Almost 800,000 incidents caused 14 million minutes of delay to rail journeys in 2006–07, costing at least £1 billion in terms of time lost to passengers, the National Audit Office has found.
The spending watchdog’s study revealed that while rail performance has steadily increased since the Hatfield derailment in October 2000, incidents such as infrastructure faults, fleet problems, fatalities and trespass still cause significant delays.
In 2006–07, Network Rail infrastructure faults such as problems with the track and signal failures accounted for 42 per cent of total delay minutes, train operating companies caused 38 per cent and external events such as weather conditions or vandalism 20 per cent.
The total delay minutes for external events, including fatalities as well as adverse weather and vandalism, rose from 2.0 million to 2.9 million minutes, up 45 per cent from 1999-2000.
The average delay due to externally-caused events was 45 minutes, around double that caused by infrastructure faults and four times that of incidents caused by TOCs.
Resolving incidents and getting trains running again requires co-operation between Network Rail, TOCs and in some cases the emergency services, the report says.
The NAO found that while Network Rail and TOCs generally had well established
procedures for managing incidents which were followed appropriately, contingency plans were not always available or implemented as well as they could have been.
The relationship between Network Rail and the emergency services could be improved, with some members of the emergency services not knowing whom to contact at Network Rail in an emergency.
The NAO recommends that national ‘memoranda of understanding’ are established between Network Rail and emergency services. Individuals may not have received in-depth training on how to work safely on the tracks, which can lead to confusion.
Network Rail should work with the emergency services to ensure guidance is available to all who may need it.
A third of passengers surveyed by Passenger Focus were dissatisfied with the way rail incidents were dealt with and, of those who were unhappy, 75 per cent complained of a lack of information when they were delayed.
NAO head Tim Burr said: “In addition to frustrating passengers, train delays cost the economy over £1 billion year.
“The rail industry has made progress in keeping trains moving, despite the rise in traffic on the network, but, when incidents happen, passengers should get better information about what is happening.
“All sections of the rail industry need to improve their incident planning to keep trains moving quickly and safely.”
Shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers said: “Delays and disruption are synonymous with Labour’s transport record. The long suffering public have had their pockets raided through inflation-busting fare rises and all they get in return are hours of delays and headaches. Fourteen million minutes of delay costing over £1 billion in time lost is far too much misery for passengers.
“This report shows once again how important it is that Network Rail finally realise that their customer is the travelling public – not the fat controller in Whitehall.
“Passengers deserve better but, because of the fundamentally flawed way Gordon Brown set up Network Rail, it is ac-countable to no one and can too often get away with impunity.”
Liberal Democrat transport spokesman Norman Baker added: “Some delays are inevitable but there is much more that can be done to move towards a genuine seven-day rail service.
“Single-line working should be reintroduced where possible so that one track can remain open while engineering works continue.”