{"id":513105,"date":"2025-10-20T00:21:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T00:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/513105\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T00:21:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T00:21:15","slug":"what-i-was-told-in-the-ticket-office-let-me-know-this-journey-would-be-a-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/513105\/","title":{"rendered":"What I was told in the ticket office let me know this journey would be a nightmare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reporter Dan Haygarth spent a lot of time waiting as he tried to get to this town by public transportDan Haygarth<\/strong><\/a> Liverpool Daily Post Editor and Regeneration Reporter<\/p>\n

00:01, 20 Oct 2025<\/p>\n

Dan Haygarth is a senior reporter who focuses on the regeneration of the Liverpool City Region. He looks at social and political issues facing the region, as well as writing about culture, business and the built environment. He also has a particular interest in covering stories from Merseyside\u2019s hospitality industry. Born in Liverpool, Dan joined the ECHO in January 2022 having previously been a reporter for CambridgeshireLive.<\/p>\n

\"ECHOECHO reporter Dan Haygarth travelled by train and bus as he put this route to the test<\/p>\n

The response of the woman at the ticket desk was my first warning it wasn’t going to be the smoothest journey. I’d made my way from the Liverpool ECHO’s Old Hall Street office<\/a> to Moorfields as the first leg of my travels would take me by train to Kirkby’s Headbolt Lane.<\/a><\/p>\n

From there, I would be catching the bus to Skelmersdale<\/a>. I was heading to West Lancashire to speak to people about the challenges facing the town and a masterplan from the local council designed to regenerate it.<\/p>\n

But the major challenge that is often mentioned with Skelmersdale is its lack of a railway station – and it was one of the biggest frustrations mentioned by those in the town I spoke to for the article<\/a>, which was published on Saturday.<\/p>\n

‘Skem’ has been without a station since 1956. Shortly after, its population grew hugely with the development of its new town in the 1960s. Many plans for developing a station have been proposed in the years since but none have yet come to fruition<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It leaves Skelmersdale in the odd and difficult position of acting as a satellite town for Liverpool but lacking an easy way to get there by public transport. There is hope a station could be developed on the former Glenburn College site – space for one has been allocated in the aforementioned masterplan<\/a> – but that has been a plan before and not happened.<\/p>\n

For now, there is a direct bus between the city and Skelmersdale, but it takes its fair time. When I looked into the best way to travel from Liverpool city centre, the Merseyrail website<\/a> offered me the ‘Skelmersdale rail link’.<\/p>\n

\"InsideOn board a Merseyrail train(Image: Colin Lane\/Liverpool Echo)<\/p>\n

About it, it says: “Travelling between Skelmersdale and Liverpool is now even easier with a combined bus and rail ticket. The new Train Link ticket covers travel on the 319 Preston Bus service between Skelmersdale and Headbolt Lane train station, and train travel between Headbolt Lane and Liverpool city centre train stations.”<\/p>\n

“Even easier” feels a stretch when two modes of transport are required, but I went with it. After leaving the office at 11.55am on Tuesday, I got to Moorfields at around midday and asked for the ticket, which I found out is not popular.<\/p>\n

That was my first warning sign. The staff member working at the desk told me it was the first time she had ever sold one of them. I’m not sure I was glad to be a pioneer.<\/p>\n

I parted with \u00a38.80 for a return and got onto the 12.07pm train to Headbolt Lane. Kirkby’s newest station has had its fair share of problems since opening in October 2023<\/a> but the journey was as smooth as it could be.<\/p>\n

The first issue with this route arose when I got to the station, however.<\/p>\n

The buses between Headbolt and Skelmersdale are half hourly for most of the day. As a result, the trains don’t all line up with the buses and I had a 20 minute wait on my hands for the next bus.<\/p>\n

Not ideal, really. I remained on my own at the bus shelter<\/a> for the entirety of the wait, once more illustrating quite how unpopular this route is, but it arrived on time at 12.48pm.<\/p>\n

The strikingly orange and yellow Preston Bus, which runs from Kirkby before stopping at the station, had “fast routes to and from Liverpool” written proudly on its side. We’ll see about that, I guess.<\/p>\n

But it once more felt a stretch of marketing when getting to Liverpool from its Knowsley terminus requires a train. Leaving the pedantry aside. I got onto the bus and showed my orange train link ticket to the driver.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe empty bus shelter at Headbolt Lane station<\/p>\n

He looked rather bemused, as if I’d tried to use a Tesco Clubcard to get onto his bus. But after reading the ticket and seeing it allowed me a journey to West Lancashire<\/a>, he let me on.<\/p>\n

I wondered if I was the only person ever to have trusted Merseyrail’s statement about how ‘easy’ this route made it to get to Skelmersdale. But there were a handful of people on the bus already and it made its journey to the town’s main bus station at the Concourse Shopping Centre in as timely a fashion as you would expect.<\/p>\n

That said, sitting at the back of a bus swinging around the town’s notorious collection of roundabouts was giving my stomach something to think about. I wouldn’t want to be on that bus home from a night out in Liverpool.<\/p>\n

We arrived at the Concourse at 1.09pm – an hour and two minutes after my train had set off from Moorfields, and one hour and 14 minutes after I left the office. For a 16 mile journey by road, which is meant to take 35 minutes by car if traffic is on your side and it’s not rush hour, that is far from great.<\/p>\n

No wonder people feel Skelmersdale is cut off and marooned. There are other options – you can get the direct bus from Liverpool or a train to Ormskirk and a bus from there. God knows what they are like if this is marketed as the easy option.<\/p>\n

\"SkelmersdaleSkelmersdale Town Centre in West Lancashire(Image: James Maloney\/Lancs Live)<\/p>\n

After a couple of hours of chatting to the people of West Lancashire, I set off back to Liverpool just after 3pm. This time, I got on the bus at the War Memorial in Old Skem<\/a>, where my run of interviews had come to an end.<\/p>\n

The 3.20pm bus was a little bit late, which is always frustrating, but it played into my hands as it left me with less time to wait before the next train to Liverpool at Headbolt Lane. In a weird way I felt as if I’d reclaimed my time. Of course I hadn’t – I’d just swapped around where I’d be waiting.<\/p>\n

The train once more ran smoothly and I arrived at Moorfields<\/a> at 4.12pm – so it was just under an hour for the shorter journey back into Liverpool from Old Skem. I’m told by colleagues from West Lancashire that this is good going and rush hour traffic can slow buses down and make the journey even longer.<\/p>\n

But the simple fact it takes an hour to travel by public transport from a new town to the city for which it acted as a housing overspill is ridiculous. It’s hard not to think that if this were the south of England, a station would have been built – or at the very least the trains and buses would be properly integrated so the times run nicely.<\/p>\n

Alan Ireland, 73, was one of the people I spoke to for Saturday’s article<\/a> and he didn’t mince his words about the lack of a train station.<\/a><\/p>\n

He said: “The lack of a train station is a complete disgrace. You’ve got a train going from Wigan to Kirkby<\/a>. It passes not far from here, it could come.<\/p>\n

“Kirkby has got two stations, we’ve got nothing. They do a train link from here to Kirkby – what for? Skelmersdale is cut off. If you haven’t got a car, you’ve had it.<\/p>\n

“You’ve got to get a bus and the bus takes forever – especially going to Liverpool, good god. It’s dreadful, you need sandwiches and a flask, you’re on it that long.”<\/p>\n

As a man without a car, I certainly felt that. It is symptomatic of how the north feels let down and left behind when it comes to public transport.<\/p>\n

Skelmersdale deserves better. The only way that travelling between the town and Liverpool will become “even easier” is if a station is built.<\/p>\n

We’re used to waiting a while for trains in this part of the country, but 69 years is far too long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reporter Dan Haygarth spent a lot of time waiting as he tried to get to this town by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":513106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,4884,179,29937,72971,1263,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-513105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-liverpool","12":"tag-rail-travel","13":"tag-skelmersdale","14":"tag-transport","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115403639317742462","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/513106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}