All week, myself and other passengers have been crammed onto packed trains.
In my experience, Merseyrail’s service of recent has been overcrowded, late and disrupted during peak hours, leaving many commuters angered.
For the many of us who, for whatever reason, don’t have the luxury of a car, public transport is the only way we are able to travel to and from work, hospital appointments and visits to friends and family.
In my case it is generally work. Every morning, like many others, I travel using Merseyrail on one of their rush hour trains.
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I know I am not alone in my anger and disappointment at Merseyside’s main train service. No one likes struggling on to the busiest coach of the day to realise that they will be breathing at 50% capacity for the next 30 minutes, while more and more travellers (many of them elderly) squeeze themselves onto the packed carriage. Unfortunately this experience is far too common. At least there’s one consolation: no one can fall over.
Of course this all relies on your train arriving at all. Many times, I’ve been late to work and then given a briefly explained, non-answer reason as to why I will have to now get a taxi to avoid letting my colleagues down.
One X (formerly Twitter) user told Merseyrail “If I lose my job because of your constant mistakes and delays, you will be sued!” However a mistake happens once, maybe twice. This is continual and is not improving.
I do feel for whoever has to sit behind the Merseyrail social media accounts all day. It must get tiring issuing the same apologies for the same complaints, day after day, week after week. I feel for the Merseyrail staff on the ground, having to explain to upset travellers why they will miss their doctor appointment or need to reschedule an important meeting.
This week, when an X user asked why the Southport line is continuously getting three-carriage trains, Merseyrail said: “We do have all available six cars out on the network during peak times. It's not possible to have them on every service each day I'm afraid but we're working hard to resolve this.”
It feels like we’ve heard all this before though and nothing has happened. We’ve had the problem of overcrowding for years now. It’s extremely uncomfortable for young, healthy people but it’s a nightmare for the elderly, the disabled and the severely claustrophobic.
This issue of crowding and late trains isn’t exclusive to Merseyside and is definitely country-wide. In fact, back in 2021, Merseyrail achieved 99 per cent punctuality over a 28 day period, a first for the UK rail industry. And this being a national issue doesn’t justify it. All this means is that more people are suffering.
A Merseyrail spokesperson, when asked by the ECHO for comment, said: “We are sorry that several trains on the Southport line have been busier than usual recently.
“We closely monitor passenger volumes, especially during the busy autumn period. Every available train is being utilised to help ensure we can get people to where they need to be across the Liverpool City Region.
“I’d like to reassure our customers that we are continuing to monitor numbers and where we have trains available, we will operate six car services.”
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