Merseyrail’s arrested development: How did a mass system shutdown happen – and who’s responsible?
‘It’s not surprising that there have been problems. What’s alarming is how long they've been going on for’
Dear readers – During a sit-down interview with BBC Merseyside earlier this week, metro mayor Steve Rotheram addressed the biggest elephant in the room: the suspension of services across the Merseyrail network due to snow and ice last Wednesday, which left commuters stranded around the region.
“I don't have responsibility for the likes of tracks and signals and all that,” Rotheram explained; the network’s infrastructure is owned and operated by Network Rail. Still, the interviewer asked, doesn’t the buck ultimately stop with him? “I took it on the chin,” he said. “I apologise for what passengers went through; it’s not good and it's unacceptable.” But, as he mentioned – twice – he’s “not an expert” on railways.
So we decided to speak to those who are. Why, we asked transport industry veterans, has the dream of the new 777 super-trains soured so quickly? And why are trains produced in Switzerland of all places unable to cope with a light dusting of snow?
That’s today’s story, which — as usual on a Friday — is paywalled partway through. It takes a lot of time and resources to publish stories like this one (many phone calls with sources; rifling through documents; digging deep into the data), which is why we rely on the support of our paid subscribers to fund this kind of work. To read the full story and make sure we can do more journalism like this in the future, hit the subscribe button below. It costs just £7 a month — cheaper than a boozy Baltic Market slushie — and helps us more than we can express. As always, thank you for your support!
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Last week, when snow and ice put the entire Merseyrail network out of commission, students missed their lectures, parents couldn’t collect their kids from school, patients missed doctors appointments, and employees didn’t make it into work. But some of the unluckiest were those whose trains did leave the station — then stopped.
“My missus has been stuck on one of your shit new trains for coming up to three hours because it lost power,” one resident tweeted at Merseyrail when they announced the suspensions to services on Wednesday. “The train is freezing and there’s nowhere to go to the toilet. In this day and age, how is this acceptable?” When that particular train finally started moving again, it had been stuck for three hours and 45 minutes. “By the time she gets off the train at Old Roan it’ll have taken her as long to get there as it does to fly from Manchester to Greece.”
Since then, apologies have abounded. “Keeping the people of the Liverpool City Region on the move at all times is our absolute priority and we apologise for the disruption to people’s journeys this has caused,” a spokesperson for Network Rail told The Post. A Merseyrail spokesperson said they were “very sorry for the significant disruption” over the last week, adding that the causes “are currently being investigated”. These two organisations are in the firing line of the Combined Authority, who told us that “despite both Merseyrail and Network Rail giving repeated assurances that they had adequate plans in place for cold and severe weather, those plans manifestly failed last week.” So who’s to blame?
Way back in 2016, when Liverpool City Region announced a £500 million investment in a fleet of new, top-of-line 777 trains that could carry more passengers while helping to decarbonize the network, the news was warmly welcomed by a travel-beleaguered region. But the pandemic and other practical and political hitches continually delayed the fleet’s arrival. When the new trains finally hit the tracks there were complaints about comfort levels as well as increased delays and cancellations. When The Post investigated what had gone so wrong after the fleet was first introduced in early 2023, members of the Combined Authority Transport Committee told us that the initial rollout that January had been “rushed out of political expediency”.
At the same time, transport expert Christian Wolmar cautioned that “new trains never work out of the box,” advising “people just need to take a deep breath,” and “a year is a reasonable amount of time to expect reliability”.
It’s now been two years since the fleet’s rollout. “It’s not totally surprising to me that there have been problems,” Hugh Chaplain, a retired rail consultant tells The Post. “What’s alarming is how long they've been going on for.”
For metro mayor Steve Rotheram, who staked much of his political reputation on bringing local transport into the 21st century, the shutdown last week was nothing short of disastrous. He commissioned an “independent and rapid review” into the disruption in service, calling it “completely unacceptable”, adding scathingly that “it’s not as if we’re facing six foot snow drifts”. Bosses from Network Rail and Merseyrail will be meeting with the Combined Authority Transport Committee later this month to answer questions about the disruptions.
Speaking to Tony Snell at BBC Merseyside this week, Rotheram gave his theory — that antifreeze applied to the third rail “didn’t do its job” of preventing it from freezing over. (The third rail conducts electricity for the trains.) He claimed he had asked Network Rail back in October whether they had a robust cold weather plan and was given assurances.
“But the buck stops with you, doesn't it?” Snell asked him.
“I took it on the chin,” Rotheram responded. “I apologise for what passengers went through; it’s not good and it's unacceptable.” He explained he was launching a review to establish the facts.
But it’s not like everything has been running problem-free on the network before this latest round of disruptions. So we assembled a cast of the great and good in the railway business to answer one simple question: why are Merseyrail’s new trains still causing so much trouble?
