Councillors - and transport bosses - ripped into 'abhorrent, 11th hour' train cancellations as late as 10pm the night before as under-fire rail operators revealed an update on their services amid ongoing passenger frustration.
Their comments came as it was revealed the percentage of trains arriving at their terminating stations 'on time' - less than five minutes late - were worse now than in pre-Covid times for four of the six train companies running services in Greater Manchester.
Operator Northern, meanwhile, said it was 'ready' and 'in a good place' ahead of the national rail timetable change on December 11. Both Northern and TransPennine Express also vowed to do things differently in the event of a rail strike being called off at the last minute, as happened last Friday, to get more services back on tracks quicker.
A rail performance report delivered to Greater Manchester Transport Committee on Friday heard pre-planned service cancellations - known as P-coded trains - are continuing to be applied, 'most notably' by TransPennine Express, due to lack of crew availability. They are removed from systems by 10pm the night before, but are not included in passenger delay repay schemes and do not count in official performance figures.
"These short notice cancellations also cause additional capacity constraints on other operators' services, where overcrowding has been reported," said the report.
Caroline Whittam, head of rail services at Transport for Greater Manchester, said the percentage figures don't include 'P-coded trains'. They are used, she said, to display times the night before instead of passengers arriving at a platform and a train being cancelled then.
"It keeps you informed and it means that you are slightly more able to plan your day, but it's far from ideal and it's not the situation we want to be in.
"What we want is for operators to be able to perform the full timetable as it has been advertised at least 12 weeks in advance. That's how it's always been on the railway and it isn't working at the moment. That's why there is so much of this 'P-coding' going on."
Mark Angelucci, from TfGM, said 'P-codes' were brought in for expectational circumstances like derailments as a 'short term emergency', but added: "They are being used every day now. TransPennine Express are pulling between 50 to 80 trains a day on some days with P-codes. As a passenger, and for TfGM, they are not acceptable."
Councillor Noel Bayley said: "I don't think this is widely known, this idea of cancelling trains the night before.
"To change them literally at the 11th hour, I think its abhorrent to be honest. And it's also reliant, mainly, on people having either smartphones or computers and being last savvy enough to look at it the night before. I know plenty of people who have got old fashioned phones - they are not going to be savvy enough to look at that."
The committee's chair, councillor Doreen Dickinson, added: "We are all of the same mind, it is not satisfactory. It is shocking."
Chris Jackson, regional director of Northern, admitted its performance had been 'less than satisfactory'.
He said that from May to October, Northern had been cancelling 6.8 per cent of its services, largely due to a rostering dispute which had now been resolved. Cancellations, he added, had now reduced five-fold as a result, and Northern was committed to using 'P-codes' with 48-hour notice.
"We are ready for December 2022," he said, adding Northern has enough drivers and conductors to operate the plan."
Melissa Farmer, regional development manager at TPE, pointed to a high level of sickness, strike action and a backlog of training.
On P-codes, she said: "We are having to use them and have had to use them much longer than before. It is not ideal. It is to create a little bit more certainty of what is going to happen the next day."
TransPennine Express has cancelled hundreds of services in recent weeks due to staffing issues after the implementation of an emergency timetable, with passengers travelling between Manchester and Liverpool and Leeds hit badly by delays. Avanti West Coast has also been given until April 1 next year to improve its services following a reduction in its trains as well.
Referencing a period spanning July 24 to September 17, the report said: "Cancellations continued to increase for operators over the periods, largely due to crew availability and the loss of rest day and overtime working. Averages of between 4 - 5 per cent cancelled services are masked by TPE’s daily pre-cancelling of anything between 35 - 80 trains across its network.
"In total [in the period] TPE cancelled, either fully or partly a further 479 trains."
Tables showing 'public performance measure' statistics were highlighted - PPM is the percentage of trains which arrive at their terminating station 'on time' compared to the total number of trains planned.
The report said: "Whilst PPM improved with fewer trains and passengers during Covid restrictions, performance now is not only worse than in Covid times, it is worse than pre-Covid for four of the six Greater Manchester train operating companies. This includes Avanti, who are operating a much-reduced train plan currently.
"Only Northern Trains and TPE score higher than pre-COVID and TPE's figures exclude a significant volume of additional pre-cancelled trains."
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