"End of the line" for TransPennine Express - northern mayors
They are calling for the franchise to be brought back under public control
The mayors of Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, North of Tyne, South Yorkshire and the Liverpool City Region, have called on the government to take TransPennine Express back into public control.
Andy Burnham, Tracey Brabin, Jamie Driscoll, Oliver Coppard and Steve Rotheram made the call at a joint press conference at the 'Convention of the North'.
18,000 train services cancelled across the north
They told reporters 18,000 train services had been cancelled across the north in the past year including 600 TransPennine services in just the past week.
They've now issued a demand to ministers to take the franchise back into public control. It would mean the 'Operator of Last Resort' takes over the running of the service.
Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham said:
"This is not a way of running railways in the north of England, it's never going to work for the public here.
"If you add on top of that, there's a suggestion out there that all of the train operators are going to have to find 10% of savings or cuts to services, you can't cut the railway in the north of England from here because you're cutting people off.
"We're at the end of the line with the current operator, it cannot be allowed to damage people's quality of life any longer,
"Transpennine Express has previously apologised to customers for the constant delays and cancellations.
"I'm a survivor of TransPennine"
It comes after a meeting was held between the mayors and the Transport Secretary, Mark Harper in December about the problems with rail services in the north.
However, Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin hit out at the minster accusing him of ignoring their attempts to contact him since:
"To the Minister, the Secretary of State, he came to Manchester and we had a very candid conversation. We have subsequently written to him a couple of times and had no response, which is deeply frustrating when time is of the essence now.
"Now I'm a commuter on Transpennine, I'm a survivor of TransPennine and I hear every day, everybody tells me that story, and let me tell you the impact... it's costing us £8,000,000 per week, across the whole of the North.
Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram urges central government to pay more attention to the North of England to help it catch up with the South.
He said: “You’ll find that different parts of the north have something particular to their area. So, for instance, everybody knows we’ve got the River Mersey and that means that tidal is a real possibility. But the government don’t seem to want to do something that is unproven and yet this government is missing out on investment opportunities right under its nose.”