The Mayor of Greater Manchester has asked the Prime Minister to intervene and sort out the chaos on railways in the North of England.
On Sunday 29th July, dozens of trains were cancelled due to staff shortages, including almost all services between Liverpool and Manchester, with passengers only being made aware of the cancellations at 9pm on Saturday in an email from a senior executive at Northern. The email stated that the reason for the cancellations was to enable Northern to protect services on Monday 30th, by ensuring trains were in the right depots ready for Monday morning commuter services when 75% of the timetables services suspended on June 4th were to be introduced.
A promise by the Transport Secretary to make ending the chaos on the Northern rail system his Department’s top priority has failed to bring any meaningful action to turn things around.
Andy Burnham said: “There are only so many times that I can call on Chris Grayling to do his job and help rail passengers in the North. He has failed to deliver on his promise………and that is why I feel I have no choice but to ask the Prime Minister to intervene.”
The Mayor went on to say: “This is no way to run a railway and we cannot continue to put up with a rail service provided when the operators can be bothered. People’s lives are being badly affected by this chaos and the Government cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the plight of Northern commuters.”
The reintroduction on Monday morning of services suspended in June does not appear to have been entirely without its problems. By mid-day, 27 trains had been fully cancelled, 50 had been ‘part-cancelled’ and 21 were operated with a reduced number of carriages.