tensixtyone

For quite a while now, commuters on the heavily loaded Liverpool to Norwich service have suffered with cramped conditions and late trains. Personally, I’ve been travelling this service for nearly four years and seen the highs and lows.

Originally the service was handled by Central Trains, who at their best used to run a terrible service, many people complained and nothing happened. November 2007 gave new hope, Central Trains were finally pushed to the sidelines and a new franchise took over the running of this critical route for Liverpool-Manchester commuters. At first many rejoiced at the sight of four carriages and a return to the level of service we expect. Trains ran on time, fully formed, and working well. Six months later, it’s a different story. What we saw was a reduction in service back to the good old Central Trains days. The issue now is that this service is worse than Central Trains ever was; four carriages are the oddity of the service, not the norm.

So enter Train Sardine, a new website for the disgruntled commuters who have to put up with this service. This group aims to give one voice for the the route and hopefully give some marked improvement, only time will tell but if your interested in helping out then check out the website.

This morning I had the wondrous privilege of travelling on the packed commuter service from Widnes to Birchwood. This service has a bad record, for a commuter service you would expect that it would have the correct number of carriages, this service demands at least four but it regularly turns up with just two, causing everyone to try and ram in.

At Warrington station we had a “complainer” as I call them, cursing and swearing about the train company and how he doesn’t like to be cramed into small places. The guy did have a point, and I’ve often said similar things. The issue I had was this guy’s persistence that it was his right to get on the train and he proceeded to swear at the first person who responded with “no room”.

We arrived at Birchwood station, a First Transpennie station, we were greeted by ticket inspectors, several people complained about the train and the general tone we were greated with was “Oh, East Midlands? Not our company”. Privatisation has really done nothing for the network except split up the “blame” to different companies who don’t give a damn. On our line, the City Line from Liverpool to Manchester, we have 3 operators. Northern Rail, First Transpennie, and East Midlands. Northern operate the local services stopping at all stations and also own the “minor” stations, First Transpennie operate a single service through this line own the bigger stations (Warrington, Birchwood). So investment and ownership is very split, and so is the responsibility.

I suspect with British Rail, we would have a worse overall service but at least the responsibility is centralised, if the trains failed it was their fault. The goverment belived that privatisation would bring new investment into the service, instead local services have stagnated while money earning routes, such as the West Coast Mainline see massive investment.

It’s past the point of saving, lets just hope the goverment notices and works something out.