TRAIN companies were ordered to abandon plans to improve the frequency of long-distance services yesterday and to concentrate instead on running fewer trains more reliably.

The Strategic Rail Authority refused to rule out further cuts to the timetable and said that it would be targeting half-empty trains that were “getting in the way of other services”.

The authority published its review of how to make best use of the network as it revealed that punctuality fell slightly in the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year.

A fifth of all trains were late, though this concealed a much poorer performance on some inter-city routes on which a third of services were delayed.

The ban on running extra trains means existing services will become more overcrowded as the Government works towards its target of an 80 per cent growth in rail travel on inter-city routes by 2010.

Passenger numbers are growing fastest on these services despite their poor punctuality, with a 6.4 per cent rise in the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year.

Passengers will also be paying more for their journeys, with the authority preparing to announce average fare increases of 3.5 per cent from next year. Alistair Darling, the Transport Secretary, said it was “totally unrealistic” to continue with the present policy of pegging season tickets and saver tickets below inflation.

“We have got to get the balance right between what the passenger pays and what the taxpayer pays. One thing is certain, the money can only come from one of those two sources,” he said.

The authority said that privatisation had created perverse incentives under which train companies were rewarded for running extra trains even if passenger numbers failed to increase.

On long-distance routes, the number of trains run since 1997-98 had risen by 65 per cent, while passengers numbers had increased by 10 per cent.

The authority set a new level under which extra services will be unlikely to be approved if a route is already at 75 per cent capacity. This rules out improvements to frequency on large parts of the network and raises the possibility of service cuts on lines which are more than 90 per cent full, including most long-distance routes out of London.

Richard Bowker, the authority’s chairman, said: “There has been a timetabling free-for-all and people have put more trains on for a variety of reasons. There is going to be targeted analysis of certain parts of the network that are overstretched. I’m absolutely not saying there will be no service cuts but any service changes will be to put performance and reliability at the heart of the operation.”

But train companies challenged Mr Bowker’s claim that the increase in train frequency since privatisation was to blame for poor punctuality.

Midland Mainline, which doubled services between London and Leicester to four trains per hour in 1999, said that it had managed to run 90 per cent of trains on time for a year after the frequency improved. A spokesman said: “Punctuality only dipped after the Hatfield crash and subsequent engineering work. We challenge the idea that you have to sacrifice frequency to achieve punctuality.”

But the authority said that companies would be forced to consider accommodating extra passengers by lengthening existing trains, stopping at fewer stations and giving faster trains more priority over slower ones.

The new rules on frequency will undermine plans by GNER to introduce a half-hourly service throughout the day from London to Leeds and Edinburgh. First Great Western, Midland Mainline and Anglia will also have to revise expansion plans.

Virgin West Coast is the only route likely to see a significant increase in frequency before 2010. The authority confirmed yesterday that the £9.9 billion West Coast Main Line upgrade would create capacity for 80 per cent more long-distance trains.

However, the planned improvements to journey times promised by Railtrack in 2001 have been scaled back.

The fastest London Euston to Glasgow journey time will be 4hr 18min from 2007-08. Railtrack had promised 4hr 10min by 2005, when it had planned to have tilting trains operating at 140mph.

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