The Department for Transport is consulting on the proposed specification for the new franchises for Northern and Trans Pennine. This process will shape the train services which will operate across the North of England from 2016 onwards for about the following 10 years.
It’s an opportunity, maybe THE opportunity, to get across the message that Slaithwaite, Marsden, Greenfield and Mossley need more frequent trains.
Recorded passenger numbers have approximately doubled in about 7 years, and that’s before taking into account uncollected fares and all those ale trailers (who, if they have tickets, don’t have tickets showing Slaithwaite or Marsden as their destination so don’t show up in the figures).
The difficulty is that all those expresses get in the way of providing more local trains. The Department of Transport would see it differently, that our local trains get in the way of providing more expresses. So we need as many people and organisations as possible to fight our corner.
The deadline for responses, which have to be submitted electronically or by post, is Monday 18th August.
The consultation paper and methods of responding can be found at
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/future-of-northern-and-transpennine-express-rail-franchises
Responding to the consultation involves responding to specific numbered questions. Some of the quesions, covering (for example) train services to such places as Barton on Humber, Barrow in Furness and Cleethorpes, are likely to be of limited relevance to passengers from Slaithwaite & Marsden.
A draft SMART response has been done in consultation with our friends from Greenfield and Mossley and incorporating some of the points made by the Campaign for Better Transport and by Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council. This is linked here as a word document.
SMART Stakeholder Consultation draft#2
We would encourage as many people and organisations as possible to respond to the consultation, to strengthen to call to increase the frequency of service as soon as practicable. Feel free to copy and paste any points you agree with into your response.