Delays and cancellations of train journeys have seen a rise pre-existing a labour shortage that worsened after the cost of living crisis and pandemic, with the hardest hit regions being in the north and midlands.
Sheffield, along with Huddersfield and York, has been branded as one of the worst hit cities.
Sheffield’s train station is largely served by the Cross Country, East Midlands Railway, TransPennine Express and Northern services. Although all train services faced disruption, the Northern and TransPennine Express services especially have had the highest number of cancellations recently, as seen in the graph below.
Both services have significantly reduced their scheduled trains, often at the last minute, leaving passengers stranded.
A woman who preferred to remain anonymous describes her ordeal travelling from London to Sheffield.
“It was a nightmare yesterday because the train got delayed. It was supposed to arrive to 12:30 but we only reached here at 3:30.
“We were also unexpectedly told to jump to another train at Derby [train station]. I had two big suitcases with me so it wasn’t easy.”
Statistics published by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) have revealed that TransPennine Express had cancelled almost a quarter of its journeys between 5th February and 4th March this year.
A separate analysis by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority found that at the rate of the current cancellations, TransPennine Express, which is owned by transport company FirstGroup, will withdraw more than 23,000 pre planned train journeys.
Delayed trains have been another issue affecting train passengers. A research by ORR shows that train punctuality has been on the decline over the past few years, as seen in the graph below.
(Part-cancelled trains refer to trains that ran at least half their journey but not stopping at all its pre-planned stations, while full-cancelled trains didn’t run even half of its planned journey.)
OnTimeTrains, a site that ranks rail services by performance, has ranked Sheffield as the 13th worst performing busiest stations in the UK due to frequent delays and cancellations.
Rail strikes began in June last year and were led by several transport and rail unions, including RMT, ASLEF and TSSA.
RMT has since called off future strikes planned for 30th March and 1st April after members voted to accept a pay deal earlier this week, but RMT secretary-general Mike Lynch says he can’t rule out further strikes in the future if conditions do not improve with inflation.
Although RMT has reached a temporary agreement to the dispute between rail workers and train companies, Aslef, the train drivers’ union, is still undergoing negotiations.
Andy Hourigan from Manchester is a full time officer at Aslef and has been a train driver for 30 years. Although he believes it’s unfortunate that the strikes have caused so much chaos, he sees no other way.
“It’s easy to demonise us and call us greedy. We don’t want a battle with the passengers. I’m gutted it’s come to this but we wouldn’t take action unless it’s the very last resort.
“We [Aslef] don’t have plans for any strikes at the moment but we’re hoping the talks will be productive,” he said.