Liverpool Lime Street passengers were caught up in further rail "chaos" as TransPennine Express cancelled 30 trains in one day.
TransPennine Express (TPE) cancelled the services on its Anglo-Scottish route on Tuesday (October 25), affecting a number of trains to and from Liverpool. The beleaguered operator also made alterations to 14 further services, reducing the number of carriages from six to three.
TPE's website said that the cancellations and alterations are due to "a short notice change to the timetable".
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Labour's Shadow Transport Secretary Louise Haigh slammed the operator for its cancellations and also pointed to ticketing issues with Avanti West Coast as causing difficulty for passengers. She said: "An extraordinary 44 TransPennine Express services cancelled today. Not a single bookable weekend service on Avanti between November and Christmas."
"This is doing huge damage. Today, in Parliament Labour will demand an urgent plan to restore these vital services."
Liverpool City Region Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram added: "Without immediate intervention, this chaos will wreak havoc across the North over the Christmas period. This should be a national scandal. It's time to put the public back into public transport. It's time to renationalise our railways. It's time for a General Election."
Mr Rotheram and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham held a press conference at Lime Street on Saturday (October 22), in which they called for an end to the "chaos and poor performance" on the North's railways. The two mayors called on TPE and Avanti West Coast to be stripped of their franchises if they don't improve.
In September, TPE announced it was making temporary changes to its timetable - reducing services on its Anglo-Scottish route from 40 services a day to 31. Among the services removed were trains from Liverpool Lime Street to Preston and Glasgow Central to Lime Street. The amended timetable, which the operator said was a result of "higher-than-normal sickness levels and a number of other issues including a training backlog as a direct result of Covid", will be in place until December 10.
When approached for comment about today's cancellations, a TPE spokesperson said: “Prior to December 2021 TransPennine Express (TPE) had posted its best ever performance results, and was subsequently recognised as “Train Operator of the Year” at the Rail Business Awards.
“Since then, prolonged disruption affecting our services has been caused by a range of issues including ongoing high levels of train crew sickness, a persisting training backlog as a direct result of Covid, and infrastructure issues outside of TPE’s control. Combined, these factors have seen a number of on-the-day or ‘evening before’ cancellations being made.
“In normal circumstances, we have enough people to fully operate our scheduled timetable – and have more drivers now than ever before – however the combination of factors has put unprecedented pressure on our ability to effectively operate our services.
“Our customers want, and deserve, reliable and punctual train services, and we are sorry have not been able to consistently provide that due to the ongoing issues. TPE’s team continues to work flat-out to deliver higher levels of service delivery and to tackle the issues that are being experienced by customers.”
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