IF you are a regular user of trains in the North West, you will be no stranger to delays.

But it is not just trains that arrive late, it is also new — expensive — projects.

Last week, our sister publication the Lancashire Telegraph revealed how a planned £780,000 facelift for Blackburn station was six months behind schedule, and two organisations are also running late with a scheme at Bolton station.

Earlier this year, I reported through this column how Northern Rail and Transport for Greater Manchester had teamed up to build two bicycle storage cages at Bolton station.

They were finished in October and signs reading “opens early 2014” have been up since — but they are still not open.

Northern Rail has told us the signs were recently replaced with “ready to use in summer 2014” signs.

Maybe the next sign will read “we hope to get our act together in the next decade”.

Northern Rail has blamed the delay on not being able to connect the cages with other cages at other stations using computer software.

In fact, the firm says it is not the opening that is late, but the cages that were put up early — so why the signs?

The problem here is simply communication.

It should not take me to raise this in this column for the powers that be to inform customers — who, let’s face it, fund all these projects — of any delays, in the same way that station staff should have done more to inform people about lift failures at Bolton station a few weeks ago.

Having said all that, the bike cages will look fancy once they are open – hopefully soon.