FED-UP rail travellers are the latest group to see potential in the Internet. Commuters whose daily lives are disrupted by inefficient trains are being invited to log their complaints on a new website.

The arrivasucks.com website, set up to chronicle the failings of Arriva Trains Northern, has proved such a success that it has received 100,000 hits in one month. Commuters have rushed to express their frustration and anger at the poor service provided by the beleaguered franchise operator.

This cheeky but inventive use of the Internet shows the degree of annoyance felt by rail users whose journeys are being made more and more difficult.

Arriva Trains Northern is a new company and it inherited a severe shortage of drivers - something which it is now trying to correct. That much is still worth saying. However, excuses can only wash for so long and that one has been through the laundry a few times.

Arriva has already been threatened with a £2 million fine from the Strategic Rail Authority for cancelling services - and that was before the company began a series of winter cut-backs, sometimes forcing rail travellers on to buses for part of their journey.

The new website may find responses from commuters on the York to Harrogate line, where further delays have been caused by leaves on the line and signalling problems on single-track rail. Those leaves have always been a problem and the signals are down to Railtrack. So Arriva may feel these are difficulties beyond its control.

But whatever the causes, whatever excuses can be trundled out again, the situation remains that the poor, long-suffering rail user is faced with a stuttering shambles of a service. It is always the passenger who suffers, it is always the passenger who sets out with heavy heart, knowing that what should be a smooth, unremarkable process is likely to descend into a bumpy farce of delays and cancellations.

As we have said before, it's not much of a way to run a railway.

Updated: 10:47 Monday, December 10, 2001