The Guardian view on rail travel in the north: taking the public for a ride
“Permacrisis”, chosen on Tuesday as Collins Dictionary’s word of the year, is defined by the publisher as “an extended period of instability and insecurity”. There could be no better description of the current experience of passengers unfortunate enough to be attempting rail travel to, from and across much of the north of England.
For months, the horror stories of trains cancelled, delayed, truncated or suffocatingly overcrowded have accumulated online and among weary travellers marooned on northern platforms. Planning a trip on Avanti’s reduced west coast mainline services has become a journey into the unknown – vulnerable to late disruption and fiendishly difficult to book in advance for weekends. Travelling across the Pennines, with TransPennine Express (TPE) or Northern, is a similarly risky business. In October, TPE cancelled 44 services in a single day. Routes between Preston and Blackpool and from Carlisle to Barrow-in-Furness have at times been down by almost a third, according to figures released by the Office of Rail and Road.
The economic and social consequences of these dire levels of delivery were summed up last week by Steve Rotheram, the metro mayor of the Liverpool city region. “Wherever you go in the north,” Mr Rotheram said, “the story is the same: urgent appointments missed, late arrival at work and school, cut off from vital public services, isolated from friends and families.” Economically, the region is being held back by the chaos as the north-west in particular becomes a twilight zone of travel jeopardy. Environmentally, all the wrong messages are being sent as people opt for the car instead.
The train operating companies concerned point to circumstances beyond their control. An acute shortage of drivers, for example, has arisen partly as a result of a Covid-related training backlog. But the more fundamental factor in the staffing crisis appears to be a broken relationship between a profitdriven management and drivers relied upon to do overtime to keep the trains running. Amid a wider cost-cutting drive that has led to the ongoing RMT strikes, they have opted not to do so.
Aggressive anti-union rhetoric from the government has further contributed to low staff morale and an absence of goodwill. In stark contrast, LNER, the state-run operator of the east coast mainline, has run a normal timetable since last February.
As the number of complaints soars towards record levels, there is the sense of a tipping point being reached. For too many years, northern rail users have been subjected to levels of underinvestment and shoddy service that would have been judged intolerable in London and the south-east. There was widespread resentment at the government’s decision last year to cancel the eastern leg of HS2 to Yorkshire and ditch plans for a new high-speed line between Manchester and Leeds, via Bradford. Comments at the weekend by the reappointed secretary of state for levelling up, Michael Gove, appeared to hint that the Birmingham to Manchester leg of HS2 could also be sacrificed, as part of looming government budget cuts. The “northern powerhouse” rhetoric with which successive Conservative administrations have courted voters has proved spectacularly hollow.
Five of the north’s six metro mayors have jointly called on Rishi Sunak’s government to intervene to address the serious damage being done by the current crisis. Greater Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, has demanded a return of the rail industry to public ownership and the devolution of powers to run it to the regions. After so many broken promises made to the north, this would be an approach that could start to address historic neglect, target local needs, repair industrial relations and offer accountability. Sadly, without an election and a change of government, northern rail users will almost certainly continue to travel in hope rather than expectation.