Train journeys 11.5 minutes late on average for 2004
11.5 minutes late is not good news for anybody especially us the commuters. What worries me is that we are becoming complacent to this awful service because we have no real alternative (well I don't). Apparently it will be August 2006 before Network Rail achieves the 86.1 percent of trains running on time that was last achieved before October 2000. there were lots of promises from Network Rail when it was initially set up. After a huge amount of Government money pumped into it all we have seen is deaths in horrific rail crashes and increasingly later running trains. Chairman of Network Rail Ian McAllister has stated that they are 'raising the bar on train punctuality' - I ask why were they allowed to lower it in the first place.
Cynical I may be but I have suffered, like all other rail commuters, years of neglect in the system and I will not now stand for the fake PR that's going to happen over the next couple of years on how they are improving the situation. Getting it back to where it was five years ago is not an improvement.