Taxpayers will be hit with a £15 million bill for the London-to-Essex C2C route in the wake of the West Coast mainline fiasco.
New figures show that operator National Express will receive an annual £2.5m subsidy for the service — after it paid a £12m per year premium to run the line previously.
The C2C contract was due to expire last month but an extension until at least September 2014 was granted with less than two weeks to spare.
In the wake of the West Coast mainline franchising fiasco, it is the first of a series of extensions that the Department of Transport is negotiating.
The RMT union warned that once major franchises such as First Great Western are taken into account in the next few months the cost of the fiasco will run into hundreds of millions.
