UK transport union TSSA said Network Rail chief executive Iain Coucher should not accept his ‘giant’ bonus after a winter of engineering over-runs which caused huge disruption to people returning to work on the West Coast Main Line (WCML) after New Year.

Coucher and two other top directors received performance-related bonuses worth hundreds of thousands of pounds – the former’s is £305,581 ($601,000) – while all 35,000 staff are in line for at least £871 from a pot of £55m.

"Passengers will simply not understand why he is being rewarded for failure on this scale after all they have suffered,” said TSSA general secretary Gerry Doherty. "He may argue that this is for 2007 and the disruptions [on WCML] happened in this financial year but passengers will be infuriated by that sort of argument.

"He should show some humility and admit that this is the time to eat some humble pie. He and the other directors should donate this money to charity and promise only to take performance bonuses in the future when they are delivering an effective seven day a week service."

Network Rail said awards such as this only happen if the railway has improved during the course of a year, and – announcing record 90% train punctuality levels and deliverance of a £4bn investment programme – added it had met almost all of its targets.  

A company statement said: ‘Network Rail's remuneration committee imposed a further penalty [for the New Year over-runs] and reduced directors’ bonuses - the combined effect has seen them cut by 14%, equivalent to almost £150,000.’

Network Rail chairman Sir Ian McAllister said: “Every single employee at Network Rail has paid a price for the over-runs at New Year. Overall, the year has been a good one with more trains on time than ever before, costs being cut and no other form of transport beating rail for safety.

“Passengers have seen improvements and the company must reward all its people for meeting the majority of its targets.”

Commenting on the company’s performance, Watchdog Passenger Focus chief executive Anthony Smith said: “Passengers know that performance is slowly improving. Network Rail and its directors can take some of the credit for that. However, more than one in ten trains is still more than five or ten minutes late, engineering work needs much better planning and execution and performance remains patchy and brittle in some parts of the country.

“There is still a long way to go in many parts of the country. Passengers using Southern, East Coast and Virgin have had a patchy service recently.”