Making Journeys Better

We are starting a new chapter at TransPennine Express, with many plans now in place to deliver a more reliable, punctual and dependable service across the towns and cities we connect. After a challenging few years, our plan sets out the steps we’re taking to make journeys better for all our customers.

To deliver this for you, our plan for the future focuses on three phases: Stabilising our operation to deliver better reliability and punctuality, Re-engaging with you, and Transforming our network. Through each of these, we will be making changes to simplify our business to ensure your trains run on time, giving you the best possible journey experience in our stations and on our trains.

The journey so far 

Since we transferred to new ownership in May 2023, we’ve been working hard to make improvements to the service we deliver for you. We have already:

• Improved our train performance and reduced cancellations by 40%, but we know there is still much more we need to do
• Carried out a full review of our business to understand and begin to address the issues that have been preventing us from delivering an excellent service for you
• Re-engaged with our trade union colleagues to try to resolve local disputes
• Delivered improvements and upgrades to many of our stations and, importantly, have plans to deliver more

Our plan for the future puts you, our customers, at the heart of our decision making and outlines the steps we’re taking to ensure we continue to build on the progress we’ve made so far.

Stabilising our operation

We’ll be delivering a better service and equipping our staff with the knowledge and tools to give you the best possible journey experience.

• We’re making changes to our timetable from mid-December to deliver a more reliable service across the network, giving you the confidence that the timetable we publish will be the one we operate
• From mid-December ’23 we’ll run a slightly reduced timetable as this will enable us to improve reliability, trust and confidence. We will aim to restore these services by December ’24 at the latest
• We’re continuing to engage and reset relationships with trade unions working towards resolving local disputes
• We're speeding up our driver training and we’re removing our Nova 3 trains to simplify the business and reduce our training backlog
• We’re investing in our stations and trains, to improve your experience on every journey

Re-engaging with you – our customers

We will focus on giving you the confidence to travel with us by delivering a reliable service, that gives you value for money and a better journey experience onboard our trains and at stations. We’ll do this by:

• Continuing to act on your feedback to improve your experience across the whole journey, from choosing to travel with us, through to ticket purchasing 
• We’ll ensure all of our staff are fully trained to give you the best possible service
• To welcome you back on board, we’ll introduce incentives that make travelling with TransPennine Express more affordable

Transforming our network

Looking ahead to your future travel with TransPennine Express, we’ll be unlocking the benefits of rail in the North by supporting the delivery of the Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) and other network improvement projects.

• TRU will facilitate the introduction of a new fleet of greener, faster trains, meaning that when you travel with us you are choosing a more environmentally friendly way to travel
• Creating faster journeys for you, with trains operating at up to 125mph between Manchester and York
• Facilitate the delivery of Northern Powerhouse Rail and other projects for the North, providing economic growth for the regions in which our customers live and work

We know there is a lot to do to restore your confidence in TransPennine Express, and we do not underestimate the importance of the role we play in delivering for the communities and the economies of the North and Scotland. We believe we now have the foundation that enables us to deliver our plan for the future, restoring our service to the levels that you, the people we serve, expect and deserve.

Download a PDF of our full plan here.

Chris Jackson

Managing Director

TransPennine Express