FORMER Green Party leader Natalie Bennett has slammed Avanti West Coast after boarding her morning rush hour train to find the carriage completely empty.
Bennett boarded the train from London Euston to Manchester on Tuesday morning at a whopping price of £120 with Trainline’s SplitSave feature – which would have cost £180 otherwise.
Upon walking through the carriage though, the 58-year-old found rows of seats deserted despite being at a time of day that many Brits would be expected to be travelling to work.
The Green Party peer, outraged at the “wildly unaffordable” tickets and the mass of empty seats, has now lashed out at train operator Avanti West Coast, demanding that railways be run “for public good, not private profit”.
An image of carriage C on Bennett’s train shows it completely deserted, with every seat empty and not another passenger in shot.
The rows of empty seats stretch the length of the carriage with upwards of twenty of the blue upholstered chairs left deserted.
The picture was snapped ten minutes after departure, meaning Natalie was likely given the whole carriage to herself for at least a portion of the more than two-hour journey to Manchester.
Bennett, who is a member of the House of Lords, took to social media just moments later on Tuesday to share the snap.
She wrote: “Note to Avanti West Coast – if you make your tickets wildly unaffordable, no one takes the train. 8:33[am] to Manchester out of Euston, carriage C.
“We need to run the railways for public good not private profit.”
Bennett received an outpouring of support with her post gathering over 18,000 likes and more than 780 comments.
One user said: “It’s not like you’re paying the money for a good service too, their trains are delayed 95% of the time.”
Another added: “They still make a fortune from Tory funding full or empty. Bring it back in our hands.”
A third commented: “No one does anything if there isn’t profit in it unfortunately.”
Another wrote: “The market certainly isn’t working. But also trains arriving in London mid-morning is an indicator for the economy, and this looks really bad.”
A fifth replied: “There is no profit in an empty train. Whatever this is, it is not capitalism.”
