Councillors welcome possibility of half hourly trains between Scarborough and York despite TransPennine’s ‘unacceptable’ record

Councillors on the Scarborough and Whitby Area Constituency Committee have been told half hourly trains could be introduced between Scarborough and York from next winter.

A report prepared for the meeting on Friday, March 24, states that initially these are planned to run in the “leisure peaks” on Fridays, Saturdays, and Mondays and could start the process towards a regular half-hourly service frequency between Scarborough, Seamer, Malton, and York.

The service is operated by First TransPennine Express which currently has an hourly service taking around 50 minutes, with some trains continuing to Leeds, Huddersfield, and Manchester

In January more than 40 per cent of TransPennine services were cancelled in a week and the company’s managing director, Matthew Golton, apologised for the poor service, stating the operator had a “recovery plan”.

Chair of the meeting, Cllr Clive Pearson welcomed the possibility of more services but noted that “currently many of the services are being cancelled, is that getting better or is it the same?”

An officer from North Yorkshire County Council said that TransPennine “has a recovery plan and there has been some improvement but there is no quick fix”.

Speaking at the meeting, Cllr Rich Maw said: “A review of the timetable for a half hourly train; I’d say good luck with that with TransPennine, knowing their shocking and unacceptable rates of connectivity from Scarborough.”

Cllr Maw also called for “mindfulness” of previous residents’ petitions regarding the trains and depot “which in my view and in many people’s view is in the wrong place.”

He said: “It is actually in a residential area and some of those trains take 45 minutes to switch on and residents were complaining of noises going on way past midnight and starting again at 4.30am.

“My email tray is still filling up with complaints because in the views of residents who are affected by that, it is an unacceptable amount of noise.”

The report presented to the committee revealed that Scarborough Train Station has seen a 14 per cent decrease in post-pandemic users, with annual figures down to 840,000 from 970,000.

A bid by North Yorkshire County Council for £33m of Levelling Up funding from the Government, which would have included upgrades to the rail infrastructure in Scarborough borough, was rejected in January.