Rail commuters ‘pay for their own refunds’

TAXPAYERS are paying for their own rail ticket compensation, MPS have said, as Network Rail was again blamed for delays and poor planning that have caused months of passenger misery.

Anyone who receives compensation or a refund to make up for a delayed or cancelled train was effectively paying themselves because Network Rail was funded by taxes, Labour said.

MPS called for the Government to step in and take control of the “chaos” of the country’s failing railway system.

It came on a day when commuters trying to reach London Victoria were told not to bother after a power failure shut off most routes to one of the capital’s busiest stations. Trains were unable to run from Wednesday evening throughout yesterday, increasing congestion on roads and prompting furious commuters to call Network Rail a farce.

The problem was unlikely to be solved until this afternoon, leaving passengers without a route into work. Around 210,000 passengers use London Victoria each day. The Office of Road and Rail (ORR) published a report yesterday that found Network Rail also responsible for almost 70 per cent of the delays on another route, run by South Western Railway, in the past year.

It said the network operator’s contingency plans were a decade out of date and that lessons were never learnt after things went wrong.

The criticism follows months of delays and cancellations for passengers, many of which were caused by Network Rail’s failure to complete work on time or maintain tracks.

Graham Richards, ORR’S railway planning and performance expert, said: “Network Rail has not updated its processes to keep pace with the changes.”

Rachael Maskell, the shadow transport minister, said Network Rail paying compensation meant that taxpayers were footing their own bill. Jo Johnson, the transport minister, swerved her point but told MPS: “Compensation involves four weeks’ cash compensation for passengers on the most severely disrupted routes.”