A ‘Meet the Manager’ event scheduled to take place this Friday 19th February at Newry train station is not a public meeting, contrary to an announcement by Sinn Fein MLA Conor Murphy, as reported in last week’s Examiner.
Mr Murphy recently met with Translink Group Chief Executive, Chris Conway, to discuss local public transport issues raised by his constituents in the Newry area, after which he revealed details of an upcoming ‘Meet the Manager’ public meeting. However, Mr Conway has stated Friday’s planned meeting is a further opportunity to engage with political representatives and not for the public to attend.
The purpose of the earlier meeting, Mr Conway said, was an opportunity to provide an update on some of the key service developments within the company, such as passenger growth in the popular X1 and X2 cross border Goldline Coach Service as well as the 238 Goldline Express services to Belfast.
Cross border travel was also highlighted along with an update on the progress of the new refurbished Enterprise trains which are all in final testing phase and soon to be in passenger service. There was also an opportunity to set out some of the funding challenges the organisation has been facing, how this has impacted on some local rail services and what has been done to address these by offering integrated travel solutions for local customers.
“Stakeholder meetings of this nature are extremely valuable and give Translink an opportunity to positively address local issues and concerns. Translink would like to clarify that the ‘Meet the Manager’ meeting on 19th February is a further opportunity to engage with local political representatives and is not a public meeting. It would appear that there has been a misunderstanding around the nature of this meeting and we would apologise for any inconvenience caused,” he said.
Mr Conway says Translink holds passenger focus group meetings on a regular basis to engage with local users and also welcomes feedback from customers who complete a feedback card at one of the main stations or email via feedback@translink.co.uk.
“We place high value on input from our passengers and stakeholders and regularly monitor this feedback to help plan and shape local services. We will be taking the opportunity to capture further local customer feedback at Newry Train Station over the coming weeks and will publicise the details of this session in the station shortly,” he added.