I wish St Helens Central had a proper link to Manchester rather than a suburb of it. It’s pretty bad that even the village of Rainford at the top end of the borough has a link (admittedly not a very good one) but the main town doesn’t. I think it’s links to Liverpool are undoubtedly still the weak link in Merseyside when the rest of the system has a clockwork 4 an hour service but ours is 2 slow and 1 semi fast. (St Helens Junction is a suburb at the southern end of the borough some way from the actual town). I appreciate though, that it coul d be worse and be like Oldham, Bury or Leigh which don’t now have any heavy rail links at all and should really be fully integrated into the national ticketing network fully. No doubt someone will mention the bus service which is good from the town, but it is slow, with no express bus anymore and has to go through some comically rough parts of Liverpool. (I think even it’s biggest supporters would not defend the Sheil Road area of Kenny and Page Moss!)
