WARRINGTON’S trains are less reliable than those of war-torn Ukraine.

We can reveal that Warrington’s two major train stations, Warrington Central and Warrington Bank Quay, run a significantly less reliable service than that across Ukraine.

Despite the ongoing war in Ukraine, their train service has remained consistent and reliable, going viral last month due to their stats for the first month of January.

This, however, is not simply an outlier of one day. From August of 2022 to December of 2022, Ukraine’s train service ran with 16% of departures being five or more minutes late, and 20% of arrivals, combining for 18% of trains late over the three-month period.

According to OnTimeTrains, over the last 12 weeks, 38% of Warrington Bank Quay and Warrington Central’s trains were more than five minutes late.

Warrington Guardian:

Ukraine’s trains, whilst operating in a brutal war, are on average 20% more reliable than those operating in Warrington.

Of this, there are some shocking stats on cancellations, with almost 1 in 5 (18%) of Warrington Central’s trains being cancelled.

Warrington Guardian:

Both stations rank in roughly the bottom 5% of stations across the UK. Out of 2624 stations across the country, Warrington Central ranked 2479th, and Warrington Bank Quay ranked 2472nd.

This poor performance remains even when looking at the pair across the last six months rather than 12 weeks.

Over the last 6 months, dating back to August 2022, Warrington Central has had 33% of their trains late, with Warrington Bank Quay seeing 36% of their trains five or more minutes late.

Over this period Warrington Bank Quay’s national rank plummets to 2552nd out of 2624 train stations nationally. This places them in the bottom 3% of stations in the UK.

Steve Parish, member for Warrington Borough Council and Non-executive director for Warrington Borough Transport said: 

""The statistics are very poor, and we need people back on public transport. Dividing the railways into competing companies really doesn't work - they're not competing for customers, they're competing for staff, and they still make profits paid out of government taxation." 

A spokesperson for TransPenine express, one of the main companies operating out of Warrington commented on the issue. “We are committed to the communities we serve and want to assure our customers that we are doing all we can to deliver a train service they can rely on.

“Prolonged disruption to our services has been caused by a combination of very high levels of sickness and a training backlog following the pandemic, which have led to us needing to remove services from our timetable on a day-to-day basis through pre-planned cancellations.

“Our customers want, and deserve, reliable and punctual train services, and we are sorry we have not been able to consistently provide that due to the ongoing issues. TPE’s team continues to work flat-out to deliver higher levels of service delivery and to tackle the issues that are being experienced by customers.”