Avanti should run more trains or lose contract – Manchester mayor
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has written to the transport secretary urging her to require Avanti to increase services between Manchester and London by the end of the month – or remove its contract.
But one rail expert warned that stripping Avanti of the franchise would not necessarily lead to an improvement in services, as it would not solve the shortage of drivers.
In a letter to Anne-Marie Trevelyan, Burnham said the company’s plans to wait until 11 December before returning to an increased timetable would cause too much disruption to passengers and damage to the Greater Manchester economy.
He called for a consistent service of at least two trains per hour between Manchester and London by the end of October as a staging post to a return of three trains by December.
If the company were unable to make this commitment, Burnham argued, the company’s contract should be terminated when it is considered for renewal next week.
It is now more than six weeks since Avanti West Coast reduced services between London and Manchester to just one per hour.
The company promised the move would bring “stability and certainty” for passengers – but an average of 10% of Avanti West Coast services between Manchester and London over the last three weeks were either cancelled or significantly late. Over the same three-week period, 27% of services failed to arrive on time.
The problems are not limited to passengers going from Manchester to London. As a result of the cuts, there is now just one direct train each day from London to Holyhead, the Anglesey gateway for ferry services to Ireland.
Earlier this week five Conservative MPs from Welsh constituencies wrote to the rail minister, Kevin Foster, to call on the government not to renew
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