{"id":1846,"date":"2018-12-21T16:14:16","date_gmt":"2018-12-21T16:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smart-rail.co.uk\/?p=1846"},"modified":"2018-12-21T16:14:16","modified_gmt":"2018-12-21T16:14:16","slug":"shrug-meeting-with-chris-grayling-5th-december-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smart-rail.co.uk\/?p=1846","title":{"rendered":"SHRUG meeting with Chris Grayling, 5th December 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Representatives of Local Rail User Groups on the\nManchester to Huddersfield line met with Chris Grayling, Secretary of State for\nTransport and Andrew Jones, Rail Minister and MP for Harrogate at a meeting in the House of Commons on\nWednesday 5<sup>th<\/sup> December to inform him first hand of the effect that\nthe poor service was having on people\u2019s lives and to challenge him to take\nstrong action to rectify the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The meeting was also\nattended by Debbie Abrahams MP for Saddleworth, Jonathon Reynolds MP for\nMossley and Thelma Walker MP for Colne Valley, Cllrs Rob Walker &amp; Donna\nBellamy (Colne Valley) and Martyn Bolt (Mirfield) &amp; Chris Roberts of Rail\nNorth Partnership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When the Secretary\nof State for Transport, Chris Grayling, claimed that a recent review of the\ntimetable chaos since May 2018 had shown that services had improved there were looks\nof disbelief on the faces of the Rail User Group representatives around the\ntable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Local Rail User\nGroup representatives challenged Mr Grayling and gave examples of how bad the\nlocal train services have been since the May 2018 timetable change:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>out of\n2611 stations nationally, Mossley, Greenfield, Marsden and Slaithwaite are in\nthe bottom 10 ranking of stations for service reliability, with Mossley and\nSlaithwaite in the bottom two places.<\/li><li>&nbsp;in the 12 weeks to 04\/12\/18 of trains <strong>arriving on time<\/strong> there were at &nbsp;Greenfield only 8%, Marsden only 9%&nbsp; and Mossley &amp; Slaithwaite only 4%. <\/li><li>in the\n12 weeks to 04\/12\/18 trains <strong>cancelled<\/strong>\nwere: Greenfield 4%, Marsden 4%, Mossley 5% &nbsp;and Slaithwaite 6%. Despite previous promises\nthat when trains were cancelled Special Stop Orders whereby other trains would\nmake extra stops would be implemented yet this has rarely happened.<\/li><li>The\neffect of this poor service on the ability of people to get to and from work,\nbusiness in general, additional road traffic due to people abandoning rail\ntravel were all hammered home. <\/li><li>It was\nalso made very clear that some people were considering moving house, having to\nchange jobs, or had been disciplined by employers for lateness.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Secretary of\nState for Transport seemed stunned by this evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He stated that it\nwas completely unacceptable on an hourly service for two consecutive services\nto be cancelled causing a three hour gap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The lack of\ndisabled access at Marsden and other stations was also discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Chris Grayling\nalso said that the recently announced \u00a33bn. rail investment for the north would\nhelp the trans-Pennine route, but he could not say whether the scope of the\nupgrade would be sufficient to provide two trains per hour and full disabled\naccess at Greenfield, Mossley, Marsden and Slaithwaite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Chris Grayling\npromised to arrange for Rail User Group representatives and MPs to meet with\nRichard George, the Independent Trouble Shooter appointed by the Department for\nTransport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Representatives of Local Rail User Groups on the Manchester to Huddersfield line met with Chris Grayling, Secretary of State for Transport and Andrew Jones, Rail Minister and MP for Harrogate at a meeting in the House of Commons on Wednesday &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smart-rail.co.uk\/?p=1846\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaigning","category-shrug"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smart-rail.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smart-rail.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smart-rail.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smart-rail.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smart-rail.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1846"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.smart-rail.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1855,"href":"https:\/\/www.smart-rail.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions\/1855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smart-rail.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smart-rail.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smart-rail.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}