The Liverpool loop is now closed for engineering works. All Wirral line trains will depart/terminate at James Street station. For 7 weeks …
This in itself isn’t too bad, but Merseyrail are charging the same price for a ticket to use the line. I pay £3:65 for a ticket from Hoylake to Liverpool, and there will be no reduction, despite the fact that the service will be considerably poorer. It doesn’t take a seasoned commuter to work out that James Street station will be chaos in busy periods.
Merseyrail could, at the very least, reduce the ticket price for the period. They do, after all, get a discount from Network Rail (the owners of the track and the company carrying out the maintenance) because they can’t use the line. I have yet to find out exactly how much this amounts to, but I intend to try.
But the real cheek of it is this – Merseyrail will get financial ‘compensation’ from Network Rail, because some passengers will find other means of travel (no surprise there) and may not return to the trains. So Merseyrail win, both ways, and the users are expected to suffer quietly.
“Network Rail and Merseyrail are in negotiations over a financial settlement over the work which is likely to hit passenger numbers. The company pays Network Rail access charges to use the track and its bill for these will be cut because of the blockade.”
“There is an arrangement in the rail industry where we pay Network Rail for the use of the track and, if we cannot use it, then our bills are reduced.”
“We may well lose passengers because of people finding alternative ways of traveling so there is a compensation arrangement in place but our priority is to look after our customers. We will do all we can to mitigate these problems as much as possible.” (source)
Full details of the closure are available in this pdf from the Merseytravel website.
