It's not often commuters find the cost of their season tickets going down but it's happening in Sussex next year.

South Central, the main operator, is cutting prices as a way of saying sorry to regular travellers because of delays and cancellations.

This has been a bad year for rail passengers.

There are still unacceptable delays on many days and, because of the continuing financial problems with Railtrack, there is no hope of a speedy solution.

Commuters will welcome the reductions, slight though they are in most cases. But a far better Christmas present would be a plan for proper investment in the railways so that they can be brought up to the standards of systems in continental Europe.