Rail signal failures cause one million minutes of delay over six years

New figures have shown that in over six and half years passengers have lost almost a million minutes due to rail delays attributed to signal failures. 
 
Some 14,764 train services were partly or fully withdrawn from April 2018 to September this year, amounting to the time equivalent of almost two years, 988,419 minutes, of delay, the Liberal Democrats identified. 
 
The data provided reveal that last year, which was the worst year since the beginning of the pandemic, 187,944 minutes of delay or four months were identified in the signalling system by Network Rail. 
 
The Lib Dems were able to acquire the numbers through the freedom of information act and is demanding rail fares to be ‘frozen’ immediately so that passengers are not charged more for a ‘poor service’. 
 
They also want rail users to be placed ‘right at the heart of the infrastructure and investment choices’. 
 
One million minutes 
 
Consolidated by financial years, it avers that one and nearly minutes has been lost to what the delayed rail services attribute to signal failures since the 2018/19 FY. 
 
The number of those rates during that period was equally high before the Covid crisis at 200,253 and 221,349 minutes in 2018-19 and 2019-20 respectively. 
 
They then plunged during the pandemic, which saw numbers of passengers also decrease as people were confined to their homes. 
 
The got-up figure of 187,307 minutes was last seen in 2019-20, and there is a tale ofProgressBar delays increasing each year. 
 
Journeys have already experienced more than a thousand signal failures this year, causing inconvenience to commuters and other travellers to the tune of nearly forty thousand minutes. 
 
Wera Hobhouse, the Lib Dem transport spokesman, said: “The fare stagnant mobility\power consumer has suffered years of What’s-New and outrageous delay and highly inflated rail fair[s]. They have to part with a lot of money for a service they can seldom enjoy. 
 
‘These disastrous figures expose the appalling levels of decline that the Conservative Party has put our railways through, now it is passengers who are suffering’. 
 
“From the passenger’s perspective they should … not pay extra for a service that they are not receiving, which is why we urgently require a halt on rail fares increase. ”
Public ownership 
 
The data of Network Rail reveal that the date there have been more than 36 thousand signal failures, 10 078 partial cancellations and 4 266 full cancellations since the 2018-19. 
 
We have committed to re-nationalising all passenger railway services where private contracts are up for renewal, and have put forward the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill in the King’s Speech. 
 
That will make Avanti West Coast, East Midlands Railway, Great Western Railway and Thameslink and other privately owned operators in a process of slow transfer to public ownership. 
 
It is for this purpose, that in the long term, there could be a franchise and one company operating the track and rolling stock, a policy suggestion by Louise Haigh, the Transport Secretary. 
 
This could result into absorption of Network Rail – a public body, which owns and manages infrastructure such as tracks, wires and signals, with train operating companies. 
 
A Network Rail spokeswoman said: I agree with the sentiments laid down by the passengers that they want and expect a safe railway. Fewer train services were delayed because of signalling problems in the last year by almost 14,400 – that’s almost six per cent improve than in 2019, but we understand that there is still work to be done. 
 
“Collectively the rail industries say it: let’s run a better railway, one that gives less delay and cancellation and more of a railway service that people can depend on. ”