Govia Thameslink fined £ 5 million for chaos of train schedules in 2018 | Business

The Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) faces a fine of £ 5 million for the chaos caused by the introduction of a new schedule last May, which resulted in train cancellations and delays for hundreds of thousands of commuters.

An investigation by the Board of Railways and Highways (ORR) into the "serious disturbance" revealed a number of failures on the part of Govia, which operates the Thameslink, Great Northern, Southern and Gatwick Express franchises .

The watchdog said Govia had not communicated the changes to the services, canceling the trains very quickly and leaving the commuters unable to plan their journeys properly.

Stephanie Tobyn, deputy director of consumers for the ORR, said: "The disruption experienced by many pbadengers as a result of the introduction of the May schedule has been terrible. When disturbances occur, information of poor quality aggravates an already difficult and frustrating situation. "

In the eight weeks that followed the change of schedule of May 20, the trains were permanently removed but the pbadengers were clearly informed of this fact only several weeks later.

Some trains have been reintroduced in the near future, leaving insufficient time to enter route information into the systems. The ORR stated that these "ghost trains" arrived at the stations with staff and pbadengers unaware of their arrival or the place where they had to stop.

In other cases, replacement buses were used on some routes but many pbadengers did not know and inadequate internal communication often left the front-line staff with little or no information to help them. The pbadengers.

GTR has retained its largest UK rail franchise, but the Ministry of Transport ordered it to spend £ 15 million in December to improve pbadenger transport. The sloppy rollout of schedules has resulted in cancellations and disruptions of thousands of train services during the summer.

Tobyn said: "The exceptional circumstances that followed the introduction of the schedule meant that it was impossible from the outset to provide perfect advance information to pbadengers and that the main objective of GTR was to provide as much capacity as possible to meet customer demand. However, persistent and prolonged failures in the provision of information prevented pbadengers from taking advantage of the operational improvement they were trying to make. "

Govia has 21 days to respond to the penalty notification from the ORR. The Guardian has contacted Govia for a comment.