‘I NOW NEED TO FIND AN EXTRA £800 A YEAR TO GET TO WORK’
Commuter slams Avanti after his regular train is cancelled
A COMMUTER has hit out after facing an £800 fare hike due to a 7.45am Stoke-on-trent to Manchester train service being cancelled.
Avanti West Coast said the decision – which could affect hundreds of train passengers – is linked to staff shortages and is a ‘temporary measure’.
Daniel Wilson regularly uses the busy service as he travels to Manchester from his Northwood home during the working week.
The 39-year-old university technician has already spent almost £2,800 on an Avanti-only annual season ticket, which has five months left on.
He must now fork out an extra £800 for a season ticket that would allow him access to other train service providers so that he could get to work. It means that from today, he will have to get either the 6.58am or 7.27am train to get to work on time. Both of these trains are slower than the 7.45am service.
Daniel said: “It would mean another 20 minutes journey time for me and it would cost me another £800 on top. There will be a 25 per cent increase in the fare.
“I was in disbelief, I thought it was a clerical error at first. The station staff have said this is absolutely insane.
“It’s one of the busiest trains of the day. It’s incredibly gutting because I now need to find an extra £800 a year to get to work.
“They are blaming a lack of train crew, which is quite interesting as they ran this train and the later train at 8.25am all the way through the coronavirus lockdowns. There’s something seriously wrong with Avanti.
“On a Monday, there’s probably 150 people on the train. But when it gets to Wednesday, you can easily get 400 people.
“People are flexible working so many don’t have a season ticket and are just buying daily tickets. There’s not as many people using the trains, so it’s probably not financially viable. But they could have run the first train in the morning and cancel one in the middle of the day to compensate.”
Daniel has contacted Avanti to ask for compensation for the extra money he will need to spend for another season ticket. He added: “Those with Avantionly season tickets are basically stuck because you’ve either got to get a later train and be late for work or you’ve got to find £800.
“The problem is if you’ve got your season ticket you would have to get a refund and then buy an any train season ticket, but you won’t get all your money back because there’s an administration fee.
“I’ve got five months on my ticket left, but I’ll only get three months plus the admin fee off of it back. The reason I bought the season ticket is because it operated on the hours I needed to get to work. It seems very unfair.
“It would be nice to have compensation for the time lost. It’s nice to have some reassurance that it is actually going to be reinstated.
“They have promised lots of things when they took over from Virgin trains and we are yet to see the impact of it.”
Avanti West Coast says the service is planned to return in September. A spokesperson said: “The 7.45am Stoke-on-trent to Manchester Piccadilly train has been withdrawn until September as a temporary measure due to staff shortages.
“The train is planned to return in September and our timetable is subject to regular review in collaboration with stakeholders from Government, Network Rail and industry partners.”