The February 2010 performance figures released by V/Line yesterday showed that punctuality on the Ballarat line had consistently dropped for the past three months.

In December 92.4 per cent of trains ran on time, in January this dropped to 89.8 per cent and last month performance was at a 10-month low, with just 85.9 per cent of trains running on time.

Of the 1036 Ballarat services scheduled to run last month, 29 were cancelled, with V/Line blaming the majority of cancellations, 23, on the storms of February 11.

Similarly, of the 1007 trains scheduled to run the full trip from Melbourne to Ballarat, 142 were delayed, with train and infrastructure faults mainly to blame.

"John Brumby's train and railway infrastructure faults delayed 54 Ballarat line trains in February compared to only 15 delayed because of crowded metropolitan rail tracks from Sunshine to Southern Cross, and 12 delayed because of the February storms," Opposition spokesman Terry Mulder said yesterday.

"Despite the bill for John Brumby's regional fast rail having come in at $919 million, compared with a forecast of $80 million for taxpayers, Labor has failed to get the basics right.

"V/Line's trains and the trackside infrastructure are still letting down Ballarat commuters, who simply want a reliable, punctual train service."

V/Line spokesman James Kelly said V/Line was "very confident" it would still be quicker than driving into Melbourne.

"The majority of those infrastructure faults have happened because of the storms on February 11," he said.

"The Ballarat line was one of the most severely hit that particular evening, where we not only had minor flooding at Bacchus Marsh but major signalling outages in the Deer Park and Sunshine areas.

"It wasn't only rail infrastructure that struggled to cope ... it's disappointing you don't see the same criticism of the road network.

"It should be Mr Mulder's job to be encouraging people to catch the train rather than painting a picture of how bad things are when, really, they're not."