The mayors of Liverpool and Greater Manchester have called on the government to terminate Northern Rail’s franchise as soon as possible.
Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram said Transport Secretary Chris Grayling should terminate the franchise as soon as possible.
In a joint statement, they said Northern Rail had “consistently failed” to deliver its legally binding requirements.
The Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region mayors are now urging the Department of Transport to implement an ‘Operator of Last Resort’ and bring in a new board and team of directors to run the company as soon possible.
The mayors said they were speaking on behalf of the 4.3 million people they represent, a year after last May’s rail timetable chaos.
The two mayors said Northern has failed to deliver a significant and sustained improvement in performance, with nearly a fifth of all services arriving late, 28,000 services cancelled, and a huge increase in services being “shortformed” – reducing the number of carriages on the train – from 2,825 in December 2018 to 4,172 in April 2019.
Northern was also accused of failing to resolve the guards on trains industrial dispute, which has seen 46 days of strike action.
The mayors highlighted the state of Sunday services, saying that last Sunday alone there were 165 unplanned cancellations on top of 90 planned cancellations.
Northern had also failed to introduce new trains, which means the “hated” Pacer trains may not be gone by the end of the year as promised, and promised new services had not been delivered, it was claimed.
Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham said: “We have been extremely patient with Northern but enough is enough. They promised us that things would be significantly better by May 2019 and that hasn’t happened.”
He said train services across Greater Manchester and the North West remain “unreliable and over-crowded”, adding that the people of Greater Manchester “deserve much better than this”.
He said he wanted to make it clear they do not blame the staff of Northern who he said have worked hard over the last year in very difficult circumstances.
“We believe they, and the travelling public, have been let down by Northern’s management who have had plenty of opportunity to show how they will meet franchise requirements but have failed to do so,” he said.
Mayor of Liverpool City Region, Steve Rotheram, said: “For too long the people of the Liverpool City Region and the whole of the North have been forced to accept rail services that are simply not good enough. Whether it’s frequent cancellations, short forming of trains or late arrivals Northern’s board have repeatedly failed to deliver on their franchise obligations.
“Given Northern’s consistent failure to provide an acceptable service we believe it is now time for Chris Grayling to terminate their franchise and move to that operator of last resort, as soon as possible.
“Stripping Northern of their franchise will not solve all of the issues with our railways – the problems go far beyond just them - but it would be an important signal that the North is no longer prepared to put up with a second class service and a first step towards building the rail network that passengers deserve.”
More broadly, the two Mayors are calling on the government to work with Transport for the North, Transport for Greater Manchester and Merseytravel, to work towards a new vision for rail in the North of England that puts passengers first.
Ministers should keep all options on the table, including further devolution to the North and the option of public operation, they said.