Mayor hopes to 'squeeze out' extra rail capacity

Everton will move to their new waterfront home this summer

Extra rail capacity will be "squeezed out" following concerns about the number of football fans who can travel to and from Everton's new stadium by train, the mayor of the Liverpool City Region has said.

Steve Rotheram hopes several longer trains will be used to transport people to and from a third and final test event at Bramley-Moore Dock.

There was increased demand on parts of the Merseyrail network surrounding a test event at the stadium on Sunday.

Everton will leave Goodison Park at the end of this season before moving to their new home on Liverpool's waterfront in time for the 2025-26 campaign.

Rotheram said rail performance on Sunday had been "largely impeccable".

He said more than 12,000 people - almost half of the 25,000 who attended - had used the Merseyrail network.

'Finite number of trains and staff'

Speaking on BBC Radio Merseyside's The Hot Seat phone-in programme, the metro mayor said there had been an unexpectedly high level of demand on the Hunts Cross line.

Rotheram said further work needed to be completed by Network Rail to allow for eight-car services to run along the line.

He said: "We will double capacity for the next test event and we'll see how that goes."

The mayor said he had spoken with Merseyrail about increasing the frequency of services on that line.

But he warned capacity increases would be limited by a finite number of trains and staff.

Services ran every 15 minutes on the Southport, Ormskirk and Headbolt Lane lines on Sunday, with some eight-car trains.

Rotheram said that while, in his opinion, the network had held up well, problems were more common before kick-off, rather than after.

He said: "The average waiting time to get away was 20 minutes, if you could guarantee that at most away grounds, 20 minutes is absolutely nothing.

"For 52,000 it might be half an hour, 40 minutes, but that's what we need to find out with the next test event."

Many fans travelling to and from Everton's new Bramley-Moore Dock stadium will rely upon Merseyrail services

Mr Rotheram paid tribute to Merseyrail staff, some of whom gave up their day off on Sunday.

He said: "We have half-hourly services on a Sunday normally - that meant train drivers on their rest day had to come in.

"We worked with the RMT to get those people and see what quarterly-hour services looked like."

Rotheram said "99% of people" who had travelled by public transport "had not complained", and there had only been a "very small handful" of official complaints, mostly about problems before the game.

He said: "Some of the complaints are that there weren't long enough trains before the game, so I'll look at that and we'll see if we can squeeze more services and longer trains before the game earlier in the day, in the build-up to the game."

Rotheram said the final test event, in which the stadium will be near to its full capacity, would give transport bosses more information about how fans travel to and from the stadium.

"What we could do with is a survey to see how many in certain post codes would be likely to use a specific mode of transport, and then we can start to see if there's more capacity we can squeeze out of the network."

Steve Rotheram said "99% of fans had a fairly decent experience" of public transport around Sunday's test event

He expressed frustration with criticism that the authorities had been too slow to develop a robust travel plan.

The metro mayor said: "It's not through a lack of trying, it's not through a lack of planning. One of the most ridiculous things I've heard is people saying 'well they've had four years to plan this and nothing's happened.'

"The first get-together of the transport working group, which is chaired by Everton Football Club, was 2021 so they have been planning this forever but the thing is we can only squeeze so many trains on to the system that we have because of the signalling.

"We can't squeeze any more trains other than an odd one intermittently between the services that are quarter-hourly."