The managing director of under-fire train operator TransPennine Express says he personally experiences the same frustrations other passengers do as he regularly commutes into Manchester from Huddersfield on the network.
Matthew Golton said of what he called TPE's 'recent delivery': "We know it's not been good enough. I have apologised for that and I will apologise again, because we have to get it right."
And Mr Golton, speaking in Manchester at a board meeting of Transport Focus, an independent watchdog for transport users, said long-suffering commuters were facing a 'doubling this year' in planned disruption due to the ongoing TransPennine Route Upgrade project.
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TransPennine Express, together with Avanti West Coast, have faced vociferous calls for their contracts to be axed due to their performance, with Avanti being controversially awarded a six-month extension earlier this month. TPE's contract expires at the end of May and the Department for Transport is examining the details of a recovery plan the company submitted in January after ministers deemed its performance was unacceptable.
The Manchester Evening News revealed in February that TPE cancelled almost a quarter of all its trains in a month, including more than 1,000 the night before they were due to run. The company ranked the highest of all train operating companies in terms of cancellations by some distance in figures published by the rail regulator.
Pre-planned service cancellations, known as P-coded trains, are removed from systems by 10pm the evening before, but crucially do not count towards official performance figures - an industry loophole which led rail bosses in Greater Manchester to claim reliability statistics from TPE were being 'masked'.
They were designed to be used as an emergency measure but have become commonplace, to the fury of passengers who can wake up in the morning to find their planned train has been wiped from a timetable overnight.
The figures released covered a 28-day period between January 8 and February 4, the latest statistics available, and showed TPE cancelled 1,048 trains - an average of around 37 every day - using P-codes during that period and there were also 312 'part-cancelled' trains, services which don't arrive at their pre-scheduled destinations.
'I experience delays for myself'
But Mr Golton said since TPE's 'very focused recovery plan' was submitted to Government in late January, on the day cancellations have been reduced by more than a third and and pre-planned cancellations by 13 per cent.
He said prior to the autumn of 2021, TransPennine Express was 'delivering the best performance that it had in a decade' and was recognised as train operator of the year.
"That's a position that we need to return to for the communities and customers that we serve," he told board members at Transport Focus.
"There are a good number of customers who have a challenging journey with us and I, literally, I deliberately moved to Huddersfield so I could commute regularly on our network. So I experience it for myself.
"So overall on a full week, we have driven about a 20 per cent improvement in the level of cancellations since we started the recovery plan. There is of course more to do. We are firm in our resolve and our commitment to get there."
Mr Golton referenced the multi billion-pound TransPennine Route Upgrade and said 'major works' on the route were currently ongoing. The TRU project aims to transform rail across the Pennine route between Manchester, Huddersfield, Leeds and York into a fully electrified, more reliable railway. Running over 70 miles, it serves 23 stations and passes through six miles of tunnels.
The largest phase of the work, at Stalybridge, is currently underway. Trains between Manchester and Leeds will be diverted via the Calder Valley route until April 5, with replacement buses in use.
The Stalybridge programme includes remodelling track, installing over 2km of new track and 23 new signals, upgrading 13 crossovers and fitting new overhead line equipment to improve journeys.
Mr Golton said: "The TransPennine Route Upgrade works are really kicking up a gear. We are going to see a doubling this year in the amount of planned disruption to customers' journeys.
"There are many customers at the moment who are experiencing coach travel as part of that response. I am doing it myself from Huddersfield into Manchester at the moment. It's important that we look after our customers well during that process. We have to do well.
"Not only on steering customers through that but also articulating the benefits that TRU as a programme is going to bring. Hopefully before too long we will see wires up at Stalybridge - electric trains running out to Stalybridge.
"It is an important enterprise and although it seems a long way away, at the moment we are in the middle of looking at tender returns for hopefully new trains for the TransPennine Route Upgrade that we need to deliver in a few years time."
The company, which has been hit with delays and cancellations over the past year partly due to train drivers no longer volunteering to work paid overtime shifts, advertised 11 cancelled services across its network today, Thursday, but one one day in January that figure was as high as 93.
Mr Golton, who was appointed in June 2021, said: "We are determined to deliver well. In terms of our recent challenges, there is forward momentum. We are at the heart of the future as well as the present."
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