News, comment and features

Outlook for improvements to Great Northern services - statement by Andrew Chillingsworth, community engagement office

Following a sustained period with significantly lower passenger numbers, we are waiting to see how travel demand and patterns stabilise. This may take some months to assess. The railway has seen large losses in revenue throughout the pandemic and it is clear people will continue to work from home more regularly in the future. The simple fact is that we need to balance the choices we make going forward with what’s affordable to run once we establish what the ‘new world’ of travel looks like.

Therefore, we will be prioritising our services in the most efficient way and adapting to what customers need for the future. This will be an ongoing process of review as part of our overall timetable planning process, which considers all areas across our network. This complex work, which takes many months of detailed planning is important because any small change we make in one area can have an impact on another.

In our mid-May timetable change, we plan to provide a further uplift of services as far as possible, given the careful balance we need to consider for the future.

We are sorry for any inconvenience the current timetable arrangements are having on our passengers and we look forward to restoring as many services as we can in the near future.