As Christmas approaches, the litany of disappointments about the quality of the train service from Brighton to London continues.

David Franks, managing director of South Central Railways, asked commuters to have patience and give time for the emergency timetable to take effect, as this would allow him to run a more reliable service. The evidence suggests this extra reliability has not been achieved.

I travelled to and from London ten times between Monday, November 26, and Monday, December 3, inclusive on either the 7.17am or 7.47am up and the 5.36pm or 6.06pm back and only arrived on time (within five minutes of our timetable journey time) on two occasions.

On all but one of these occasions, passengers were not informed of the reasons for the delay, either by the train crew on the train or by staff when arriving at Brighton or Victoria. I had to spend time asking staff the reason for my delays because I needed to keep my employer informed of the reasons why I seldom arrived at work on time.

My frustration has led me to look into the running of the service and I have a number of questions arising from the investigations I have made.

Firstly, I hear there is a network-wide shortage of train drivers. Mr Franks has stated he needs about 60 drivers to achieve a full compliment of 729 drivers. He also stated he runs about 1,060 services a day. Even taking into account rest-day working and assuming the same number of journeys are made on Saturdays and Sundays, this means drivers are undertaking fewer than two passengers journeys a day. This seems a woefully inadequate level of productivity.

How much time a day do drivers spend actually driving trains with passengers on board? What efforts have been made to improve the existing working practices?

It seems crazy, for example, to complain of a shortage of drivers when every day the extra rolling stock to make up the 7.17am is driven down from Lovers Walk by one driver, only for that driver to go away before coupling up the train. We then have to wait for a station driver to attach the carriages to form the running service. There may be legitimate reasons for doing this but it seems a pointless waste of driver time to me.

What are drivers doing when they do not drive trains with passengers on?

Clearly, if Mr Franks improves the use of existing resources, there will be less need to train new staff. A relatively small improvement in productivity will solve the driver shortage at a stroke, without the need to wait for 12 months or more for trained drivers to be available.

Does Mr Franks accept it is both good customer relations and an obligation under his contract and the passenger charter to inform passengers of the reasons for delay to services as soon as possible?

Are drivers and guards properly equipped with pagers and phones to receive train-running information?

There was a rumour that pagers had been taken away from guards to save costs. Is this true and, if so, what other measures have been put in place to ensure staff have in-formation required to inform passengers of difficulties?

Many commuters are now planning to renew annual season tickets to avoid the price rises that often occur at this time of year. I have heard from national rail inquiries that the price of an annual ticket will not rise and there may be a question of a service refund. I have to apply for a loan for my ticket within the next ten days, hence my final set of questions.

How much will a ticket from Brighton to London cost when I come to renew on or around January 3, 2002? How much of this is the cost of the ticket and how much is a service refund? Has this taken into account

an emergency timetable being in operation? Are customers likely to receive a further refund if the emergency timetable continues?

-Pete Rowberry, Bates Road, Brighton