Will TOCs start to increase journey times to avoid delay payouts?

[Schweir]

This practice is already occurring at various airlines to avoid delays reaching the dreaded 3 hour mark, where substantial compensation has to be paid out. Do you think this practice will be adopted by any UK TOC's (including any likely routes or TOC's who may adopt this practice) and are there any cases where this has already happening/ happened? Or is there any way this could be prohibited by the DfT etc...?

Background reading: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/...aggerating-flight-times-so-theyre-never-late/
https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/848337/why-flight-times-longer-plane-arrivals

 

[380101]

This would involve a MASSIVE timetable change throughout the whole of the UK. So it'll NEVER happen. You only need to look at the disastrous implementation of the May 2018 timetable change to see it would never work.

 

[bb21]

No...

Not gonna happen.

The proportion of journeys/passengers three hours late is minuscule. No one is going to go to the trouble of massaging those figures.

 

[Kite159]

You can say some TOCs already do with putting some timetable padding near the end of the journey

 

[bb21]

You can say some TOCs already do with putting some timetable padding near the end of the journey

... within the constraints of the franchise terms and the maximum journey times set.