National train performance for period 10 is heavily impacted by extreme weather

Friday 10 Jan 2014

National train performance for period 10 is heavily impacted by extreme weather

Region & Route:: National

A succession of tumultuous storms tested the rail industry’s resilience during a very difficult period 10.

Punctuality on the railways reached 83.7% according to monthly performance data released today by Network Rail. The data for Britain's train services covers the period from 8 December 2013 - 4 January 2014. This compares to 88.3% for the same period last year. The moving annual average is now at 90.1%.

During this period, the railway dealt with multiple and sustained extreme weather conditions. Storm-force winds brought down almost 400 trees onto the railway while torrential rain caused almost 130 floods and 29 landslips, some blocking major routes. Thousands of railway staff responded with dedication and professionalism to repair the damage caused.

Despite these considerable challenges, over the same period Network Rail was able to successfully deliver a £110m investment programme during Chritmas and the New Year – the largest ever undertaken over a two-week period. Some 6,000 people worked in often challenging conditions to deliver over 300 projects aimed at improving and expanding the network for the benefit of its millions of daily users.

As ever, safety was the industry’s top priority in the face of widespread and unpredictable damage to the infrastructure. On a number of occasions, Network Rail and train operators took the decision to introduce blanket speed restrictions to reduce the risk caused by fallen trees and in some instances delayed the start-up of services so routes could be checked by empty trains in daylight for obstructions and debris. These precautions, and those used during the investment programme, meant the railway experienced no serious injury to passenger, employee or contractor.

Franchise	Punctuality % Period 10, 2013/14	Punctuality % Period 10, 2012/13	Moving annual average (MAA)
Arriva Trains Wales	89.3	91.6	93.4
c2c Rail	93.6	98.0	96.9
Chiltern	91.7	93.7	95.1
Crosscountry	80.4	82.1	87.3
East Coast	76.9	77.2	82.3
East Midlands Trains	90.7	89.3	91.2
First Capital Connect	75.9	82.8	86.2
First Great Western	82.5	84.1	88.7
First Scotrail	88.2	91.1	91.1
First Transpennine Express	88.1	90.0	90.0
Greater Anglia	87.6	93.4	91.6
London Midland	81.6	77.7	85.2
London Overground	96.1	96.9	96.0
Merseyrail	93.4	94.6	95.6
Northern Rail	87.5	88.1	90.5
Southeastern	77.1	90.8	89.7
Southern	73.1	82.4	87.0
South West Trains	78.1	90.1	90.5
Virgin Trains	80.8	75.9	84.0

Total National Performance	83.7	88.3	90.1

Notes to editors

Delays attributable to Network Rail (this includes external factors such as fatalities, which made up around 20% of all delays) accounted for 60% of delays nationally during the period.
For train operator Southern, the extreme weather had a particularly significant impact with scores of trees blocking routes and a number of major landslips on the Brighton Main Line – the operator’s primary rail artery.
Arrived on time – the measure of train punctuality also known as PPM (public performance measure) means trains arriving at their destinations within five minutes for commuter services and within 10 minutes for long distance services. This measure of punctuality is commonly used throughout Europe
National train punctuality is measured for all trains across the whole network, 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, did not measure all services and also excluded external factors and other items from their numbers.
These figures represent provisional data for the period and individual operators' performance data may vary slightly from the full period performance report that Network Rail publishes on its website every month.
Network Rail and the train operators run more trains across Great Britain than are run in most European countries – almost 20% more than in France and 60% more than in Italy.
Great Britain's 24,000 trains per-day are 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.