News of the return of Southport’s Manchester Piccadilly service has been warmly greeted by Labour’s Parliamentary Candidate for the town, Liz Savage.
The service is due to run again from December after huge pressure from the Ormskirk, Preston and Southport Travellers’ Association (OPSTA) and Labour campaigners.
OPSTA has revealed that a deal has been struck with rail company Northern which will see trains to Piccadilly restored, while also keeping those to Manchester Victoria.
The plan is that a twice hourly service east will alternate between the two routes, creating an hourly service to each destination.
Labour’s Liz Savage says that although not ideal, the scheme is the most practical compromise currently possible and huge credit should go to those who have campaigned hard to bring pressure to bear on the company:
“OPSTA and Labour MPs Lisa Nandy, Rosie Cooper and Yvonne Fovargue have done Southport commuters proud, as have others deeply involved such as Labour’s Cllr Gordon Friel and Cllr Liam Robinson, Chair of the Combined Authority Transport Committee.”
“They’ve worked tirelessly to keep the pressure up on Northern and I’m delighted that the company has responded positively.”
“We saw the true measure of Tory rail management with this problem, with FOI’s revealing how the Department of Transport had actively conspired to deliberately lie to Southport commuters over the cutting of this service.”
“Then, when that was revealed in the House of Commons, we saw how Southport’s Tory MP chose to leap to the defence of the former rail minister, Chris Grayling, instead of his own constituents and Southport commuters.”
“Now, thanks to OPSTA, Labour campaigners, and the public backlash, the link to Piccadilly has been restored. What we need next is for Northern to look at its levels of provision and give us a service eastwards that will match the widely praised Merseytravel system that runs to the south.”