Commuters to benefit from 3,000 extra seats

Working with the Department for Transport, First Great Western has committed to converting first-class carriages in its fleet to increase the number of standard-class seats to help reduce overcrowding.
Before work began some of the trains had two-and-a-half first-class carriages and others had two first-class carriages.
When the work is completed, all high speed trains serving Reading will have one-and-a-half first-class carriages, adding 80 and 38 standard-class seats to each train respectively and delivering a total of an extra 3,000 standard-class seats every day.
The conversion of all trains with two-and-a-half first-class carriages to one-and-a-half first-class carriages has already been completed.
The announcement follows a meeting held by the MP for Reading West, Alok Sharma, the managing director of First Great Western, Mark Hopwood, and the rail minister and Devizes MP Claire Perry.
Mr Sharma said it was not acceptable to have passengers standing when there were empty first-class seats.
He said: “It was good to hear about the progress being made on converting first-class carriages into standard class, but I have asked First Great Western and the Department for Transport to go further and see what more can be done to speed up the conversion to standard-class seats, and on local stopping services, to consider removing first-class carriages entirely.”
Mr Hopwood confirmed that his company had already increased standard seats on local Reading services by 21 per cent and is two-thirds of the way through converting a first-class carriage into standard class on every high speed train serving Reading, meaning 2,000 of the extra 3,000 seats promised were already online.
He said: “We appreciated the opportunity to take Alok through what we have done, and what we are planning to do to ease capacity for our Reading customers.
“In the past two years we have added around 7,000 additional seats to our Reading services at peak times, and we are always looking at new ways to secure more.
“However, given the growth in popularity of our rail services, it is a challenge keeping pace with demand.
“The long-term solution is, of course, the electrification of the main line, which will deliver bigger, faster trains for our customers.
“The first of these new trains will be introduced in 2018.”