SIR Richard Branson has warned long-suffering West Coast train passengers that services will get even worse, as he launched a savage attack on the body upgrading the line.
The Virgin chairman accused Network Rail of ignoring his warnings not to rush the work in the hope of running a new timetable – with faster, more frequent trains – before the end of the year.
Sir Richard said the result was a dramatic plunge in reliability and a big increase in line closures, which had wrecked two years of steady improvement in Virgin's performance.
And, warning of “further pain to our passengers”, he said: “Our concern is that it could be even worse when the new, more frequent timetable comes into effect.”
The Virgin chairman said he was “increasingly worried about the ability of Network Rail to meet its timetable and deliver an upgraded railway that is reliable and can be maintained”.
He added: “We have always favoured a later completion deadline given the complexity of the project and believe this would have minimised (and would minimise) unnecessary disruption for passengers.
“We raised our serious concerns with Network Rail, the Office of Rail Regulation and with the government before they embarked on this timetable and question why we and our passengers remain bound by this unrealistic timescale.”
Meanwhile, the British Chambers of Commerce has compared the “rapidly deteriorating service” on the West Coast line to the disastrous opening of Heathrow's terminal five.
The row came as passengers faced a Bank Holiday weekend of disrupted journeys, with no trains running south of Birmingham or Coventry because of the engineering work.
The new timetable promises three extra daily, weekday trains out of Liverpool which will run in the morning peak, leaving between 5am and 7am.
Of three new daily services to Liverpool, one will be at around 5.30am, with the remaining two leaving London Euston in the evening peak, for business people heading home.
As well as the boost to capacity – there are currently 15 trains each way on weekdays – the timetable will also slash around 25 minutes off the journey time, which will be just two hours and seven minutes.
However, Network Rail is now locked in a race against time to complete the upgrade after work dramatically overran at Rugby, at the New Year – resulting in closures every weekend.
Sir Richard’s rare personal intervention – which came in a letter to a national newspaper – also illustrates the dramatically deteriorating relations between Virgin and the government.
A war of words blew up after Virgin refused to run an extra 106 carriages on the West Coast line unless ministers agreed to extend its franchise by two years.
The Department for Transport (DfT) hit back by inviting a rival operator to test the new Pendolino trains, in what many saw as strong evidence it was preparing to dump Virgin in 2012.
David Frost, director of British Chambers of Commerce, also in a letter to the Financial Times, wrote: “Much attention has rightly been focused on the problems of Terminal 5 at Heathrow.
“This has sadly drawn attention away from the rapidly deteriorating service on Virgin West Coast rail. Why is it that we appear unable in this country to manage the basic transport infrastructure on which our businesses rely?”
