THE chaos effecting East Coast Main Line services in December sends completely the wrong message to people across Britain about the benefits of travelling by rail versus using the motor car.

The descriptions of people with small children, large suitcases, dogs and bicycles all waiting in near freezing temperatures sounded more like a wartime scene than a postcard from the 21st Century.

There were seemingly some highly unrealistic targets set in relation to the engineering activities assigned for completion over the extended shutdown, which had massive knock-on impact when the targets were not reached.

A common complaint was the lack of information about what was happening when passengers themselves had no problem posting minute by minute accounts of their own experiences on Facebook and Twitter.

One passenger trying to travel to Edinburgh said “not all of us are on Twitter, a real person telling us what’s going on would be nice.”

The next Labour Government will fix systemic flaws in organisation of rail infrastructure and long term funding of the rail network, securing it and our transport infrastructure for the future.

A successful and efficiently functioning railway will bring untold benefits to Crewe, sitting as it does at a critical location on the network.

That means training places, skilled jobs and investment.

These are just some of the things that I want to see for Crewe in 2015 and beyond.

Dr Adrian Heal
Labour PPC for Crewe and Nantwich