Merseytravel announces wifi at all underground train stations within 5 years
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The first main agenda item at the meeting was a report on a review of transport and emissions in the Liverpool City Region, along with the terms of reference for the Reducing Transport Emissions Review 2014 and slides which summarised the author of the report said.
In response Cllr Steve Foulkes suggested, “Maybe leave your car home for one day or something, those types of changes you know that make a massive impact.”
Cllr Liam Robinson (Chair of Merseytravel) said, “For me that’s about making sure public transport is the number one choice of getting around from A to B.”
The next item was the Customer and Passenger Satisfaction Review.
There were no questions or comments on this. Councillors agreed the recommendation.
The next to last report was on Rail Patronage and Ticketing along with an enclosure.
A representative from Merseyrail and Northern Rail were along to answer any questions. The report showed an increase in passenger numbers on the Merseyrail lines (for the first half of 2014/15 compared to the first half of 2013/14) but a decrease in passenger numbers travelling with Northern Rail.
The Merseyrail representative attributed some of the increase to the Open Golf tournament and the Giants event, but that even when the extra passengers travelling to these events were taken into account that there was still an underlying growth of 2%.
The Northern Rail representative disputed that there had been a decline in passenger numbers and stated that their own figures showed a 2.3% increase compared to the previous year. He asked for passenger numbers to be compared at the end of the year as factors such as engineering works and electrification closures would have affected their figures.
A councillor pointed out that wifi was nearly always available on long distance trains and asked when they would introduce wifi to trains?
The answer given was, “Chair I can comment on that. Firstly, the thing to mention on that is the five-year growth plan that was mentioned by Paul a little bit earlier. One of the initiatives is wifi at all the underground stations as a pilot scheme. So that’s already committed to, we’ll see how that rolls out.”
The Northern Rail representative answered, “We are currently trialling free wifi on our electric trains in the Yorkshire area with a view to rolling out.
The new franchise specification for Northern and Transpennine Express will indicate, well sorry has stated that all services will have free wifi during the first part of that franchise. We’re also trialling free wifi at stations.”
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