TransPennine Express franchise needs to be removed by dithering Transport Secretary - Yorkshire Post Letters

How many times has the rail operator, TransPennine Express (TPE) let rail passengers down due to cancelling scheduled or timetabled services?

Would the lack of action by the current Secretary of State for Transport, Mark Harper, and one of the recent post holders, Grant Shapps, be repeated if this was happening in London on a route used by many MPs trying to travel from their constituencies to work in Westminster?

The main excuses are lack of train drivers, as they were relying too much on drivers volunteering for doing overtime, rather than training additional drivers sufficient to cover timetable rotas and also have a ‘pool’ of spare drivers to cover sickness and planned staff holidays.

The salaries are very attractive for fully qualified train drivers, thanks to the efforts of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union general secretary, Mick Lynch, who to give him credit, has fought for good terms and conditions for train drivers and for onboard train managers.

How long does it take transport officials at TransPennine Express to work out and submit a recovery plan to the Department of Transport? Granted that some of these delays have been out of the hands of TPE, with over-running rail engineering works by Network Rail.

Having trained staff and retaining them is one of the key resources to achieve and sustain an agreed service level agreement, which the parent company, First Group, signed up to.

A previous chief operating officer, Tim O’Toole, gained a lot of experience of running rail operations in the US before moving to Transport for London and was in charge of London Underground for London’s first mayor Ken Livingstone when under his management there weren’t as many performance problems.

How has this gone so wrong? Well the answer lies with the chief officer at the top, Graham Sutherland, who needs to sort things out urgently. He previously gained experience running Hull-based KCOM and before that was a senior executive at BT. Running telecoms businesses is, in my opinion, a lot different to running a train company!