Delay Repay

Delay Repay is a very good scheme in principle as it does provide a degree of compensation for late running, while at the same time providing a good measure for the operators.   And, since it was introduced, South Eastern have handled the scheme well and efficiently.   Perhaps all too efficiently for some, perhaps, as I have received more than half a dozen payouts this year so far.

I was impressed, though, that they sent £40 in M&S vouchers for all he disruption caused by the gas leak instead of the normal travel vouchers.   This is going to produce happy customers.

The next step is to use the payouts to start to look at disaster recovery.   If there are problems on the lines east of Ashford, South Eastern will not stop the High Speed trains at local stations until after there has been a cancellation.   This means that they may well know that there will be no connecting train for local stations but will not stop the High Speed because the cancelled train was not yet due to run.   This means that connecting passengers must wait either for the next High Speed (which will now stop at local stations because the previous connecting train was cancelled) or the next local.   In either case South Eastern will have to pay up on delay repay.   If they had just stopped the initial high speed services at local stations then they would not have had to pay.   The same is true if a local train is delayed by 30 minutes or more.   The High Speeds will not stop (because the local train is only late. not cancelled) but the company will have to pay out on delay repay.

It cannot be too difficult to calculate just how many delay repayments they need to make before it becomes cheaper to pre-empt the problem by stopping high speed trains.

I do note that Eurostar does not use delay repay.   Why am I not surprised?