FOLLOWING Peter Grant's recent Inferno column, allow me to pick up on some of the points the piece raises about Merseyrail.

First of all, I'm glad that, overall, Mr Grant is a supporter of our service and enthusiastic at the prospect of possible network expansion in the future, as indeed are we.

The survey he refers to is the National Rail Passenger Survey (NRPS), a respected industry barometer, which is conducted twice a year by independent consumer watchdog Transport Focus.

We do not have any control over the content and phrasing of questions in the poll, however it does include an over-arching question, asking passengers to rate their overall satisfaction with their journey that day.

This is what forms satisfaction score.

Merseyrail remains very popular with customers and we have secured the highest score among all franchised operators for passenger satisfaction on several occasions, most recently in the last NRPS, achieving 93 per cent.

As regards the availability of seats, we monitor passenger loadings carefully for individual trains to ensure that rolling stock is allocated to services in an optimal way.

Merseyrail services are highly frequent, with most trains run every 15 minutes, but when demand is lower, which is generally in the evenings, this becomes half-hourly.

For major events, attracting a lot of people, we often adapt our train plan and put on more services.

Over the Grand National, for example, when we carried around 90,000 passengers, there were trains every 7½ minutes between Liverpool city centre and Aintree station.

And for the first time last Christmas, we ran trains on Boxing Day, one of just a few operators in the country to do so.

On bank holidays, we operate a Saturday service, which means slightly fewer trains than during the week, mindful of people who are working on that day or pursuing leisure activities, shopping or visiting family and friends.

Jan Chaudhry-van der Velde, Merseyrail managing director