Patrick Hurley, MP for Southport, has called on Northern Rail to take action to improve conditions and reliability on the Southport to Manchester line.
This follows Patrick’s journey last week, where he live-tweeted the various issues faced when attempting to travel from Southport to Manchester city centre, sharing various constituents’ complaints about the cost of travel, the length of the journey, and the likelihood of trains being cancelled.
Following the journey, Patrick has written to the Managing Director of Northern Rail, the Secretary of State for Transport, and the Mayor of Greater Manchester, sharing their experience.
In the letter to the Managing Director, Patrick wrote: “It cost me £16.20 for an off-peak return to Manchester, whilst an annual season ticket costs £3,356. For an employee receiving the national living wage of £25,397 a year, they would have to pay over 15% of their take-home pay on travel, effectively blocking off the entry-level opportunities in Manchester’s growing and thriving digital, creative and media sector for people in Southport.”
“On my journey, the lack of the basics that other trains have, like charging points for devices, meant I was unable to work during my journey, meaning that the length of the journey feels even longer and unproductive… More importantly, the temperature on the train was far too cold with no heating, which made a long journey even more uncomfortable and off-putting.”
“This is not just my experience – I get emails almost every week from constituents telling me about their complaints about the trains on the line and why this influences them to continue to drive to the city instead.”
“When more than 4.5% of services are cancelled across the North Manchester service group, with monitoring suggesting as worse as 6% of services cancelled on the Southport to Manchester line, and only 49% of services running on time, this is clearly another factor in putting people off using the train to commute or visit Manchester.”
Welcoming recent measures to reduce the cost of travel, with rail fares being frozen for the first time in thirty years whilst wages rise, Patrick has called the current cost unjustifiable, given the service provided by Northern.
He has called on Northern to improve the condition of trains, introduce new rolling stock to the line, and work with partners to introduce a seven-day working agreement to bring reliability to Sunday services.
Patrick has also called on the government to continue their process of working with rail companies, like Northern, to create a Performance Restoration Framework, with five clear areas of focus to recover performance to acceptable levels, as well as displaying punctuality and cancellations at each station for the first time, as well as supporting companies to upgrade their rolling stock to make rail travel comfortable and a preferred option to driving.