Rail disruption 'to improve'

Repairs have caused chaos on the railways

The rail regulator has said passengers should soon see an improvement in the reliability of emergency timetables, after he imposed a deadline for planning track repair work.

Tom Winsor has given Railtrack two weeks to come up with a detailed schedule of remaining repairs to the rail network which will ensure both passenger train and freight operators can deliver a reliable service.

He hopes it will enable operators to draw up more accurate timetables and could impose a final enforcement order and then financial penalties if Railtrack fails to meet the 18 January deadline.

I do not know when full recovery will take place and the train operators don't know when

Rail Regulator Ton Winsor

Passengers groups and train operators have welcomed the crackdown.

Railtrack's chief executive Steve Marshall told BBC One's Breakfast News it would be able to produce the plan and passengers can expect full recovery of the rail network by mid April.

"We have come out of the Christmas period with a lot of good work done and our target anyway is to get detailed plans to the rail operators by the middle of this month," he said.

"We have been redefining plans as we have gone along and what we have found is 50% more work than we thought we had to do.

"It has been pretty difficult up until Christmas to predict what will happen for passengers but over Christmas we have done a huge amount of work and now think it is sensible to get detailed train operator plans."

The details required include when each piece of repair work is done, when each speed restriction will be lifted and the impact this will have on rail running times.

Radical change

Mr Winsor acted after the Association of Train Operating Companies expressed dissatisfaction with Railtrack's plans at the end of December and asked the rail regulator to intervene.

He said in a statement: "Train operators require such plans as well as route-by-route information so that they can plan their services properly and with confidence."

But he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that it was "highly likely" that the rail network would be back to normal by Easter, as predicted by Railtrack.

"I think that there will be substantial progress as January and February go on and by Easter we should have very substantial progress towards full recovery," he said.

Enforcement

"But I do not know when full recovery will take place and the train operators don't know when."

Atoc welcomed Mr Winsor's announcement.

Director General George Muir said: "We know that Railtrack has made progress in the last three weeks, but we don't yet have a return-to-normal plan. This is what passengers want.

"We are working closely with Railtrack to develop these detailed plans and we expect they can be prepared in time."

Stewart Francis, chairman of the Rail Passengers Council, also welcomed the enforcement order.

Tom Winsor: Set deadline

But the Rail Passengers Committee for Southern England said there should be a radical change in Railtrack's working methods.

Ms Toms added that simply because Railtrack, unlike the old British Rail, employed contractors rather than a direct labour force, "it cannot abdicate its responsibility for ensuring the overall quality and safety of the infrastructure".

"There are signs that passengers are reaching the end of their patience," she said.

"Those with a choice of whether or not to travel by train are forsaking rail in droves and travelling by car or coach if their journey is relatively short, or by air if going long distance."

The committee said that the number of complaints it had received about rail services in the 12 months ending in March 2000 totalled 1,810 - a 9% fall on the 1998-99 total and the first time since rail privatisation that the figure had fallen.

But the 1999-2000 total was still well over double the figure in the last year of British Rail operation.

Of the train companies in the southern region, Connex South Central attracted the largest number of complaints.

Most complaints over the whole region were about late and cancelled trains.