Misery of cancelled services

A rail firm which operates across Greater Manchester cancelled more services last year than any other train company, new figures have revealed.

Figures released by the Liberal Democrats show 7,474 trains were cancelled from the 811,980 services run last year by Northern Rail.

The company’s cancellation tally accounted for 11.9 per cent of the 62,640 cancellations made by all 19 train companies across the country.

A spokesperson for Northern Rail said: “We operate more than 800,000 local and regional train services across the north of England every year. While we regret having to cancel any train in 2008 we cancelled less than 1 per cent of our total planned services.

“We have worked hard to improve the service we offer to passengers and in doing so have improved the punctuality of our trains from 83 per cent on time when Northern started to over 89 per cent today.”

Reasons for cancellations can include anything from staff absence to mechanical or infrastructure failure and flooding. The figures cover all unplanned cancellations but do not include trains where scheduled bus replacement services were arranged.

Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat shadow transport secretary, said: “Not only do we have the most expensive railway in Europe, but passengers in Britain are expected to put up with tens of thousands of cancelled trains every year.

“The Government would rather shift costs on to passengers than pay for better services and more trains.

“We need to raise standards on the railways, with longer franchises and tough passenger satisfaction targets to bring in much-needed investment.”

In addition, Virgin Trains, which operates on the West Coast Mainline, cancelled 1,383 of its 81,449 trains. It was yet another blow to passengers who have faced months of delays travelling from London to Manchester while upgrade work was carried out.

A spokesman for Virgin Trains said: “The Lib- Dems themselves say that we have experienced problems because of Network Rail and the upgrade of the West Coast mainline. Now the upgrade is complete it will be a very different picture if the survey was re-done this time next year.

“We are running faster trains up to the North-West and more of them. We think there will be significant improvement next year.”

The Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc), which represents operators across the UK, said the proportion of services that were cancelled was relatively low.

But Anthony Smith, chief executive of Passenger Focus, added: “These figures are disappointing especially as many passengers are now being asked to pay more for their rail fare.”