A record ”14m ($28m) fine has been slapped onto Network Rail two months after its engineering overruns on the West Coast Main Line (WCML) caused New Year commuter chaos.
The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) investigated the company”s failings, calling them ”totally unacceptable for passengers and freight customers, and train operating companies.”
ORR chief executive Bill Emery, said: ”It is quite clear that Network Rail is failing to manage major engineering work as consistently well as it should. We have published a draft Order directing them to address these failings and thus reduce the risk of similar events in the future.”
And he continued: ”The company has accepted that it does not currently have a robust plan, agreed with operators, to deliver the upgrade work to the WCML needed for the December 2008 service improvements. We have therefore ordered it to produce quickly a plan on how it will do this.”
A Network Rail spokesman told ABTN: ”We”re fully committed to completing the work by the December deadline ” we feel we”ve a robust plan in place to make sure it”s delivered on time.”
As well as four days of disruptions at Easter, the company said that passengers can expect slimmed-down services during 13 weekends this summer as it ramps up line repairs to keep to schedule.
”We haven”t worked out exactly what disruption these works will cause passengers yet, but we are advising them to check with National Rail Enquires or train companies to see how their journey might be affected,” said the spokesman.
While Emery said that ”it is right we should impose a fine to mark the seriousness of this breach of Network Rail”s licence and send a clear message to the company”s Board and senior management,” there is a view that the penalty is pointless as Network Rail is a public-owned company which puts all profits back into its work.
”Simply fining Network Rail potentially hits passengers twice,” said Passenger Focus chief executive Anthony Smith. ”Passengers suffered the original disruption and then a large amount of investment cash will be lost to the rail industry which could mean poor quality services in the future.”
The Network Rail spokesman told ABTN the company will ”see where it can make more efficiencies in order to raise the money to pay the fine. What we”d like to see is the money being used to drive additional passenger improvements - it”s a matter for the government, but we hope that”s the case.”
Network Rail chief executive Iain Coucher, said: ”We will now be making representations to the ORR that this money should be used to deliver additional and concrete benefits for passengers.
”We are clear that the ORR has said that what happened at the New Year cannot happen again. We will make changes in the way we plan and manage future work on the railways.”
Some improvements have already paid off, said Network Rail ” it set up new military-style command centres for the first time this month on a ”75m ten-day project at Leamington in the Midlands, which was delivered on time.
Network Rail was also advised to recruit more specialist in-house engineers ” ”We”re hoping to augment our team to between 30 and 50 and we”re still working on that,” said the spokesman.