STORM AGM: First thoughts

Photo: STORM

Work at Rochdale Train Station

The Annual General Meeting of STORM (Support the Oldham Rochdale Manchester rail line) was held on Thursday 12 May, with two guest speakers, Alex Hynes, the former MD of Northern Rail and now MD of the new franchisee Northerntrains and Robert Fickling, Rail Services Development Officer for Transport for Greater Manchester.

Alex Hynes outlined the proposals included in the new franchise and the proposals in the North West Hub.

Richard Greenwood from STORM reported on the meeting that although the new bay platform at Rochdale Train Station is virtually finished apart from some fencing and the installation of Customer Information Screens (CIS), and signalling will need to be done, so services are not expected to start using it until December 2016.

The first major timetable change will be in December 2017 and another in December 2019. The detailed timetable provision will be dictated by Rail North.

The stations currently unstaffed, which are planned to be staffed, will not be by way of ticket offices, the railway person will have a base but not behind a glass screen. The presence is to assist passengers generally especially in using ticket machines.

There will be better Sunday services generally with earlier starts and later finishes. The promised 37% increase in peak hour capacity will not mean all commuters will get a seat. The DfT believe that commuters can stand so long as it is no longer than 20 minutes.

Whether the 153s should be retained and incorporated into 155s as three car sets was a matter for the Rolling Stock Companies.

The question of the ‘tunnel tax’, cross Passenger Transport Executive area boundary fares, is to be addressed and the higher fares should be reduced but other fares would need to be raised to maintain the anticipated income flow. Targeting fare evaders would be a priority with more closed stations (ticket barriers).

Timetabling fast and slow trains and freight trains will be a challenge and passing loops may be needed before the full Northern Hub proposals can be achieved. Alex Hynes will look at the problem of diesel fumes on the footbridge at Victoria.

The current Station Adopter Scheme utilising individuals was being replaced by a Group based scheme and STORM is ideally placed to volunteer to join the new scheme.

Despite the passage of many months the damaged platform at Moston has not yet been repaired.

A lively question and answer session meant that Alex was speaking for almost an hour.

A new face from Transport for Greater Manchester, Robert Fickling, was the second guest. He is Rail Services Development Officer, under Amanda White who is Head of Rail. Formerly a consultant on transport matters he has been busy touring the lines in Greater Manchester in a mission to find out what passengers and potential passengers want.

He had spent some time at the enquiry desk at Piccadilly station and found that the two most frequent question were ‘where to find the Metrolink platforms?’ clearly better signing needed and ‘where do you buy tickets for non-Virgin services?’ as the Virgin branding of the ticket office led people to believe (understandably) that they only sold Virgin tickets.

Robert Fickling also believed that integration between Metrolink and Rail could be improved by better announcements on trams than the present ‘Passengers should change at Victoria for Bury/Rochdale services’ by adding ‘And for mainline trains’ is long overdue. A similar change is of course needed at Piccadilly, Altrincham and Deansgate/Castlefield. This is something STORM (and a lot of others) have been campaigning for over many years.

He promised to look into the lack of TfGM timetable posters at Victoria for the Rochdale line, relying as they do on West Yorkshire PTE posters which do not show details of the Burnley trains beyond Todmorden or the last Saturdays Only Victoria to Rochdale turnback.

STORM members again joined in a lively question and answer session.

A STORM spokesman said: "We are grateful to the two speakers for the full and frank way in which they answered the questions from the floor."