BRIGG PUBLIC TRANSPORT SERVICE TO BE CANCELLED FOR SOME TIME

Brigg railway station, which has not had a passenger train call since early January due to the operating company's Covid-related staffing shortages, now looks like waiting some time, possibly months, before there is a chance of normal service being resumed.
A new timetable has been draw up, covering the period May 15 to December 10, 2022 names Brigg and Kirton Lindsey stations.
However, the adjoining rows remain blank where local passengers were hoping to see the times of Saturdays-only passenger trains serving these stations. No trains at all are listed to run.
Having obtained a copy of the May-December timetable, Brigg Blog contact Northern, the train operator, through its communications office. A spokesperson told us: "We are having to make some difficult decisions in terms of matching our available resource to service provision, and on a limited basis we are not able to run everything that we did pre-Covid. To provide increased certainty we are having to prioritise services with the highest customer demand. COVID isolation is still impacting our resource base."
Comment has also been made by Tony Baxter, Regional Director for Northern.
He said: “To give our customers more certainty about their train service, the timetables currently in place will broadly continue until December 2022. We understand and regret the frustration this causes to our customers and apologise for the inconvenience caused.
“Some amendments to the timetable will be made from 15 May 2022 along with the rest of the industry. For the remainder of the year, services will be reinstated where possible with the intention of a larger uplift in December 22. These re-instatements will take us more in line with December 2021 service level, although any changes are dependent on several factors. We will share the final plans when we can.
“The fact remains that whilst the headline grabbing elements of the pandemic may have passed, the implications of nearly two years of disruption have not. Our drivers are required to maintain regular route and train knowledge to be able to operate. We currently have a backlog, and we need to create space to enable drivers to catch up and build on that knowledge.
"We are taking all the necessary steps available to us to rectify these problems. This is in the face of increasing levels of COVID-related sickness absence amongst our operational workforce.”

N.F. ADDS: Brigg can normally expect three Saturday trains towards Grimsby and Cleethorpes (from platform one) and three heading for Gainsborough and Sheffield (from platform two). When all local trains were suspended in January, it was indicated they would resume in mid-February but this did not happen.