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Wednesday 20 Jan 2010

EIGHT OUT OF TEN TRAINS ARRIVE ON TIME DESPITE EXTREME WEATHER

Region & Route:

National

Despite the severe weather over the past month, eight out of 10 trains still ran to time and almost 92%, or 19,000 each weekday, of scheduled services ran.

The figures were released today in Network Rail's regular monthly report on train performance that, during the four weeks from 13 December to 9 January, 80% of services arrived on time.  This compares to 89.8% in period 10 last year.

Train punctuality was affected by the severe weather with a reasonable service being provided on almost all routes.  Punctuality did drop during the extreme cold snap but underlying performance remains at historically high levels with, on average over the past 12 months, 91.2% of services arriving on-time.

Robin Gisby, director of operations and customer service, said: “It's been a difficult month and we have not delivered the railway passengers have come to expect.  Working closely with the operators, and despite the extreme weather, we have kept the railways open and most services ran with eight out of 10 services running to time.  We will work to restore services to their punctual norm in the weeks ahead."

Only two of the 19 operators - London Midland and East Midlands Trains  - saw their performance improve compared to the same period last year. London Midland saw the biggest improvement in performance this month compared to the same period last year. Sixteen operators saw significant movement in their performance (over three percentage points):

Operator	P10 2009	P10 2008	% point change
Southeastern	70.0%	91.7%	-21.7%
East Coast	67.2%	88.4%	-21.2%
First Capital Connect	72.8%	93.0%	-20.2%
First Scotrail	72.9%	88.9%	-16.0%
First Transpennine Express	75.7%	90.5%	-14.8%
National Express East Anglia	78.5%	92.0%	-13.5%
South West Trains	82.2%	93.8%	-11.6%
Southern	77.8%	88.9%	-11.1%
Crosscountry	77.0%	87.5%	-10.5%
Virgin Trains	65.7%	75.7%	-10.0%
Chiltern	89.4%	95.8%	-6.4%
First Great Western	85.9%	91.9%	-6.0%
London Midland	83.4%	78.9%	+4.5%
London Overground	88.9%	92.8%	-3.9%
Northern Rail	82.1%	85.5%	-3.4%
Arriva Trains Wales	90.4%	93.5%	-3.1%