Ex-Olympic boss called to sort out rail chaos
THE government has appointed a troubleshooter to tackle the rail chaos around Greater Manchester – and there’s a new compensation package for passengers without season tickets.
For months, Transport for the North and Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, have been calling for someone to be parachuted in to solve the crisis of cancellations and delays.
It follows a year of disruption on Northern Rail and TransPennine routes, peaking with the launch of the bungled timetable in May – said to have been caused by Network Rail’s delayed engineering works.
At a meeting of the TfN board – made up of leaders driving transport reform across the north the Department for Transport confirmed they would appoint Richard George.
Mr George was the Director of Transport for LOCOG – the organising committee for the London Olympic and Paralympic Games.
It was also announced that an enhanced compensation package will be put in place for regular travellers affected by the timetable fiasco. Previously, compensation was available only to season ticket holders.
This follows an announcement from the DfT that passengers can now claim for delays over 15 minutes, as opposed to 30.
Also on the agenda was the TransPennine route, with the government confirming its plan to allocate nearly £3bn over the next five years for phase one.
The upgrade, which was originally set to be full electrification aimed at reducing the journey time from Manchester to Leeds to 40 minutes, has been plagued by delays.
While recognising that performance has improved and stabilised since the major disruptions following the May timetable change, board members challenged representatives from Northern, Trans Pennine Express and Network Rail about the reasons for continued delays and cancellations.
John Cridland, chairman of Transport for the North, said: “Our focus as a Board is on a rail service that is reliable, resilient and environmentally sustainable and we will continue to press the industry to deliver on our vision.”
While welcoming the developments, Mr Burnham said failure to improve reliability on the railways should result in the most serious of sanctions for rail operators. He said: “The chaos travellers have experienced this year on the railways has been completely unacceptable and must never be allowed to happen again.
“I have received assurances from operators Northern and TransPennine Express that the current situation will improve by Christmas and significantly by next May.
“The government and their new troubleshooter must be seen to monitor this situation closely and, if services do not improve as promised, then all options should be considered including removal of franchises,” said Mr Burnham.