Media centre

Tuesday 24 Aug 2004

RESPONSE TO PASSENGER TICKET BOOKING PROBLEMS – ‘T-12’

Region & Route:

National

We recognise the need for passengers to have as much notice as possible of engineering works and are acutely aware of the consequences when this notice is not possible.  The current problems are partly the product of the unprecedented amounts of work Network Rail is doing to rebuild the railway, especially on the West Coast Main Line.  We're replacing almost three times as much track per year as Railtrack was five years ago and whilst the majority of this work has no affect on train services, the biggest, most complex tasks necessitate alterations to the normal timetable requiring very detailed planning.  We're already taking significant steps to improve matters. We've created a special task force, working in conjunction with train operators, to tackle this issue and improve planning so that the current problems are speedily resolved and do not recur. We've centralised train planning to improve the efficiency of the function and embarked on a significant recruitment drive in this area. Things are getting better with passengers able to book long distance journeys anything from one to two and half months in advance.  It’s still not where we would like to be but the situation is improving week by week.