the two trains per hour have not yet been reinstated, and that any uplift in Cross-City south would be dependent on work
to allow Camp Hill services to terminate at King’s Norton.

It added that “significant infrastructure intervention is proposed at Kings Norton as part of the wider Midlands Rail Hub (MRH) proposals”. This could mean a new bay platform reducing conflicts with other services.

Cross-City North passengers look set to fair better, with another application to ORR seeking to increase the number of trains heading to Lichfield to six trains per hour.

The applications have been described as “administrative” to cover any future stepping-up of frequency on the Cross-City Line.