A busy UK train station that sees a footfall of over half a million passengers each year has been named and shamed as one of the country’s worst performing stations. Hartlepool station received a £12m overhaul last year that saw a second platform back into use after nearly 30 years.
Prior to these works the station was the busiest single-platform station in the UK and offers connections across the North East, with trains to Newcastle, Middlesbrough and Sunderland and long distance into London King’s Cross. However, earlier this year it was named as one of the worst performing stations nationwide majorly affecting its 650,000 annual passengers.
Nearly one in every 10 scheduled services expected to stop between January 5-February 1 was affected.
The 9.90% figure – out of a total number of 1,566 trains – was the ninth worst in the country according to statistics released by the Office for Road and Rail.
To test how bad this station really is for delays and cancellations BBC Journalist Ana Guerra Moore took to TikTok to try out the short 10 minute hop from Hartlepool to Horden and one extremely surprising thing happened.
The train was due to arrive at the station at 4:01 and much to the surprise of Ana the train pulled in nearly a minute early.
However, it seems this was somewhat of beginner's luck as one disgruntled passenger said often trains are cancelled at short notice.
One rail user said: “We get the train to Newcastle and then on our way back the train to Hartlepool gets cancelled.”
But this service pulled into Horden bang on time.
“The train was due to arrive at 4:13pm and it did. Maybe we got lucky or maybe they have sorted out their problems but we got here on time”, said Ana.
Train bosses previously said the “higher than normal level of cancellations” is down to “staff sickness and several trains requiring maintenance work”.
At the time a spokesperson for Northern, which manages the station and runs the majority of services here, said: “We are delivering our plan to improve performance and provide customers across the North of England with a reliable service.
“Addressing the underlying issue of conductor availability is our number one priority and we are working to secure a new agreement that will mean we are no longer reliant on them volunteering to work Sundays.
“We are also working to reduce sickness levels by helping staff return to work as well as introducing state-of-the-art simulators to accelerate our training programme and planning to make the largest ever investment in our fleet by introducing up to 450 new trains.”
