Stop treating rail passengers as a political football amidst TransPennine Express chaos - The Yorkshire Post says

Plagued by a shortage of drivers, the operator, which is owned by First Group, has cancelled thousands of services at short notice. It has become a textbook example of how not to run a rail franchise.

At Prime Minister’s Questions earlier this week, Jason McCartney, the Conservative MP for Colne Valley, revealed how cancellations were “causing absolute misery” for his constituents, saying that “if TransPennine Express does not get to grips with this we need to strip it of the franchise”.

Now Mick Whelan, general secretary of the Aslef union, has criticised the company for blaming train drivers for its “abject failure” to provide the service they are contracted to deliver, and are paid “handsomely” for by the taxpayer.

TPE’s contract to run services expires in May and the Government will have to decide whether to renew it or appoint its Operator of Last Resort (OLR) to take over.

While calls to nationalise the service are growing, it would just serve to be a reminder of the failure of the current operator to deliver on the fundamentals of running a rail franchise.

There should be no reason for operators to deliver a fairly priced, efficient service, where staff are remunerated at an acceptable level and profits are reinvested in infrastructure, rather than doled out as huge dividends to shareholders.

Given the drive to net zero, where many cities are now looking to reduce the number of cars on their roads, rail travel should be at the forefront of the solution. Instead, rail passengers in this region are treated as a political football by the operator, the network, Government ministers and unions. All they want is for the trains to run on time.