The rail company at the centre of the summer timetabling fiasco was today ordered to pay an extra £15 million in service improvements for passengers.
Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) will also make no profit this year and will have profits capped for the next three years, Transport Secretary Chris Grayling announced.
The franchise, which includes the Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern lines, will not be axed immediately.
Mr Grayling said ending the franchise early “would cause further and undue disruption for passengers and is not an appropriate course of action”.
Mr Grayling, who was criticised by MPs today for not doing enough to prevent the chaos caused by timetable changes in May, apologised and said: “Clearly we did not ask tough enough questions.”
GTR has already paid £15 million in compensation. Mr Grayling said today’s punishment followed its “unacceptable performance”.
Further sanctions will be imposed if the second phase of the timetable changes, due next week, leads to a repeat of the chaos.
GTR is majority-owned by transport group Go-Ahead. Boss David Brown apologised for the “poor service” suffered by passengers after the May changes.
RMT general secretary Mick Cash said: “Grayling’s half-hearted slap on the wrists for GTR is an insult to the passengers who suffered daily misery at the hands of this basket-case franchise.” It comes after the Transport Committee said that “genuine change” was needed to restore trust in the railways.
Mr Grayling today refused to comment on the future of Crossrail chairman Sir Terry Morgan, who expects to be sacked from the post and the HS2 high-speed link.
Crossrail is a joint project of the Department for Transport and TfL but Mr Grayling today passed the buck to Mayor Sadiq Khan to resolve problems.
He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “We are working hard to support the Mayor of London, who is the lead on the Crossrail project.”
