Easter travel woes

The misery is complete for the many thousands of potential rail passengers who would have liked to have gone away for the Easter weekend.

There were the 75,000 who were totally inconvenienced and disenfranchised in their attempt to reach Wembley by train from Liverpool and Manchester, for an important football fixture.

We didn’t hear about airport runways being closed for tarmacking, or link-spans at ports being taken out of use for general maintenance. So why is the railway industry so out of step at holiday periods with the rest of public transport provision and requirement in mainland UK? Whatever happened to ‘putting passengers first’?

We have campaigned for years for passengers wishing to travel by rail to Blackpool and the Lakes at peak holiday periods. But other than Northern and Network Rail in the North and North West, requests have gone unheeded.

I don’t know where Department for Transport and Network Rail chiefs have been for the past couple of years and where they are today. But clearly, they haven’t looked at the statistics, which indicate that the rail leisure market is recovering rather well whereas commuting five days a week isn’t. The nearer to London, the poorer the uptake and upturn appears to be in this market sector.

North of Lancaster pre-pandemic, in normal times West Coast Main

Line usage was 80% leisure.

At weekends, school holidays and Bank Holidays, NR and some train operators hide behind the assertion that the passenger railway is less busy. Clearly, under the new order, this is simply not true.

In 2022, this figure must be skewed even more in favour of leisure travel - almost certainly 90%, and at weekends and the holiday periods noted above it will approach 100%. But that is 100% of a much higher number of passengers.

A journey to the Lakes which normally takes a little more than three hours will be an intolerable and interminable seven hours to Windermere, further delayed due to mistimed connections at Oxenholme.

It is difficult to find accurate and detailed information very far in advance of travel, and this year it wasn’t even possible to get to destinations by rail before noon on Good Friday or return home after 1400 on Easter Monday, as has been the case promised in previous years.

In tourist areas and the hospitality industry, economic recovery is of vital importance. I hope that Great British Railways is listening and watching.

Robert Talbot, Kendal