‘Rail commuters are treated like second class citizens’ claim
ROCHDALE’S rail commuters are being treated like ‘second class citizens’, a motion set to go before the council next week will say.
Put forward by Coun Janet Emsley it will call on Northern Rail and the Government to deliver the ‘decent level of service we were promised’.
It come after months of chaos, cancellations and delays following the introduction of a new timetable on Northern Rail trains across the region in May.
The motion, which will be put forward at Wednesday’s full council meeting, states: “The travelling public of Greater Manchester have had to put up with levels of inconvenience and disruption on the region’s railways way beyond what is acceptable.
“Along with our MPs and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Rochdale Council has made it clear that it is unacceptable that our commuters are being treated like second class citizens.
“The introduction of the emergency timetable, which is due to finish at the end of July, has stabilised things to some extent with less last minute cancellations, this is inevitable as there are less trains timetabled.
“This situation has been compounded by the continually postponed plan to electrify the line between Manchester and Leeds.
“It is worth noting that Northern have not hit a performance target since 2006.
“That is simply unacceptable.
“Therefore, I call upon the Council to continue, along with our MPs and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, to exert pressure on Northern Rail and the Government, until we get not just a decent level of service but the level of service we were promised when the franchise was awarded.”
Northern Rail boss David Brown has also insisted the true scale of the problem did not emerge until ‘two days before’ the new timetable was released.
Problems have been blamed on delayed Network Rail electrification and its knock-on impact on a behind-schedule driver training.
Earlier this month it emerged Northern Rail has continually failed to hit punctuality targets for two years – proving the chaos did not begin with May’s timetable changes.
The operator has not run the expected number of trains on time in any month since June 2016, just weeks after it took up the contract.
It has also missed its cancellation targets every month since last August, bar January.
By June 1 of this year it was cancelling up to 340 trains a day.
Meanwhile, it has also failed to deliver five key commitments laid out in its franchise agreement – including new Sunday services, new trains and more trains an hour.