Metro time table demise

For as long as I can remember, West Yorkshire Metro has published a pocket-sized complete rail timetable for the county.

It included not only all rail services within the county, but also those starting and finishing beyond its boundaries, such as services through Airedale to Carlisle and Morecambe. There were valuable composite timetables for LeedsBradford and Leeds-Sheffield, a timetable for the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, and a map of ticketing zones.

It was, in short, a superb example of how to present integrated train information in an attractive and convenient format. It was the travel ‘bible’ for thousands of passengers, and was always quickly snapped up when the timetables changed.

I use the past tense sadly and advisedly, because passengers

looking for their Metro timetables last December found nothing. They found, in fact, that the Metro timetable had been replaced by 19 individual Northern timetables in a flimsy, inconvenient format containing nothing so useful as the composites for Leeds to Bradford and Sheffield. The Metro website helpfully informs us that train timetables “are now published by the operators”.

This whole situation is reminiscent of the dark, early days of privatisation. Instead of information integrated and helpfully presented to the passenger, we have fragmentation of the worst kind.

My concerns go deeper than that. Metro is a public body - there should have been a public consultation on these major changes. At the very least, passengers should have been informed of them in advance.

The role of our shiny new franchisee in this situation is also unclear. Why was it not possible for Northern to produce some kind of composite timetable instead of 19 pieces of paper? Between them, Metro and Northern have really let down their passengers in West Yorkshire. David Stokes, West Yorkshire