People might think I bang on about public transport - and specifically Merseyrail - a lot, and they would be right, writes Liam Thorp.
I'm really interested in public transport and passionate about how we can improve services to encourage more people to leave their cars at home and hop on a bus, train or even a ferry when going about their business. That's my reasoning anyway, others (my wife included) may suggest I'm just turning into a boring old bloke with an obsession - also highly possible.
I am a regular Merseyrail user and have been for years, and because of this the operator gets a lot of my journalistic attention. I have said many times before that despite its faults, I have generally regarded the service as reliable and solid in the years I have used it. But that cannot be said at the moment.
READ MORE: Day of disruption on Merseyrail following track fire and cancellations
This week, the latest disruption on the network came into force, with reduced timetables in place meaning that trains will only run every 30 minutes on the Ormskirk, Kirkby, Hunts Cross, New Brighton, West Kirby, Chester and Ellesmere Port lines. This timetable has come into play just weeks after the standard 15-minute services returned following years of pandemic-fuelled disruption.
The operator says this change is because of 'unexpected faults' on the ageing trains. They cannot give a timeline of when things may go back to normal.
The new timetable is already having a big disruptive impact for many people around the city region. To highlight some of these issues I made a quick video of my journey to work this morning (I can only apologise for the extreme close ups of my face).
Travelling from St Michaels to Moorfields each day I'm aware that I am lucky to only have a short commute, but today's journey was still pretty unpleasant and there were lots of examples of how people are being let down badly as they try and make their way to work.
I've written before about the frustration of Merseyrail's outdated ticketing system, which for many people means a requirement to still buy a physical ticket from a kiosk before travelling. Unlike in other cities, passengers do not have the option of simply tapping their debit/credit cards to pay for journeys - and only a select number of ticket types can be used in this way.
As someone heading into the office every day, I buy a monthly pass (making sure I don't try and purchase this at peak times of course), but for the many people who alternate between home working and the office, the only tickets available that make financial sense must be purchased at the station.
As you can see from my video above, there was a really long queue at the station this morning. This was at about 8.13am, just three minutes before the train to town was arriving. I can only presume some of those people ended up missing that train, while some may have asked to pay at the other end.
For those who did miss that service, the new timetable means they would then have to wait half an hour to 8.46am for the next one. If they were due to start work at 9am, they would most likely have been late today. Even before getting on the train itself, it's far from a satisfactory situation.
Moving on to the train and a fairly obvious result of less services is more people cramming on to the ones that do arrive. If you take my local station as an example, there were previously four city centre-bound trains arriving at St Michaels between 8am and 9am, now there are just two.
The people who got on those services have to go somewhere and the result is packed, uncomfortable and unpleasant journeys. As you can see from the video, today's journey saw us crammed in like sardines and pretty much unable to move.
You might say, well London Underground trains are often similar to this, but there is a big difference. If you decide to avoid a tube because it is overly busy, you will wait a couple more minutes for the next one to arrive. Anyone who understandably didn't fancy that Merseyrail journey this morning would have faced a half an hour wait and probably a late arrival at work.
It may sound a little trivial to some, but my overarching point on all this is that we should be doing everything we can to encourage people to leave their cars at home and head to work on public transport as we attempt to tackle the carbon emissions that are doing so much damage to our environment. I would suggest that the current situation on our city region train network could unfortunately be doing quite the opposite.
