Transport chief on route for rail talks

Transport Secretary Lord Adonis will travel to Manchester’s run-down Victoria Station next week to announce improvements to Oldham’s train and future tram network.

The Chronicle understands the crumbling 160-year-old station is on a hit-list of Britain’s worst rail terminals to be improved with Government money.

Victoria is on a list of more than 2,000 stations across the country to benefit from £3.25bn of spending by Network Rail, the Department for Transport, and others over the next five years.

It will also get a new £9m roof to replace the leaking one shattered by the IRA bomb in 1996.

Over the coming weeks, Network Rail is launching a three-month research project, involving on-line polls and telephone surveys to really get into the detail of what passengers rate as the most important things to have at stations.

Results from the poll, along with Lord Adonis’s investigation, will feed into a much wider review on stations, led by Network Rail. This will take place throughout 2010 involving every train operator in the country.

Robin Gisby, Network Rail’s operations and customer service director, said: “Stations are the railways’ shop-front and they have been ignored for too long.

“Much is planned in this area over the coming years and we must invest wisely. We shouldn’t try and second-guess passengers but ask them what they want from stations and what’s important to them.

“We need to listen to passengers and use their views on stations to guide our decisions.”

The news comes after plans for a £300m facelift which had promised to make the station “world class” were axed because of the recession.

Rail watchdog Travelwatch claimed in the spring: “For its five million passengers a year, Victoria does not provide a welcoming environment.”