Media centre

Thursday 11 Dec 2003

NETWORK RAIL RESPONSE TO NATIONAL RAIL TRENDS REPORT

Region & Route:

National

In response to the publications of the SRA’s National Rail Trends report today, Iain Coucher, Deputy Chief Executive said; “Today’s results reflect a difficult summer period that saw exceptional temperatures and one off events (London power black-out) hitting performance particularly on long distance services and the southern commuter networks. Performance would have seen improvement were it not for these events. “ Since then improvements have been made with the autumn period seeing delays fall by some 27%. Getting to grips with the detail of the causes of delay is where our energies are focused and the success of the autumn period shows that significant improvement is possible.   “Driving up performance is our goal. We are far from complacent and are determined to work with the industry to deliver improvements for the benefit of all rail users.”  Notes to editors:

• The exceptional hot weather over the summer and the August London power black-out alone caused almost 6,000 hrs of delay

 

• Year to date (periods 1-8 (roughly April to October)) shows Network Rail’s delay minutes at 8.5 million down from 8.7 million for the same period in 2002.

 

• Of around 1.7 million delay minutes that are attributed each period around 790,000 minutes are attributable to infrastructure, 710,000 to TOCS and 200,000 to external events.

 

• Since 1999 the number of asset failure incidents on the rail network has remained largely static.  The real story on punctuality is the significant increase in delays per incident.  The causes of this increase are shared between Network Rail (35%), the TOCs (35%) and consequential or reactionary delays (30%).