The Mayors of Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region are calling for an immediate injection of funding for TransPennine Express and Northern contracts to end the rail chaos in the region
Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram will say that the train operators are being put in financial straitjackets and are unable to bring in staff needed to run services
They both are condemning the unacceptable delays and cancellations that have turned people away from railways and impacted on the economy of the North
They say that widespread cancellations, delays, and poor performance were seriously damaging people’s lives by preventing them getting to work, visiting friends and family, and attending events and causing businesses to reconsider investing here.
A deadline of the end of the year should be given for improving services, they will argue, saying that without a marked improvement in delivery, TPE should be stripped of its contract.
Figures show that across Greater Manchester over the last fortnight, 1 in 5 services on TPE’s Anglo-Scottish route – which links Greater Manchester with Scotland along the West Coast Mainline – were cancelled.
TPE is the third worst rail franchise for punctuality, with 58.4% of services between April and June 2022 arriving on time. It also had the third highest percentage of cancelled services of any operator.
The figures compare unfavourably with those of Northern, whose performance is better at 65.5% of services on time in the same period – although improvement is clearly needed on services across the wider North.
While rail patronage in Greater Manchester increased through to Spring this year, levels have declined since, due in part to the disrupted services that people have experienced.
This contrasts with bus and tram patronage, which has increased in Greater Manchester – indicating that the return of passengers to public transport after the pandemic could be jeopardised by the impact of unreliable and poor services.
Andy Burnham said:
While chaos dominates the national headlines, rail passengers in the North have had to contend with it for years. They have suffered from delays, cancellations, and poor performance for far too long. Growing the economies of our city-regions is simply impossible if rail services are so unfit for purpose that they act as a barrier rather than a gateway to growth.
Appalling levels of service are also turning people away from the railways at a time when, to meet our economic and environmental ambitions, we urgently need to make sure public transport is always a viable – and even a preferable – alternative to cars.
But it is not just operators who are responsible for the North’s failing rail system. Successive governments have failed to invest in vital infrastructure improvements that could make a significant difference to reliability.
Enough is enough. Today, we are calling for immediate action from the Government to deliver a funding injection into the TransPennine Express and Northern contracts. Both have a long way to go to win back the trust of passengers in the North, but they will never do so if they are being hamstrung by the financial constraints imposed on them by Whitehall.
The Transport Secretary has rightly acknowledged the gravity of the situation concerning Avanti West Coast, but the news of their contract extension was a cause of concern for many people here. Millions of passengers in the North need to know that the Government has their back when it comes to the delivery of reliable, functioning public transport. They need to ensure that operators have the financial and negotiating room to breathe in order to start fixing our broken system, including by supporting a resumption of rest day working.
This is the action we need to see now. In the longer term, we believe a North West Rail Executive is needed – as part of wider rail reform and the creation of Great British Railways – to ensure the delivery of better services in our areas, and provide our city-regions and neighbouring areas with more control over the rail services they depend on to live their lives.
