Campaigners met rail chiefs in Piccadilly service battle
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SOUTHPORT and West Lancashire rail campaigners met Northern Rail on Friday to restart discussions on how the direct Southport to Manchester Piccadilly service can be restored.
Eric Woodcock, of Southport Rail Transport Forum (SRTF), and Alan Fantom of Ormskirk, Preston & Southport Travellers’ Association (OPSTA), attended the meeting in Manchester, with representatives of Merseytravel and the Rail North Partnership also in attendance.
As a first step, rail campaigners are seeking an extra morning direct commuter service to Piccadilly leaving Southport after 8am, and an extra afternoon return service heading back after 5pm.
A passenger survey conducted by SRTF since a new timetable was introduced in May has shown that fixing shortfalls in peak time services is the most urgent priority for rail users.
The campaigners’ goal is a full hourly Southport to Piccadilly service restored by May 2019, in time for Southport’s summer visitor season.
After the meeting, Mr Woodcock, of Churchtown, said: “This feels like genuine progress although we shall be pressing Northern hard to make the restored services a reality.
“At the same time we shall be lobbying the MPs along the line to make sure that this matter stays firmly on the Transport Secretary, Chris Grayling’s, radar and he endorses the plans we devise with Northern. In particular we want to see better commuter services this year, before the worst of the winter weather makes changing at Salford Crescent or Wigan even more miserable”.
Mr Fantom said: “We also need to see a more sensible peak hour time- table for users of Victoria. Having a train leave for Southport just before 5pm makes no sense.
“We are urging Northern to have a service leaving between 5pm and 5.30pm. Lots of people don’t work nine to five any more, but many people still do.
“Although the dialogue on Friday was positive we recognise that getting these services back will not be straightforward. We will face a number of practical obstacles, the majority of which are not of Northern’s making.”
The working group will meet again shortly to start detailed planning work.
Craig Harrop, Northern’s interim Route Director, told the campaigners: “We are pleased to continue working in partnership with OPSTA and SRTF and although it has not yet been possible to develop further timetable revisions to provide an “all day” service from Southport to Manchester Piccadilly, it remains our ambition to do so.
“But first we must stabilise the service across the whole network and all of our current efforts including driver training are concentrated on achieving this by the end of July.”