Thursday 29 Oct 2009
ANOTHER RECORD MONTH FOR BRITAIN'S TRAINS
- Region & Route:
- National
Britain's three million daily passengers enjoyed another month of record train performance. Network Rail's release of the latest performance results shows that 92.8% of trains arrived on time last month.
In its regular monthly performance update, Network Rail announced that period seven (20 September to 17 October) proved to be one of the highest on record and is the first time that every train operator reported train punctuality above 90%.
Robin Gisby, director of operations and customer service, said: “Passengers rightly demand on-time trains. This is one of Network Rail's key tasks, and working closely with train operators, this is being achieved month after month. Our mission remains to maintain and improve this record performance."
In all 16 of the 19 operators saw their performance improve compared to the same period last year. Virgin Trains saw the biggest improvement in performance this month and saw the fourth consecutive month of improvement compared to last year. Three operators saw significant movement in their performance (over three percentage points):
P7 2009 P7 2008 % point change Virgin Trains 93.3% 84.9% +8.4 Arriva Trains Wales 96.4% 92.2% +4.2 National Express East Anglia 94.1% 90.9% +3.2
Notes to editors
1) Arrived on time - the measure of train punctuality also know as PPM (public performance measure) means trains arriving at their destinations within five minutes for commuter services and within 10 for long distance services. This measure of punctuality is commonly used throughout Europe
2) National train punctuality is measured for all trains across every day, including cancelled services and delays caused by external factors (such as vandalism, extreme weather, suicides etc). Punctuality did not start to be recorded in this vigorous and thorough way until 1997. Before then Railtrack, and BR before it, did not measure all services and also excluded external factors and other items from their numbers
3) These figures represent provisional data for the period and individuals operators performance data may vary slightly from the full period performance report that Network rail publishes on its website around one month after period end
4) Network Rail and the train operators run more trains across Great Britain than are run in most European countries - 50% more than in France and 60% more than in Italy. Great Britain's 24,000 trains per-day is also more than Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Portugal and Norway combined
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We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.
Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.
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