Northern Rail is a disgrace
Its an insult that Northern Rail is putting up ticket prices when the service they offer is so reliably terrible, says the Guardians northern editor, Helen Pidd
I never travel with Northern Rail if I can help it, and not just because I have a car and some of their services are so slow that its quicker to drive or cycle, or walk, on a really bad day. Nor is it because so many of their bone-shaking Pacer trains are so knackered that British Rail donated a load to Iran back in the day, where these buses on rails are now considered too antiquated to continue in active service.
No, I avoid Northern Rail because their services are so chuffing unreliable that Id rather take a chance with motorway traffic than put my faith in a train which so often seems to get cancelled at the 11th hour.
Take a look at @NorthernRailOrg on Twitter if you want to get a flavour of how utterly incompetent the company is. Last Thursday began with typically miserable news for northern travellers, with three services cancelled for the same, infuriating reason: due to a member of train crew becoming unavailable. So hard luck for any Blackpudlians up at the crack of sparrows, hoping to travel to York on the 05:11. Northern Rail couldnt get its staffing together to make that one run. Ditto the 06.43 from Sheffield to Lincoln and the 06.21 from Nottingham to Leeds. All for the same reason. It was not an atypical morning. Last month the leader of Leeds City council was late arriving in Manchester for George Osbornes endorsement of a £14bn transport plan including a Crossrail for the north. Why? His train was delayed, of course.
I asked Northern Rail to tell me how many services they cancelled in August because they didnt have the staff. A press officer suggested she could collate the figures and then changed her mind, saying the firm was worried the information would be misinterpreted. I told her that her refusal to be transparent would surely be interpreted as Northern Rail hiding the embarrassing truth about their inability to get staffing levels right.
Instead of answering my perfectly straightforward query, she sent me some propaganda from Alan Chaplin, Service Delivery Director for Northern Rail, who boasted that the proportion of trains arriving on time had risen from 83% to 91% over the last ten years. Only a minority of services were cancelled due to staffing issues, said Chaplin, including colleagues out of place due to disruption and members of staff being signed off due to being involved in a serious incident such as a fatality.
Now I accept that many delays are not Northerns bad. Often theres a fault on the line, or engineering works have overrun and we can blame Network Rail - or the idiots who have stolen crucial copper wiring from the signalling box, the obstinate cow having a nap on the rails, and so forth. And as the firm is coming to the end of its franchise, I understand that they are not about to buy a load of shiny new trains (even if they did, so many Northern lines are still not electrified that it would be a total waste of money).
But it really tries my patience that despite running such a poor show they have the audacity to put prices up. From Monday, rail users travelling at what Northern calls the evening peak on any services in the Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire areas and associated routes can no longer use an off-peak ticket. In Northern World, peak time begins at 16.01 and ends at 18.29. An peak return from Rochdale to Wigan is about to jump 162% from £4.20 to £11. For anyone using the Manchester-Liverpool service at that hour, the journey is about to get £4.20 more expensive each day, with an anytime return costing a hefty £18.90.
Naturally its not Northerns fault, but the big bad government, which asked Northern to look at several options to help reduce subsidy as part of its new franchise agreement. The change to off-peak tickets was deemed the best idea, to reduce the cost of the railway to taxpayers by reducing subsidy to Northern.
So for anyone wanting to get home from work at a sensible time, an already rubbish service will now cost significantly more. Its an insult and Northern Rail is a disgrace.
