Trains sought to ease off-peak shortages

Councillor Allen Brett

Rail commuters in Rochdale are being crowded off trains because of a shortage of carriages.

Passengers are being left behind at stations across the network because rail travel has become so popular.

Once a feature only of the rush hour, over-60s travelling free after 9.30am since last year have turned it into an off-peak problem, too.

The Calder Valley line from Leeds, through Rochdale, to Manchester Victoria, is at bursting point.

Rochdale councillor and deputy chairman of Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority Allen Brett said: “You can just about get a seat at Littleborough and Smithy Bridge but it is touch and go at Rochdale and by the time it gets to Mills Hill, forget it.”

Now, local transport chiefs are to plead with the Government for more money to buy trains.

Commuter operator Northern Rail has won awards for the way it has improved the reliability of its services. But it won its franchise — the biggest in the country, covering not only Greater Manchester but also Yorkshire and the North-East — on Government predictions of no passenger growth.

In fact, their numbers have been growing at 10 per cent a year.

Jamie Ross, Northern’s top man in Greater Manchester, said: “The nature of the franchising system means that we could lose it in 2013 or 2015. That is not a recipe for long-term investment.”

Because the trains are too short, they are being run more often, which means the tracks are becoming overcrowded, too.

Transport Minister Rosie Winterton paid a surprise visit to Manchester last month to announce a feasibility study into improving Piccadilly and its approaches which could cost £2 billion and enable more and faster trains to operate across the North.

But PTA chairman Councillor Roger Jones said: “An MP told me he had seen about 20 commuters left behind at Ashton station because they simply could not get on the train. We have got to find a way of breaking the logjam. It is such a significant problem with people clammering to get on our trains that we have to do something soon.”