Last night, the Manchester Evening News, Yorkshire Post, Yorkshire Evening Post, Lancashire Post and Sheffield Star all went to print with similar headlines—many opting for the same exact phrase, “off the rails.” The shared sentiment of the Northern print media is hardly an embellishment of the regional mood. The persistent underfunding of transport projects in the north is a continued problem over numerous governments that has only been exacerbated by the latest inception.
In May, over 22 per cent of Northern trains were either late or cancelled, with the cancellation rate being as high as 28.5 per cent on the Lancashire & Cumbria Inter-Urban lines.
According to the Lancashire Post, 2000 services have been scrapped already, and there has been a further announcement that 165 services will be scrapped daily until the end of July, for which commuters will be paying a full rail price to travel on a replacement bus service.
Since May 1, the Northern-Lancashire & Cumbria Inter-Urban lines have managed only 3 days when more than 80 per cent of service have been on time. In the same time period, there have been 11 days when less than half of services managed to be on time.
Northern has postponed the Lakes Line for two weeks from Monday. The line runs to and from Preston, Lancaster, Oxenholme and Windermere. All rail services will be cancelled.
This is no small issue: according to Centre for Towns research, there has been a passenger increase of 561,008 passengers on those four stops over the previous 5 years.
A series of delays
To understand the grievances around Northern and Government transport policy, you must first contextualise the failures. As part of the ‘Northern Hub’ project, multiple electrifications were planned, alongside station upgrades.Of these, only Manchester Airport’s fourth platform project was on time. Manchester Victoria station upgrades were six months late. Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Oxford Road station upgrades will both be at least a year late.
Manchester-Liverpool and Wigan upgrades were five months late, the Ordsall Chord was one year late, Manchester Victoria to Stalybridge Junction electrification was seventeen months late and Preston to Blackpool electrification was two years late.
Manchester-Sheffield track improvements are at least a year late, Manchester-Preston via Bolton electrification is at least two years late and Manchester to Leeds electrification is at least four years late.
Meanwhile, the Hull to Selby line and Windermere Branch line electrification projects have been shelved indefinitely.
Enter the Pacer (no pun intended)
Because of these failed or delayed electrification projects, many Pacer trains are still in use. Initially adapted from buses, Pacer trains are now a rarity on British railways—excluding Northern.Many Pacer models were exported to Iran, and then subsequently scrapped from public use, making Iran 13 years and counting ahead of the curve of Northern.
To help replace them, Northern unveiled refurbished Class 150 trains, in a glossy press release with Rail Minister Paul Maynard and Engineering Director Ben Ackroyd.
“We are fast approaching a rail network fit for the 21st Century”, Mr Ackroyd said in 2017 (17 years into that century, for those counting). “We are entering an exciting phase of our modernisation programme,” he said, whilst announcing a Class 150 train that initially entered construction one year earlier than the Pacer train it sought to replace.
With these events setting the recent history of rail in the north, the latest developments come as no surprise.
A lack of national media attention, and interest only being shown by those who seek legacy projects or deem it politically beneficial, has stunted meaningful development and investment in a region’s transport that desperately needs it.
A bad case of London logic
Too often, a London-driven narrative is allowed to determine northern transport policy, which leads to grandiose talk of HS3 leading the conversation, whilst buses on rails continue to ferry passengers between northern cities.HS2, HS3 or ‘crossrail for the north’—the name of which quietly exposes the wish of many commentators to apply London logic to northern cities—are irrelevant soundbites that counter few of the issues that dominate northern transport.
When basic bus services are inconsistent, often late and overpriced—as I have discovered living in Hull—many commuters find the train to be the only option, which means that each cancellation is even direr for the commuter. More often than not there is no alternative.
Centre for Towns co-founder and Wigan MP Lisa Nandy said, "For decades Northern passengers have been second-class citizens. Decisions are made hundreds of miles away by people who never use our public transport, and have no idea of the human cost of their failure."
"If we had been given the power to decide we would never have prioritised HS2. We would have connected up our towns and cities in the North and spent far, far more on buses which are the arteries of our local economies."
"The economic and social cost of this failure is evident in towns like mine. This latest rail crisis should be the catalyst to return power to the North and allow us to commission and run our own public transport."
Manchester Evening News reported cases of panic attacks, exhaustion and stress over the most recent delays.
But it was one commuter quote which painted the perfect picture of the issues with Northern, and transport in the north as a whole: “Last week I waited for a tram at Piccadilly that sat in the station for 30 minutes before it was cancelled and I had to get the tram. It took me two hours to travel four miles. I’m late to work all the time, it’s affecting my job. It’s an utter shambles.”
When five newspapers are telling you there's a problem, it's time to take notice.
This article has been updated to include Lisa Nandy's quote.
