The changes – along with driver shortages – caused delays and cancellations in the south east and north west, with commuters calling it a “shambles”.
The RMT union branded this morning’s commute “Meltdown Monday”, claiming a lack of planning and shortage of crews was jeopardising the new timetable.
GTR, which operates Southern, Thameslink and Great Northern trains, apologised to customers for the delays and cancellations.
The mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, has called for the transport secretary to take action after widespread cancellations across Northern this morning, which he called “appalling”.
Readers in the north of England have got in touch to tell us how the timetable changes are affecting them. Many feel the changes have been made to benefit people in the south-east to the detriment of northern commuters.
Jonathan, 33, says the timetable changes add 35 minutes to his commute:
I use the Tyne and Wear metro to reach the train station and then commute by train to work. The train is now earlier on the way to work and later on the return. It really does seem like this change has been made to better service London and south-east travellers.
Matthew travels from outside Wigan into Salford and finds the new timetable changes affect when he is able to drop off and pick up his son from nursery:
There used to be three trains but these have been reduced to two. Nursery opens at 7.30 so I’m limited as to what trains are available to me. My usual train has been put back five minutes, while the one afternoon/evening train that gets me back in time to collect my son has been brought forward 10 minutes. This means that despite working on flexi time I actually lose time each day, unless I’m able to make some arrangement to drop off my son early to get an early train once a week.
This morning however the train was 25 minutes late arriving, and got to Salford half an hour late. To rub salt in the wound, the train has been reduced from the previous four carriages to two. This means I am down on my flexi already with no prospect of being able to make it back. And all this because of wholesale changes apparently to accommodate some more trains into London Bridge - cheers Govia Thameslink Railway!”
Michael Morey, 38, from Blackpool was travelling in from Zurich when he faced train cancellations this morning:
I was abroad for work and started my journey at 3am. I landed in Manchester at 8am and the trains are either late or cancelled. I was only ten minutes late home but making plans when the rail network doesn’t know what it’s doing on day one of a timetable change isn’t easy.
To make things worse there has been a bus service since November from Preston to Blackpool. It is nearly two months late to reopen, partly because not enough drivers have learned the route. I’m getting rather bored of paying for a service that only goes as far as Preston and then getting on a bus.
Northern Rail said a shortage of train drivers was to blame for problems affecting destinations such as Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle, with staff telling commuters that it was the fault of the unions.
One in seven (14%) of its services were cancelled on Monday morning, with a further 17% delayed by at least five minutes. Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham described the situation as “appalling” while commuters called the situation a “shambles”.
Darren Riley, who commutes daily between Bolton and Manchester to his job at a trade union, was ninety minutes late for work and said that the Northern staff he spoke to at Bolton’s station blamed the unions for the disruption.
He said:
Fortunately I have flexitime and as I work for a union, very understanding management, but I can’t have this commute every day.
The staff at the station were polite and apologetic but not particularly helpful. One of them told me he was a senior manager and blamed much of the disruption on the unions. Apparently the Aslef union rejected a proposed training plan for the new Blackpool – Preston line. He continued to blame the unions before asking what my job was and so found out that I work for a trade union.
I raised the point that they shouldn’t be running a business that expected staff to work on their rest days – they were fairly non-committal about that. I asked them how things would improve - they just said they would but it’s hard to see how.
The Aslef union said not enough drivers have been trained on new routes and rolling stock. An official said the union had asked the company to start training drivers last summer, but it only started in February.
The official said:
Drivers are not on a go slow, they are not calling in sick, but they just have not been trained on the new routes.
If you were late for work this morning or are still struggling to get to your final destination due to the disruption, we’d like to hear from you. Share your stories via our encrypted form in the link below and we’ll feature some of your responses as part of our coverage.
You can also share your stories, photos and videos with the Guardian via WhatsApp by adding the contact +44(0)7867825056 or by emailing me on nicola.slawson@theguardian.com.
Transport for the North, England’s first ever sub-national transport body, has released a statement expressing its extreme disappointment and concern with Northern’s performance this morning.
— Transport for the North (@Transport4North) May 21, 2018
The statement reads:
Transport for the North is extremely disappointed and concerned with the inadequate performance of Northern. We have formally raised these concerns with Northern making it clear that we want more to be done to rectify the performance issues and to mitigate against impacts on passengers and for action to be taken immediately.
This is a matter of significant concern to us and we are aware that across the Northern franchise, parts of Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Cumbria have been badly affected by these performance issues and we recognise the detrimental effect of unreliable train services on both passengers and the economy.
We have requested an improvement plan to return performance to an acceptable level for passengers and will be meeting Northern to discuss this further.
The body said it would continue to monitor Northern’s performance, in conjunction with the Rail North Partnership which co-manages the day-to-day management of the rail franchises in the North, and will use its influence to ensure that the train operating company provides an “improved level of service as quickly as possible”.
The mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, has called for the transport secretary to take action after widespread cancellations across Northern this morning.
In a tweet, Burnham said it was “appalling”. He added: “Grayling needs to intervene - today.”
Northern itself reported severe disruption on lines linking towns and cities across the north, while the mayor highlighted that services from some stations were completely wiped out.
By 8.30am, around 50 trains were reported cancelled, while a similar number were running a reduced service or had fewer carriages.
In the hour after the morning rush, National Rail departure boards still showed virtually all trains cancelled or delayed running through Manchester Oxford Road.
Northern’s press office could not be reached for comment.
New timetables are published every year but normally with minor tweaks. This year Govia Thameslink Railway, which carries about 500,000 passengers daily, has redrawn its schedules from scratch.
Why has it done that?
The rebuilding of London Bridge and surrounding track infrastructure, new trains, and new infrastructure allowing partial automation means more services can run through the capital, carrying more passengers. Some can be rerouted to cut journey times, while others will stop at new stations offering more direct services.
So is it a good thing?
Overall, it should be: GTR believes it will use its capacity more efficiently. About 400 more trains will run, with space for 50,000 more people to travel into London in the morning peak.
What’s the problem?
While the new timetable should benefit a greater number, many people have built their work and family routines around a particular train. Removing or rescheduling services could make some existing commutes untenable without flexible work starts or childcare, passenger groups say, or force some into taking more expensive peak trains. For a month-long transitional period, services will be reduced at some stations. And engineering work means some commuter towns have fewer trains until 2020.
Where are the changes coming?
Every train on the GTR service will run at a new time: that includes Thameslink trains between Bedford and Brighton; Great Northern trains from London into Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire; Southern services from Sussex and parts of Surrey, Kent and Hampshire to the capital.
Readers have got in touch to share their experiences of the GTR timetable changes. A common theme is that people will now have to choose between arriving to work too early or arriving too late.
Underwriting manager Dan Pearce, 39, from Littlehampton thinks the reduced service to London Bridge and back is “awful”.
He said:
There were only three direct trains in the morning but now only two trains run an hour apart meaning I end up arriving 20 minutes later than usual. The situation on the way home is similar. I either leave work early or wait around for a long time. This train now runs to and from Bedford so there will be more people on an already reduced service.
Beth, 34, who commutes from Bedfordshire to London took three hours to get home on Sunday after experiencing four train cancellations:
One driver I spoke to said Sunday was meant to be his day off but he had to be called in as there don’t seem to be any drivers. This morning my first train was cancelled so I decided to wait an hour (I’m fortunate that I can do this and I’d pre-warned my place of work) as I knew the next train would be rammed. When I did get on a train I wasn’t able to get a seat - which is the first time in two years.
Since January, my train fare has gone up £15 a month and all I can see that’s happened is a worse timetable (I either now get into work 30 mins early or 30 mins late) and fewer seats. I felt the changes were communicated well, and I altered my commute accordingly, but that doesn’t make any difference when trains are then cancelled.
Thameslink is making a big deal about the fact that I can now get a direct train from to Horsham, but I don’t need to go to Horsham, I just need to get into central London, on time and preferably while sitting down.
Kevin Mcnulty, 55, from Southwick in West Sussex, works for a Japanese company and usually commutes to London Bridge. He called the changes “a complete scam”.
He said:
We were promised more trains from stations like Southwick instead there are less and they take longer. I used to get the 6.54am change at Hove and was in London for 8.16am, now I have two choices that take longer: with the 6.12am I arrive too early and the 7.12am arrives too late. The most disturbing thing is that there is less capacity train-wise but they seem to be covering this up by making the trains longer with more carriages. It’s a complete scam and so much money has been spent to deliver this outcome which is worse than before – unbelievable.
Though expectations are very low among commuters we are still very cross, mainly about the cost as we have paid for this through higher fares.
The enormous Thameslink upgrade programme has its roots in a proposal originally made by British Rail in 1989. The plan to increase rail capacity through central London later became known as Thameslink 2000, in the optimistic hope that the programme of works could be completed by the start of the new millennium. In the end they were only 18 years late.
The project struggled during the era of rail privatisation and in 1999 the Observer’s business section described the upgrade programme as “controversial” and likely to cost around £800m. The newspaper warned the proposal to connect new destinations north and south of the Thames was delayed and “will not now be up and running until 2007 at the earliest”.
In reality it took two public inquiries and the collapse of Railtrack before the project was formally approved. Projects included the total rebuilding of Blackfriars station, the construction of a new viaduct over London’s Borough Market, enormous upgrade works at Farringdon and London Bridge stations, the lengthening of platforms, and the purchase of a fleet of 115 new trains.
The headline cost for the project now runs at £7bn, with the final changes to services not due to be implemented until 2020.
Robert Nisbet, regional director at the Rail Delivery Group, which represents the rail industry, said that customers in “many parts of the country” will benefit from the timetable changes in the long run.
He said:
We’d like to thank customers for bearing with us as we introduce the biggest timetable change in a generation. In the long-term these changes will see customers in many parts of the country benefit from more and faster services, better connecting communities and boosting the economy.
Retiming over 100,000 services is a huge operational challenge. We’re working together to deliver the best possible service but continue to advise customers to check their train times before they travel.
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