What was going on in the heads of those who commissioned this advert, and spent goodness knows how much on it, when they know that TPE’s record of cancellations and delays is utterly dismal?

The thinking behind it seems to me to belong to a parallel universe in which those running TPE must be in some form of denial about how poorly it performs.

The sense of this being a company that doesn’t exist in the same world as passengers stuck on freezing platforms waiting for trains that don’t turn up or are late was only reinforced when it emerged yesterday that TPE has suspended almost half of scheduled new services before they have even started running.

This is beyond absurd. It has entered the territory of farce for a company to announce that it intends to run services when it knows it simply cannot do so.

Taken on top of the massive number of cancellations in recent months because of insufficient staff, it is surely evidence that TPE is failing to provide the service that its contract to run the franchise requires.

Rail strikes this week will bring most of the network to a halt anyway, but even without the industrial action that has rumbled on since the summer, TPE was letting its passengers down. And it has been doing so sneakily, to avoid its cancellation figures looking even worse than they already are.

By removing services the night before trains are due to run, they are not officially classed as cancelled.

Passengers would rightly view this as a cynical exploitation of a loophole in the regulations covering train operators.

Although effective in massaging the statistics, it displays a contempt for the travelling public who should not have to make last-minute checks to see if a service has mysteriously vanished from the timetable.

Tomorrow, when TPE is one of the rail companies appearing before the Transport Select Committee, its use of this loophole should be one of the areas that MPs address.

But they should also ask the question that passengers would if they had the chance – why should TPE keep its franchise to run trains across the north when all the evidence points towards it being unable to do so efficiently?

At the end of last month, when mayors from the north – including those from West and South Yorkshire – met Transport Secretary Mark Harper in Manchester, they called for TPE to face what amounted to a probation period in which to improve matters before its contract is up for renewal in May next year.

That is an entirely reasonable request, because in Yorkshire we know to our cost that once a rail operator sinks to a certain level of incompetence, there is no way back.

It stretches credulity to believe TPE’s repeated assurances that services will improve as a result of crew training.

Passengers have had enough of being promised better services at some unspecified point in the future. Much of what TPE has to say feels to me uncomfortably reminiscent of the dying days of Northern when it urged this region to bear with it because improvements were on the way.

The time for improvements is now. When it comes to sub-standard rail services, the passengers of Yorkshire and the wider north long ago ran out of patience at being asked to pay annually-increasing fares for unreliable trains.

The Government is doing too little to recognise the anger and frustration of those passengers. After meeting the northern mayors, Mr Harper made sympathetic noises, but that’s not good enough.

He needs to get a grip and tell failing companies like TPE that unless they improve as a matter of urgency, they’ll be out.

It is inconceivable that the Government would tolerate the sort of chaos northern rail passengers ensure on a daily basis if it affected commuters in London and the south-east, because they are regarded as vital to the economy of the capital.

The north’s rail passengers are no less vital to the economy of our region, and it is beyond time ministers recognised that.

Government needs to take TransPennine Express to task over dismal train service - Andrew Vine