Railways struggle to agree timetable

RAIL PASSENGERS may not be able to plan their journeys over one of the year's busiest holiday seasons because the industry is struggling to put together a timetable.

Railtrack and the train operators have just four days to finalise the Easter timetable before incurring the wrath of the Rail Regulator. The industry admits the timetable is still not complete.

The companies were recently reprimanded for failing to organise services for the Christmas and New Year periods. As a last resort, they can be fined.

Under the complex system for regulating the privatised industry, the train companies and Railtrack must agree 12 weeks in advance which services will run and which will be cancelled for engineering work. This is to allow travellers to be able to book with confidence.

The Regulator, Chris Bolt, is worried the industry will not hit the target for Good Friday, which this year falls on 2 April. Under the rule - known as T minus 12 - passengers should be able to book for the Friday holiday from 9 January. The industry has another week to hit the deadline for Easter Monday.

A spokeswoman for Railtrack said that where it had had bids from train operating companies (Tocs) it was "likely" the great majority of the timetable would be complete in time. But she added: "We have a few bits and bobs outstanding. There are some Tocs where we are actively working and there are some delays in the bidding system. We are hoping that it will be mostly uploaded on to the system for booking. The industry is working very hard on this one."

A spokesman for Mr Bolt said: "T minus 12 is not just for Christmas, it is for the whole year round, but there are obvious pinch points such as half-term holidays and Easter. Our concerns still exist because the processes are not right yet to enable T minus 12 to be a reliable programme." But he said early signs showed the industry was better prepared than it was 13 weeks before Christmas.

The Office of the Rail Regulator has called for a comprehensive review to improve the system, which was started by the Conservative government five years ago. The regulator's spokesman admitted T minus 12 was a "trifle optimistic" but said the 12-week period itself was not up for renegotiation.

The problem stems from the fact that Railtrack, which has an ambitious engineering programme, uses bank holidays to carry out maintenance work to avoid disrupting commuters. Meanwhile, train firms want to run more services to attract new passengers.

The 25 train companies currently face a separate threat of a fine from Mr Bolt. They will be fined pounds 500,000 unless they improve markedly the telephone inquiry service, which has not met performance targets.

n Railtrack has offered to donate up to pounds 10,000 to charity after an administrative error led to north London residents being given just one week's notice of 60 hours of noisy engineering work over Christmas. The company carried out "unavoidably noisy" work - involving drills, cranes and floodlights - along the West Coast main line near Primrose Hill.