- By Dearbail Jordan and Katy Austin
- BBC News
image source, Transpennine Express
TransPennine Express is to be nationalized after customer complaints of poor service and canceled trains.
The government will now run the service which covers Manchester and Liverpool in the North of England and runs to Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland.
Passengers will not see any changes in the service but the overall aim is to improve its performance.
In January and February almost a quarter of its services were cancelled.
That has improved from around one in six in March, although that is still the highest rate in the UK.
The Department for Transport said the TransPennine contract would not be renewed on 28 May.
It will now be run by an “Operator of Last Resort”, which means a business will step in on behalf of the government to take over the management of the service.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper said commuters and companies no longer had to bear the “burden of continued cancellations”.
TransPennine, run by FirstGroup company, stood for the number of trains it canceled the night before they were due to run, due to staff shortages.
There have been ongoing disruptions since early 2022, but the company says a recovery plan has brought the numbers down.
It previously blamed high staff sickness rates, a backlog of driver training and the absence of an overtime working agreement with the drivers’ union Aslef.
Mr Harper said taking TransPennine under state control was “not a silver bullet and will not immediately fix some of the challenges that are being faced”.
He blamed the Aslef strikes for hampering the full service offered on TransPennine routes.
However, Aslef said that was “misleading” and that the blame should lie with the company’s “inept management”.
FirstGroup said it was disappointed by the government’s decision not to renew the contract it has run in various forms since 2004.
“Our team has worked hard to improve services, including by recruiting and training more drivers than ever before,” said Graham Sutherland, FirstGroup’s chief executive.
He added that private rail operators still have an “important role” in the delivery of train services.
West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin said there had been “a catalog of failure and delays and cancellations” at TransPennine and that it was “absolutely right that this is the end of the line” for the “falling railway operator”.
He said the cancellations were “destroying our economy” and it was “an opportunity to reset relations” between the unions and the new management.
One of the reasons for the cancellations was that train drivers did not want to go into a “rest day working arrangement” – unions said they were not paid enough to do that.
Ms Brabin said industrial relations between the train operator and staff, including drivers, were “underground” in part due to funding constraints, and that the government needed to “get -around the table”.
Commuter Chris Flanagan said the TransPennine service was “horrendous”
Passengers on the packed Manchester to York line on Thursday morning were not surprised by the news.
“I’ve been getting this train for 20 years and it’s been a bit fraught,” said Chris Flanagan.
A few years ago there was some investment, but since the Covid pandemic “it’s been absolutely terrible”, he said.
“Most days you don’t really get into the office. [It’s been] quite sad,” he added.
Fellow commuter Sarah Hunt agreed, saying she checks what trains are running the night before and the morning before departure.
But the nationalized service “could be a good thing”, he said.
“I feel like Northern has benefited a lot since the Last Resort Operator took it over, so I think it could be worthwhile.”
The Northern, London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) and Southeastern Trains are also operated by the OLR on behalf of the government.
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