The Daily Telegraph

Chaos for rail passengers as new timetables hit the buffers

- By Joel Adams

A TRAIN timetable revolution is in disarray, with dozens of cancellati­ons on day one and chaos for commuters expected for up to a month.

The times of more than 3,000 trains run by the UK’S largest rail franchise changed yesterday.

Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR), which operates Southern Rail, Gatwick Express, Thameslink and Great Northern, have said the overhaul will mean there are 400 more trains a day and will allow 50,000 extra passengers to get to London during morning peak hours.

However, on the first day of the new timetable, dozens of trains had been cancelled before 9am and the company has apologised.

Last week, Thameslink admitted it expected it will be June 11 before the new timetable is fully operationa­l on its routes, and train drivers and commuter groups say the worst is yet to come.

Commuter groups have also claimed that while GTR is blaming cancellati­ons on “operationa­l incidents”, the problem is actually that it does not have enough drivers.

An internal GTR email sent at 7.30am yesterday warned of 66 “potential cancellati­ons” across the Southern, Thameslink and Gatwick Express routes due to “train crew position”.

By 9am, Great Northern had announced that a “short-term amended timetable” with a “reduced service” had been put in place, with disruption set to continue all day.

A GTR source told The Daily Telegraph: “What angers me is that they’re telling the paying public it’s just shortterm timetable amendments, but it’s actually because they haven’t got organised in time and are trying to hide the driver shortage. Referring to today’s morning rush hour, he added: “I shudder to think what will happen.”

A spokesman for GTR said that the company had sufficient staff but was working to match driver skills to work rosters.

By midday yesterday, 20 per cent of GTR’S trains had been cancelled or had arrived more than 30 minutes late. Service improved slightly through the day but by 6pm more than 170 of 1,280 trains had been cancelled or arrived at least half an hour late.

GTR chief executive Charles Horton

‘It angers me... it’s because they were not organised in time and they are trying to hide the driver shortage’

said last week that “the biggest ever change to a rail timetable” might mean some services did not run at normal times “during the introducto­ry phase”. He promised that the impact on peaktime services would be “minimal”.

A GTR spokesman said last night: “We apologise to customers for any inconvenie­nce caused during the initial stages of the timetable change. The improvemen­ts we are making will lead to a significan­t boost in capacity.”

 Rail fares will continue to rise if Labour renational­ises the service, the shadow transport secretary, Andy Mcdonald, admitted. He said the plans were “not about freezing or reducing” fares, but Labour would only increase them by the CPI, and not the higher RPI, rate of inflation – a policy already being examined by the Tories.

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