Train firms fined record £136m

THE passenger train companies have been fined a record £136m by the Rail Regulator for the misery they have caused commuters with their late, cancelled and chronically overcrowded trains during the last year.

In a graphic illustration of how services have worsened, this compares with the fine of £17.8m for the previous 12 months.

South West Trains, which operates local and long distance services into London's mainline Waterloo station, was fined the most - nearly £16m - mostly because trains regularly failed to run on time.

Connex South Eastern, which serves the busiest commuter routes in the UK into Charing Cross, Cannon Street and Victoria, was fined £10.5m. The bulk of that is for late trains but also includes a £1.6m penalty for making unscheduled changes to the timetable.

South Central, which used to be owned by Connex and has recently been taken over by transport group Govia and which includes the Brighton line, was fined nearly £10m with virtually all of that due to poor timekeeping.

Both SWT and Connex were fined more than £1m each for running trains with not enough carriages which made the already packed trains even more overcrowded - as demonstrated by the Evening Standard in its Cattle Truck London campaign. South Central was fined £688,000 for the same offence.

Railtrack was fined nearly £8m by Tom Winsor the Rail Regulator for failing to meet its performance targets during 1999-2000. The bill will eventually have to be picked up by the taxpayer because Railtrack is in administration.

Official statistics show the deterioration in the number of morning and evening rush hour trains serving London and the South-East during the last four years arriving on time. In 1997/8, 86.9% arrived on time. This dropped to 85.3% cent the following year and to 85.1 the year after that. For 2000/1 it dropped to an all-time low of 73.7% - with fewer than three out of four peak-time trains on schedule.

Every one of the 20 passenger train companies governed by the Strategic Rail Authority's (SRA) performance regime was fined for late services for the year ending 16 October.

Most but not all of the fines result from the chaos after the Hatfield crash in which four people died in October last year. This was caused by a broken rail and led to Railtrack imposing national speed limits and closing some sections of line while it replaced substandard track.

The passenger train companies will now make record compensation claims on Railtrack for delays caused by signal and track faults for which Railtrack is responsible. Mike Grant, SRA chief executive, said the fines cash would be re-invested in the industry.