Andy Burnham has urged the Transport Secretary to demand increased Avanti West Coast train services between Manchester and London or remove its operating contract.
In a letter to Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the mayor of Greater Manchester said the current situation was having a 'profoundly negative impact on the regional and national economy' - and frustrating 'thousands of passengers and businesses every day'.
Avanti announced a plan last month to restore three trains an hour between Manchester Piccadilly and London Euston from December 11, but Mr Burnham said the timetable would mean 'two more months of chaos on the West Coast Mainline in the interim'.
READ MORE: 'You don't go from sitting in a pub to being shot dead by police in 10 minutes'
He called for the operator to provide a consistent, two trains per hour service by the end of the month. "If 11 December is to be acceptable, Avanti must also commit to providing a consistent two trains per hour service between Manchester and London by end of this month, as a staging post to full restoration of the timetable," wrote the mayor.
"Unless this happens and is clearly communicated, train travel between our most important economic regions will continue to be chaotic, forcing people into their cars or into abandoning plans to travel entirely. Without this commitment, I will be unable to support a new contract for Avanti.
"At present, Avanti customers continue to report very poor levels of reliability. Even on the current, massively reduced timetable, trains are still regularly delayed or cancelled at a time when we are told by Avanti that they have more drivers available than ever. I urge your officials to study Avanti’s performance metrics which demonstrate this.
"Passengers face other challenges too. Tickets are still only being released a few days in advance, making planning for individuals and businesses impossible. Seat double bookings remain a significant issue, leading to arguments between passengers and people having to stand for long journeys.
"Poor maintenance is resulting in broken toilets, air cooling and onboard café equipment. These dreadful conditions would be unacceptable at any time but are particularly so now given the wholesale collapse of the timetable, something no other train company is experiencing at anything like this scale."
What do you make of the ongoing situation? Have your say in our comments below.
Avanti West Coast's contract expires on October 16, with the Department for Transport saying Government would 'consider all options'.
Avanti announced in August it was cutting the number of trains between London Euston and Manchester Piccadilly from one every 20 minutes to one an hour 'until further notice', saying it had acted in the wake of industrial action 'to ensure a reliable service is delivered so customers can travel with greater certainty'.
The timetable change, however, sparked fierce criticism from the travelling public.
Avanti has used a degree of rest-day working to operate its timetable. Drivers have traditionally volunteered to work additional shifts over and above their contracted hours in what ministers called an 'industry arrangement' that 'has been in place for many years, to the benefit of the drivers, the operators and indeed the passengers'.
But services were reduced in early August as result of drivers being unwilling to sign up for the overtime upon which all train operators rely. That caused numerous 'short-notice cancellations' and led to the reduction in trains, said Avanti. The company has also blamed Covid for a backlog of training and industrial action.
Avanti said it would use the national timetable changes in December to relaunch a 'stable and deliverable' three trains an hour service that wasn't reliant on rest day working or overtime, saying it now had more drivers 'in the business than ever before'.
In late September, Avanti began to run an additional 10 daily trains between Manchester Piccadilly and London Euston on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, and an extra six on Wednesdays.
A spokesperson for Avanti West Coast said: "Our revised timetable has reduced the percentage of short-notice cancellations and so improved reliability for our customers. We’ve also worked hard to produce a plan to incrementally increase services, particularly on the Manchester route which is our busiest, over the next two months, and then in December we are planning to return to a full timetable on most of our network.
"Nevertheless, we know that at the moment we’re not delivering the service our customers rightly expect and we apologise for the enormous frustration and inconvenience this is causing. We would like to thank our customers for their patience and understanding."
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: "People deserve certainty and confidence that their train will run on time, and while the change of schedule was unavoidable, it should minimise the fallout for passengers.
"The problems facing Avanti are a prime example of why we need to modernise our railways, so passengers benefit from reliable timetables that don’t rely on the goodwill of drivers volunteering to work overtime in the first place. Government will consider all options when Avanti West Coast’s contract expires on 16 October."
Read more of today's top stories here
READ NEXT:
- 'You don't go from sitting in a pub to being shot dead by police in 10 minutes': Heartbroken family of Manchester-born man, 24, desperate for answers
Ilkay Gundogan's wife under fire after branding ALL of Manchester's restaurants 'horrible'
Eye-opening diaries show the reality of life for Greater Manchester families on benefits
