Department for Transport has no choice but to sideline TransPennine Express - The Yorkshire Post says
Train operator TransPennine Express (TPE) has run out of excuses and there is no other option than to push the failing franchise operator into a siding.
If TPE’s contract to run rail services is renewed after it expires in May then that will raise serious questions about the Department for Transport’s understanding of the sheer misery inflicted upon passengers in the North by the operator.
In fact there is a growing cross-party consensus amongst MPs in the region that TPE has had its day.
With Tory MPs Martin John Vickers, Holly Mumby-Croft, Andrew Percy and Lia Nici co-signing a letter with three Labour MPs, saying that passengers have been "completely let down by an uninterested franchise holder" and forced to endure “endemic unreliability”.
It calls on the Transport Secretary Mark Harper not accept “another excuse” and rightly so.
The operator, which is owned by First Group, is cancelling hundreds of services at short notice each week and the latest figures show it had one of the worst punctuality records in the country between July and September last year.
This has an adverse impact on people’s lives, as the plight of passengers in Slaithwaite, highlighted in The Yorkshire Post today, shows.
Employees can’t get to work on time, students struggle to get to lessons and charity workers have to find alternate, more costly methods of transport to enable them to carry on making a difference.
Natasha Pedersen, who has lived in Slaithwaite since May, says: “My message to TPE is just sort the trains out - it is so frustrating.”
While another passenger is contemplating early retirement, because he can’t “believe how bad it is”.
How is that going to help level up the region? We’ve heard all the excuses from TPE, it’s now time to terminate TPE’s time as the operator.