Rail misery worsens

A devastating picture of the daily misery inflicted on commuters is revealed today.

Figures show one in four overground trains is late and the Tube cancelled 18,440 peak-time trains in the past year.

The appalling performance today sparked anger and comes days after commuters were hit by ticket price rises of up to 25 per cent on some routes.

The figures confirm what commuters have long suspected: that services are getting consistently worse. The scale of delays on overground trains is to be revealed by the Strategic Rail Authority in its statistics for June, July and August.

They were expected to show that around one in five of all Britain's trains ran late over the summer.

In London and the South-East the figure was even worse, with around one in four trains late. The SRA figures are being published after Transport Secretary Alistair Darling told rail chiefs: "The trains need to run on time."

He warned rail bosses that late trains were the "number one concern" of passengers and issued strict orders to achieve a substantial improvement.

Rail firms were today set to blame the summer heatwave for the scale of late running, after buckled rails and speed restrictions hit services. Passengers suffered some of the worst journeys ever as they sweltered on packed trains. In the worst incident, an hourlong trip into London from Southampton turned into a nine-hour journey.

Passengers were locked in a single-carriage train stranded between stations as temperatures soared above 100F. At one point they had to smash windows to let in air.

Cynthia Hay of Capital Transport, the passenger pressure group, said travellers were suffering a massive "rip-off ", with fares going up but no improvement in trains.

Today's figures will increase the tension between the train companies and Network Rail, the body that replaced Railtrack to maintain the lines and signals. The train companies blame Network Rail for more than half of all delays.

They say that failures in track and signal infrastructure are the cause and remain Network Rail's responsibility.

The SRA report comes just after steep increases in fare prices. First class tickets for Silverlink services from Euston are to go up by 25.2 per cent - the highest rise in the country.

Fares on many routes from Kent and south-east London are to increase by nine per cent in the New Year.

And as the overland figures were revealed, Tube commuters' worst fears about the state of the network were confirmed when London Underground admitted it had cancelled 18,440 peak-time trains in the last year.

The figure is almost triple the number of trains that had to be cancelled in 1997.

New statistics for the Underground show the full extent of the cancellations suffered by travellers on a daily basis. The most frequent cancellations were on the Central, Piccadilly, District and Northern lines - the four busiest routes on the system.

And the statistics also revealed 3,425 cancellations were caused by industrial action.

The figures today prompted calls for urgent talks on a no-strike deal to be agreed among the Tube unions.

Conservative shadow transport secretary Damian Green, who obtained the figures, said: "The delays caused by industrial action contribute significantly to the overall level of unreliability of the network."