'Potentially dangerous disruption': Passengers endured 'appalling services' during rail timetable chaos, MPs' scathing report finds

Sign up to Simon Calder’s free travel email for expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calder’s Travel email Get Simon Calder’s Travel email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy “Around a fifth of rail passengers have suffered appalling services and been very badly let down by the whole system” – so says the Transport Select Committee in its scathing report on the botched introduction of new timetables in May. The report says the system for “delay repay” refunds should be made much easier to obtain: “The government must now set a measurable target for implementation of ‘one click’ automated compensation schemes on commuter rail routes.” A DfT spokesperson said: “We have already worked with the industry to deliver special compensation schemes on Northern, TransPennine Express and GTR, which provides the equivalent of up to 8 per cent of the cost of an annual season ticket for those most severely impacted. Next week we will begin to introduce 200 mainly off-peak services to complete the phased roll-out of the May weekday timetable, bringing the total number of daily weekday services to 3,600.” Robert Nisbet, regional director at the Rail Delivery Group, which represents Network Rail and the train operators, said: “We are learning the lessons from the unacceptable disruption in May and this report will be an important contribution. “While we are truly sorry for what happened this summer, our ambition remains to deliver thousands of new trains and extra services, improving journeys for customers and helping grow the economy.” The most damning sentence in the report concludes: “Far from marking the intended substantial improvement for rail passengers across the north and in London and the south of England, the 20 May national rail timetable change and the weeks that followed will live long in the memories of a large proportion of rail users as a prolonged period of intensely inconvenient, costly and, on occasions, potentially dangerous disruption.”