The Rail Delivery Group is due a restructure so that it works for passengers - Yorkshire Post Letters

I wonder if the chief executive officer of the Rail Delivery Group, Jacqueline Starr, received a performance bonus during the last 12 months?

The board of the Rail Delivery Group is chaired by Steve Montgomery, who is managing director of First Group, Dominic Booth who is managing director of Abellio, David Brown, managing director of Arriva North, Peter Strachan and Andrew Haines, chief executive officer of Network Rail.

Many of these bosses got part of their transport management experience by working for Transport for London underground or surface transport, working for respected transport industry expert Sir Peter Hendy.

I was fortunate enough to be working with Peter Hendy in Belgium for the planning of the start of the Tour de France cycle race, which was departing from The Mall in London's St James's Park, one of eight Royal Parks.

I was and still am impressed with his no nonsense style of management and I can understand why Boris Johnson engaged him as the government's transport expert during his time as Prime Minister.

This is the group of very well paid top officials who manage the majority of the rail operating companies and are collectively responsible for providing rail services across Britain.

Why is the taxpayer giving hundreds of thousands of pounds in subsidiaries (towards the 'gross' salaries, with performance bonuses) to a group of professionals who have not delivered rail service for the past 14 months resulting in inconvenience to hundreds of thousands of rail passengers mainly due to rail union strike action?

Surely the current Secretary of State for Transport, Mark Harper, needs to look at reorganising the Rail Delivery Group structure to one which can perform for the benefits of the rail passengers?

It is of concern when the UK's leading travel expert, Simon Calder, who was being interviewed on the radio about the bank holiday weekend travel chaos, states that he had to travel from London to an important meeting in Bristol in the next few weeks and decided to make sure that he got to his meeting had booked a coach as it is more reliable.

As more members of the public are altering their methods of travel to work or see families, along with business people travelling on 'state of the art coaches' with fast Wifi, this to me is the demise of the rail industry. And to put the final nail in the coffin of the rail industry, the chief executive officer of the Rail Delivery Group, Jacqueline Starr, is closing all the remaining ticket offices on railway stations.

Many passengers are uncomfortable with using the internet to book a rail journey, especially as there are so many types of tickets and many feel that they have not got the best price for their journey.

It is interesting to read that Jacqueline Starr started as director of customer experience at the Rail Delivery Group before being promoted to the top job in the organisation which is supposed to keep the railway system in England and Wales moving?

If this downward spiral of reduced passenger numbers continues then there will be more trains parked up in the sidings and less train drivers required.