The joys of the train (in NZ at least)

I remember a couple of weeks ago, I was catching the train home from university, and when I got to the station, the LCD stated that the train was running up to 5 minutes late. I didn't think that was too bad, it's pretty normal for the trains to be running a few minutes late.

After I had been waiting at the platform a few minutes, there was an announcement apologising for these still "up to" 5 minute delays. At that point it was already 3 minutes after the train was meant to have departed. As I listened to the announcement, I remember saying, "up to" in a sarcastic tone and a guy standing beside me agreed that the use of those words was probably not wholly accurate.

A few minutes later, now almost ten minutes after the train was meant to have departed, another announcement comes, now the train is "about" 10 minutes late. Lo and behold, only 2-3 minutes after this announcement the train arrives!

What I object to about this whole thing is not the fact that the train was running late, that happens, and we have a rather run down rail service, thanks to that almighty cure-all known as privatisation, but that's another whole story, but instead the way they stated the lateness. Surely they would have known that the train was likely to be more than 5 minutes late, so why use the specific term, "up to"? Surely it would have been more accurate if they had stated "about" at first. Ah well, the state of people's England is ever improving.