Railway timetable shake-up ‘failure’

Train tracks

The biggest change in Greater Manchester’s railway timetable for two decades became a catalogue of failure.

The new winter timetable was supposed to herald a new age of the train with faster journeys, more services, and more room for harassed commuters.

Instead, passengers were hit with hundreds of cancellations and worse overcrowding than ever. As a result, operator Northern received almost five times as many letters of complaint while Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive was sent twice as many.

It is only now, more than two months after the new timetable began — when 123 Northern trains were axed on the first day — that cancellations and punctuality have returned to normal, members of Greater Manchester Integrated Transport Authority were told.

The operator, which has a high reputation for reliability saw its official measure of train punctuality dive to just above 40 per cent on one day at the height of the Christmas shopping rush.

But while long-distance travellers were faced with their own well-publicised problems of the West Coast Main Line, local commuters were faring no better.

PTE boss Michael Renshaw said: “Northern Rail needed to introduce extra trains to operate the revised and expanded services. Small numbers of trains which were of a different type to those already being operated had to be brought into use in the Greater Manchester area.

“These factors brought about the need for an intensive programme of maintenance staff and train crew staff training. The time available to do this was limited as the new types of train were only delivered shortly before commencement of the new timetable.

Meanwhile bus mileage in Greater Manchester has fallen to its lowest in almost a quarter of a century due to increased numbers on trains.

Statistics released by the Greater Manchester Transportation Unit which monitors public transport and roads show the area’s buses were driven 66.9 million miles in 2007 — the latest figures available.

That’s the lowest since they travelled 53.8 million miles in 1986 — the year after bus deregulation. Since 1991, the number of bus passengers across Greater Manchester has fallen from 269 million to 224 million.

At the same time, the number of passengers travelling into the city centre from train stations across Greater Manchester during the morning peak period increased by a massive 47 per cent between 1991 and 2007.

The number of off-peak passengers more than doubled over the same period. And in a sign of the accelerating exodus to rail, both rush-hour and off-peak patronage in Greater Manchester increased by 7 per cent between 2006 and 2007.

Rail lines to the north of Manchester, including the Oldham loop and the Calder Valley line, have fared best with a huge 74 per cent increase in city-bound journeys in the two-hour morning peak since 1991 while southern lines saw a 27 per cent increase.

However, the popularity of rail has made some Greater Manchester trains horribly overcrowded. Passengers are routinely left behind at stations because their trains are full.