Sugg: full London-Leeds service relies on Azumas

LNER is unlikely to be able to introduce its full half-hourly service between London and Leeds before the Azuma trains enter traffic, according to Baroness Sugg, the Government’s transport spokesman in the House of Lords.

In a House of Lords Written Reply to Lord Bradshaw on February 7, Sugg said that between May 21 and August 10 last year, the East Coast franchise operated the full half-hourly weekday timetable on the route on 19 of the 60 days. She said there was at least one cancellation on the other 41 days.

Sugg attributed the worsening performance largely due to the timetable chaos on Northern, TransPennine Express and Govia Thameslink Railway, following the introduction of the May timetable.

This also affected Virgin Trains East Coast, and then LNER when it took over operations on June 24 last year.

Sugg added that reliability problems have also been encountered with the High Speed Trains and Class 91/Mk 4 sets operated by LNER, which she said was due to their age.

A decision made by LNER and Government meant that from August 13, a small number of Leeds trains were cancelled to enable the operator to have a spare set in the case of failures elsewhere on its network, and to allow additional maintenance time.

Sugg said: “We are monitoring the situation closely and working with LNER to reinstate the preplanned cancellations as quickly as possible, but sufficient resilience is not likely until there are new Azuma trains in service later this year.”

Azumas have been visiting Leeds on training and commissioning runs ahead of their delayed introduction into traffic.