Commuters faced disruption on the rails on the day season ticket prices were increased by another 3.1 per cent.

From the start of 2019, season tickets from Colchester to London will cost £5,264, an increase of £160 on last year.

To add insult to injury, commuters returning to work after the festive period yesterday were faced with delays and cancellations after a track defect in the Seven Kings area.

Several trains bound for London Liverpool Street were forced to terminate at Colchester and dozens of trains in and out of the capital were late by 15 minutes or more.

Passengers had already endured ten days of replacement bus services over the festive period, with Network Rail upgrading a set of overhead lines between Norwich and London. Rail replacement services will also run at weekends in January, February and March.

Colchester’s MEP Alex Mayer (Lab) said commuters in Colchester faced one of the biggest bills in Europe.

She pointed to the fact a ticket between London and Colchester costs £1,308.08 more than a BahnCard100, which giver German passengers travel across the country’s entire network.

Ms Mayer called for the Government to “give commuters a break”.

“Surely after the delays, cancellations and overcrowding on the railways last year, the Government should not be allowing fares to increase faster than many people’s wages,” she said.

“We need to be encouraging people onto trains not putting obstacles in the way.

“The Government could have used its power to cap regulated fares, instead they have let train companies off the hook and failed to stand up for passengers.”

Marks Tey’s MP Priti Patel said passengers wanted to see action to reverse a “recent decline in service reliability”.

She added: “Both Greater Anglia and Network Rail need to do more to better the service on offer to passengers by limiting disruption caused by signal failures and overrunning engineering works and improve train punctuality.”

Greater Anglia said it was increasing fares to meet rising costs due to inflation and said a number of fares were being frozen.

A spokesman said: “Our average fare increase is 3.1 per cent, however, we’re freezing our advance fares, which start from just £5 and can be up to 60-70 per cent lower than walk-up fares.

“The 3.1 per cent increase applies to Government regulated fares, such as season tickets and anytime singles and returns.

“We need to apply this increase, as many of our costs will also increase in line with inflation.

“We offer a range of great value off-peak fares such as advance, super off-peak day return, off-peak day return, Duo and Kids for £2 deals, as well as Group Save discounts.”