Oh Thameslink, will it forever be jam tomorrow?

After years of unreliable services, crowded carriages, and a general inability to communicate with passengers, a golden age of train transport is promised to materialise in the next couple of years.

An expanded number of commuter trains, 27 per cent more rush hour seats, and new connections across London are being dangled in front of desperate travellers hoping for an end to their daily misery.

Yet it wasn’t so long ago that the introduction of new state-of-the-art additions to the train fleet were being heralded as the promised land for commuters left wandering for too long in a desert of despair.

But despite having been in service since the spring, there are still problems with train breakdowns, contributing to more delays and cancellations, and actually making things worse than before.

It seems as though all the testing carried out before the trains went into service wasn’t enough to deal with the daily pressures of life on one of the busiest commuter routes in the country, and the promised improvements just haven’t been witnessed.

There is an inherent problem of trust for Thameslink which no amount of promises are going to overcome. To put it simply, their customer base (that’s passengers to you and me) just don’t have any confidence in them being able to improve their service.

Years of excuses and apologies have ground away at belief in their brand, and passengers just aren’t prepared to put any faith in things ever getting better.

All the spin in the world isn’t going to get that back. Instead the only surefire way of regaining their customers’ trust in the service is to finally deliver on all of these promises, and to actually make life better for long-suffering commuters.

One day we might finally be able to enjoy the rail service we deserve, but I for one won’t be holding my breath.