Northern regional mayors late for rail briefing after train cancelled

Two mayors were precocious for their property league astir "rail chaos" successful the northbound of England due to the fact that their bid was cancelled.

Greater Manchester politician Andy Burnham and Liverpool City Region politician Steve Rotheram are lobbying for a currency boost for TransPennine Express and Northern.

They are calling connected the authorities to instantly summation backing for bid operators.

"This obstruction chaos is not lone inflicting misery connected people's lives, its wreaking havoc connected our section economies too," helium said successful a statement.

"If this was happening successful London oregon the South East, it would beryllium treated arsenic a nationalist scandal.

"And fto maine beryllium clear: we are not being captious of concern successful the South, but we are acrophobic astir the deficiency of concern successful the North."

Mr Burnham said obstruction passengers had suffered from delays, cancellations, and mediocre show for acold excessively long.

"Both [rail operators] person a agelong mode to spell to triumph backmost the spot of passengers successful the North, but they volition ne'er bash truthful if they are being hamstrung by the fiscal constraints imposed connected them by Whitehall," helium said.

"Millions of passengers successful the North request to cognize that the authorities has their backmost erstwhile it comes to the transportation of reliable, functioning nationalist transport."

A TransPennine Express spokesperson said anterior to December 2021, the institution had posted its best-ever show results, and was subsequently recognised arsenic Train Operator of the Year astatine the Rail Business Awards.

"Since then, prolonged disruption affecting our services has been caused by a scope of issues including ongoing precocious levels of bid unit sickness, a persisting grooming backlog arsenic a nonstop effect of Covid, and infrastructure issues extracurricular of TPE's control," the spokesperson said.

"TransPennine Express squad continues to enactment flat-out to present higher levels of work transportation and to tackle the issues that are being experienced by customers."

A Department for Transport spokesperson said it had has earmarked much than £16 cardinal of backing for rider services since the commencement of the pandemic.

"We are moving intimately with bid operators to guarantee disruption is kept to a minimum, agelong word solutions are enactment successful place, and passengers tin proceed to question portion besides recruiting and grooming important numbers of caller drivers astatine speed."