How rail delays are costing us millions

Mar 24 2008 by Dan Warburton and Sam Wood

VANDALISM on the railways helped cause more than 9,000 hours of delays in the North-East and over £200m in lost time for passengers in just one year, it emerged yesterday.

The East Coast Main Line running through the North East was ranked as one of the worst in the country, second only to its counterpart in the West, for delays and disruption, according to the National Audit Office.

It found in 2006/07, there were 296 incidents which caused at least 1,000 minutes – more than 16 hours – of delays.

In total there were 542,610 minutes of serious delays on trains running through the region. That amounted to 22% of the overall delays in the country.

It is estimated that this cost rail passengers, including those in the North-East, at least £230m in lost time.

And those delays are just part of the picture – the National Audit Office only recorded hold-ups of at least 1,000 minutes, meaning minor delays were not included in its report.

North East Conservative MEP Martin Callanan said last night: “Those 500,000 plus minutes are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of delays. It seems a ridiculous way of calculating the figures, really. This way any incident that causes less than about 17 hours of  delay  would not be counted.

“If one train is delayed by a few hours it was cause severe problems for passengers but would not be recorded. The 1,000 minute cut-off point seems ridiculous.”

The number of lengthy delays has been steadily falling since 2000/01, but those caused by vandalism and theft in the region are soaring. Officials said many of the delays were caused by a spate of cable thefts.

The report said: “The North East had by far the highest number of incidents caused by vandalism, some 61 of the 94 incidents that occurred nationally during 2006-07.

“These were caused by thefts of lengths of copper cable, a problem that worsened significantly during 2006-2007 as the price of copper increased.”

A bulletin released by the British Transport Police showed criminal damage on the rail lines between 2005/06 and 2006/07 soared by 27%. During that time the number of attacks of vandalism on the North East rail system rocketed by more than 100 from 389 to 496.

Tyne Bridge MP David Clelland told The Journal: “This is bad news for passengers and businesses in the North East. But it is also bad news for the people who are carrying out the vandalism. It is incredibly dangerous for people to be messing about on the railways.

“The people who are doing this are not thinking about the impact they have on society by their actions.

“The message needs to get out that stealing from rail lines is just not acceptable and impacts on all of us. Network rail and British Transport Police need to get on top of the problem.”

Simon Lubin, from the British Transport Police, said vandalism was a big challenge on an open railway system with over 10,000 miles of track.

He said: “Throwing missiles at trains and similar highly dangerous acts are sadly daily occurrences. Apart from the obvious dangers, they cause delays and cost money.

“We are having success by working with Network rail and train operators to combat this sort of crime.”

On a national level shortcomings were discovered in the way passengers were handled during delays.

And inadequate training of emergency services staff meant they were not always aware of who to contact during incidents or how to work safely on the railways.

A spokesperson for Network rail said: “We are very aware of the problems vandalism causes on the network and we do a lot to try to combat them. Through our No Messin’ campaign we go into schools to educate children about the dangers of straying onto tracks. And we work with British Transport Police to try to prevent cable being stolen.”

Guy Dangerfield, a spokesperson for Passenger Focus, commented: “It really backs up our view that the industry, by and large, is not good at handling unplanned disruptions from the passenger’s perspective.

“With regards to the vandalism, it is the high cost of copper that is making it very lucrative, and it puts a massive financial strain on the companies, and also causes massive disruptions.”

The East Coast route was operated by Great North Eastern Railways during 2006/07 and is now run by National Express who yesterday said track management was down to Network Rail.