Northern, Govia Thameslink Railway and Network Rail have released a joint statement regarding the status of Britain's railways after a week of cancellations and disruption for passengers.
What has gone wrong?
They have said that the problems have been due to demand for rail services since 1994 doubling to more than 1.7bn journeys. This is very much welcome but has brought its challenges especially at peak times.
In order to make space on the network for the new services to help with capacity, the timings of all GTR, and most Northern, services had to be changed. All of these new journeys need to be approved by Network Rail to make sure that the railway runs safely. Unfortunately, due to the number of checks needed and the late running of some improvement works, the process has taken longer than first expected, leading to service changes being delayed and timetable requests being changed.
Circumstances differ across the country, but the problems have meant that train companies have had less time to prepare for the new timetable and which trains and drivers can run on the different routes.
How are they going to correct the problems?
Network Rail, Northern and Govia Thameslink Railway are now urgently working on plans to reduce disruption and give passengers a much higher chance of train services running. However, it will take time to deliver these improvements.
They are now all reviewing the timetables to work out what actually went wrong so this doesn't happen again.
What did the officials say?
Mark Carne, Network Rail's chief executive said:
“There is no doubt that the May timetable was finalised significantly later than normal for reasons that were both within and without our control. The consequences of that have been particularly hard for both Northern and GTR to absorb.
“But we are all firmly focussed on fixing this issue as quickly as possible to give passengers the reliable service they need and deserve. At the moment, in some parts of the country, that simply isn't happening and for that I'd like to wholeheartedly apologise.”
Charles Horton, CEO, GTR, said:
“We always said that delivering the biggest timetable change in generations would be challenging – but we are sorry that we have not been able to deliver the service that passengers expect. Delayed approval of the timetable led to an unexpected need to substantially adjust our plans and resources. We fully understand that passengers want more certainty and are working very hard to bring greater consistency to the timetable as soon as possible. We will also be working with industry colleagues to establish a timetable that will progressively deliver improvement.”
David Brown, Managing Director, Northern said:
“We are doing everything we can to minimise cancellations and keep customers informed. It has been extremely difficult for many of our customers, in particular on a number of routes around north Manchester, Liverpool, and Blackpool extending up to Cumbria, and we are truly sorry for this.
“We‘ve agreed a number of actions with the Department for Transport and are urgently working with them on a comprehensive plan to stabilise our services. Such a plan is likely to take a number of weeks to deliver lasting improvements, but we recognise our customers deserve better and that's what we're focused on.”
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