A petition has opened hoping to get the Department of Transport to review and improve the train service offered by Abellio Greater Anglia.

The appeal states that customers require a reliable and comfortable service and has received 758 signatures so far.

In August a statement published on the Greater Anglia website by managing director, James Burles, and Network Rail Anglia managing director, Richard Schofield, said they were “genuinely sorry” for the service being “well below the standards you rightly expect and we intend to deliver”.

However passengers are still left facing delays and cancellations on the service and the petition states: “The service provided to rail passengers by Abellio Greater Anglia must be urgently called in by the Department of Transport and reviewed by representatives of passengers and independent rail experts.”

It adds that Greater Anglia also ought to improve so as to “deliver sufficient resilience to ensure rain, leaves, sunshine and signal failures cannot continue to cause the current levels of financial and physical distress to passengers and the business they work for”.

A five year £2.2bn investment program began in April to improve the railway in the east of England which aims to tackle bottlenecks, rebuild junctions and upgrade signals in order to deliver a more reliable service.

A Network Rail spokesperson said: “We realise that when passengers experience delays to their journeys this is extremely frustrating.

“Over the next five years, we will work tirelessly to deliver real improvements and bring ageing parts of the network into the 21st century.”

A spokesperson at Greater Anglia added: “We are working with our stakeholder partners to make the case to government for further investment and improvement in the region’s railway, including new rolling stock, as part of the Great Eastern Rail Campaign.

“On infrastructure such as the track and signals, this is the responsibility of Network Rail and we are also working closely with them in taking positive actions to improve train service punctuality and reliability.”

Metro services are due to transfer to Crossrail in May next year and there is a provision for new rolling stock to be delivered later in the decade.

The petition closes in March and can be found here.