He wrote that he and senior colleagues “have spoken to and corresponded with many customers as well as meeting with a high proportion of MPs along the route.”

And guess what, they have decided to improve the compensation package for season ticket holders (annual season ticket holders will now get a 7 percent discount and weekly ticket holders a further two free tickets).  He also announced investment in trains and also in better communications technology for staff when future problems happen.

Anyone would think there was an election in the offing.

Perhaps they are finally smelling the coffee.  But it has come so late that it will do little to quell the fury of travellers.

I am knocking on doors across the constituency and the feedback is the same everywhere.  Only last evening I met a voter in London Colney who told me that she had lost a promotion at work because of her problems getting into work on time over so many months – and this is just one voter among many.

This announcement still provides for less than one month’s free travel for annual ticket holders.  It still does absolutely nothing for regular off-peak travellers for whom it does not make sense to buy season tickets because they work from home some days a week or their work demands that they travel outside peak hours.

The Delay Repay scheme so trumpeted by FCC is despised by everyone for its complexity and meannesss.

As for the announcements on train and station investment, this is what they should be doing as franchisee.  It is welcome to have the confirmation that improvements are finally underway, but for many it will feel like bolting the stable door.

FCC certainly has “transformed” travel but not perhaps in the way that the marketing copywriters had intended.

Ms Grant was there with Neal Lawson, the new MD of FCC, to meet Norman Baker MP, the LibDem shadow transport secretary, and fellow LibDem MPs Tom Brake and Paul Burstow, both of whom represent constituencies “served” by FCC.  Also present was Bill Bradshaw, former Director of Strategy for British Rail and now LibDem transport spokesman in the House of Lords.  Norman had kindly asked me to join them, together with Nigel Quinton, my counterpart in Hitchin & Harpenden.

At least there were no New Labour crocodile tears.  But no tears at all really.  Some routine expressions of regret – “how we inconvenienced passengers was unacceptable” – but I had no sense that they truly understood just how horrible the last few months have been for local commuters.  As a met police detective said to me last night, “Ive never had such an awful time.”  We heard a lot of excuses and “force majeure” was dusted down rather a lot.

There was some explanation of what went wrong.  The new 377 class trains delivered late by Bombardier so that driver training had to be compressed, taking a lot of drivers away from their daily duties.  Lack of new trains meant the old trains had to stay in service and miss key modifications.  As a result more need to rely on goodwill from the remaining drivers in terms of rest day working.  Mix in an unpopular pay proposal.  Have the inevitable teething problems with new trains, add snow, stir well and wait for chaos.

I listed just some of the litany of complaints I have received, particularly the niggardliness and complexity of the compensation packages, and I compared it with the much more generous terms offered to travellers in Berlin who experienced a similar collapse in service.  I particularly criticised the Delay Repay scheme, echoing many comments made to me by St Albans travellers.

Ms Grant told us that they had already processed 73,000 delay repay schemes, with many more coming in.  When pressed, she conceded that they were being as flexible as possible.  Firstly the 30 minute delay is being measured against the original timetable and not the emergency one.  I am not sure this has been clearly communicated so I am communicating it now.  Secondly they are waiving all time limits for claims.  Thirdly they will not demand tickets or receipts as long as there is some evidence of travel, for example a credit card bill.  I report all this because it may allow people to bump up their own personal compensation, albeit through a tediously bureaucratic process.

I suspect it won’t help the occasional traveller even when they are regular users – I have had numbers of comments from people who travel into London off peak or no more than three times a week.  In both cases there is no need for them to have season tickets and they slip through the net.

I told her about inaudible announcements at West Hampstead, rude and offensive staff at St Pancras, and flakey text alerts.  I told her that FCC was deep in the mire and would have a long journey to recover any respect from its customers.  “God is in the detail” I said – they will have to be perfect in every aspect – clean toilets, clean stations and rolling stock, excellent timekeeping, good real time communication, full length trains, staff there when you want them.  It will be a long haul back, I’m not sure FCC gets it, in which case steps should be taken to remove the franchise.

PS I hope any reader using St Albans City Station comes along to Meet The Managers this coming Friday between 4.30 and 7 pm.  Mary Grant won’t be there, but Neal Lawson will – and so will Three Counties Radio.  It will be worth making your voice heard.

The latest proposals are unnecessarily complex and frankly niggardly.  People who had a break in season tickets – for example when the previous one expired around Christmas and there was no point renewing before going back to work – look to be losing out.

As for people who have already claimed under the Delay Repay Scheme, the way this has been handled beggars belief.  I am told by local commuters that rather than one single set of tickets for a combined claim, passengers are receiving a separate envelope and letter with rail travel voucher for each journey leg where delays were more than 30 minutes.  One local commuter told me she came home to 13 separate letters, each with 36p postage.  One of her fellow passengers had his letter box inundated with 24 identical envelopes, again each carrying 36p postage.  This will have been repeated for thousands of commuters.  A huge amount of money swallowed up in postage and unnecessary bureaucracy.

Presumably if you are a season ticket holder, you have to put these vouchers behind the proverbial clock on the mantelpiece and wait till your season ticket runs out, then use the vouchers (which won’t cover any underground element) and then renew the season ticket.

I have previously noted the basic unfairness of the one-size-fits-all national Delay Repay scheme with its cut-off point of 30 minutes, so St Albans commuters have to be delayed by more than 100 perent of their journey time to qualify.  It would have been far better if FCC had devised a simple and appropriately generous season ticket extension scheme from the beginning.  My son lives in Berlin.  They had a major problem lasting weeks with the surface railway S-Bahn – operated by a private company.  Annual season ticket holders got a month’s free travel, monthly season holders got an extra week.  Simple and uncomplicated.