Rail commuters between Preston and Manchester were dismayed today when Northern Rail decided not to expand the capacity on the city route.

Passengers vented their anger on Twitter as the BBC reported the train operator would be adding 50 more carriages to deal with overcrowding, but Preston would not benefit from these.

Advertisements

Peak-time commuter routes to Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield will all see thousands of extra seats available for the morning rush.

Northern Rail is expecting an increase of one million passengers in 2012, but passengers going between Preston and Manchester said their line should have seen an increase.

DonnaB tweeted upon hearing the news “ridiculous! Always packed and standing!”.

Rachel Shepherd tweeted “The Preston to Manchester route is ridiculously over crowded”.

Matt Roberts said the express service between Preston and Manchester was “mad busy” at commuting times.

A spokeswoman for Northern Rail said the selected routes for extra carriages had been picked after consultation with the Department for Transport.

She said: “The work we have done with the Department for Transport to bring in these extra carriages has been done on a priority basis, therefore the most overcrowded routes on our network have benefited from this.

“Although there will be other routes that do suffer from overcrowding, we have assigned the carriages to the routes where it is needed most and will benefit the greater number of passengers.”

Image credit to eisenbahner

Do you use Northern Rail to commute? What do you think about the decision? Let us know your views in the comments below