Services across the network over recent weeks have been subject to delays and short-notice cancellations due to a lack of available staff partly caused by industrial relations issues.
TPE have stated that
We are doing all we can to keep you on the move and, as ever, our aim is to provide you with a stable and reliable service as we know you put your faith in TransPennine Express to get you where you need to be.
We are sorry for any disruption this may cause to journeys in the coming days and ask you to allow additional time for travel and to check carefully – up to the last minute – for any changes to train times. You can check for updates on TransPennine Express services here: https://www.journeycheck.com/tpexpress/.
As a result of the ongoing issues, it has been necessary to make pre-planned cancellations to some services.
Link is Service Disruption | Travel Updates | TransPennine Express (tpexpress.co.uk)
This appears to be a dispute about rest day working and/or Covid-safe working practices. It is not for SMART to speculate about whose fault it is, or how it should be resolved (other than quickly!). However, we can comment on how the cancellations disproportionally affect passengers at Slaithwaite and Marsden.
We are back – unnecessarily – to levels of disruption last seen in the worst of the infamous May 2018 timetable.
Over the period of the May 2018 timetable, when Slaithwaite and Mossley were by a large margin the worst stations in the country for punctuality and reliability, Slaithwaite saw and average of 33 cancellations a week.
Since the December 2021 timetable change there have been an average of 48 cancellations a week (up to & including 17th April). The difference is that cancellations are now concentrated in the evenings rather than in the morning peaks.
It’s been common for consecutive services to be cancelled, with nothing being done to mitigate the disruption. Apparently it’s ok to wait an hour for the next one and hope that isn’t cancelled as well.
Passengers on routes with 4 trains an hour will cope with limited disruption, as there’s only ¼ hour to wait for the next train. We have an hourly service, so a cancellation means a delay of an hour, two cancellations in a row mean a two-hour delay. TPE need to re-learn that consecutive cancellations on an hourly service are unacceptable, period. Otherwise we are back to 2018.
The first week of the new timetable (12-19 December) saw 55 cancellations at Slaithwaite & Marsden, and the second week (20-26 December) saw 66 cancellations over just five days. The worst week of the May 2018 timetable (16-23 September 2018) was 58 cancellations, and this record has been surpassed on several occasions.
The planned cancellations appear to change from day to day. On some days they have taken out a quarter to a third of the services at Slaithwaite & Marsden, leaving gaps of 2 and three hours and an evening service which is so infrequent as to be useless.
TPE seem to have forgotten that the purpose of having a timetable is so that passengers (remember them?) can predict when they will be able to travel. To have a timetable that changes radically from one day to the next, and where the following day’s timetable is only made public the evening before, is an idea which can only have been thought up by someone who has no knowledge of what it is to be a train passenger.
Making vague reference to the possibility of a bus replacement service is equally useless. A bus replacement service does not work for a range of reasons:
- There are no published timings, so passengers at intermediate stations have no idea when they can catch it. If passengers cannot know when or whether it will run, then it may as well not exist.
- There is no clarity as to where the bus replacement service will call – not all the stations are accessible by bus, and sometimes replacement buses stay on Manchester Road. Passengers cannot be expected to guess when and where they should be.
- A bus replacement service takes three times as long as the train
- An 8 seater taxi leaving some passengers behind is not an adequate replacement for a train with 180 seats.
It was something of an unfortunate coincidence that on the day TPE were congratulating themselves on being awarded Operator of the Year, they cancelled the last seven trains to Slaithwaite. The last train from Piccadilly to Slaithwaite was 1759. if this is what the Operator of the year is like, how bad must the others be?
Some advice has been provided on Journeycheck by TPE for passengers whose train has been cancelled. It’s not always meaningful. Here’s an example:
Please board the next available service to your destination.
There’s no point in directing passengers to the next train if that too is cancelled.
“Please check information screens or speak to a member of staff.”
The last time there were staff on Slaithwaite station was sometime in 1967.
“Please be advised TPE tickets will be valid on board Northern services between Huddersfield and Manchester Piccadilly.”
Maybe TPE weren’t aware that the last Northern service between Huddersfield and Manchester Piccadilly ran in May 2019.
Where (as now) TPE are still running trains along the route, stop orders should be put in those trains to maintain a useable service at Slaithwaite, Marsden, Greenfield & Mossley.
There’s no excuse for concentrating this level of disruption on stations that only have a basic hourly service, and there’s no excuse for the poor quality of passenger information.
We have been in communication with TPE, but it appears that providing a reliable evening train service is in the box marked “too difficult”.
Providing meaningful information, at times of disruption, to passengers at the smaller stations, is also in the box marked “too difficult”. TPE have attempted to explain why it is difficult to do at times of disruption, we in turn have attempted to explain why it matters.
The half-hearted attempts at running replacement buses are aimed only at passengers travelling from the larger stations. Essentially it is provided to get those passengers who haven’t made other travel arrangements out from the major stations.
TPE are unable or unwilling to provide any meaningful information for how passengers travelling from the smaller stations can use these so-called replacement bus services.
There is, of course, one thing which never gets cancelled. Passengers can always rely on is happening, year after year. We refer, of course, to the annual fare increase.
