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Friday 25 Jun 2004

NETWORK RAIL WELCOMES IMPROVEMENT IN TRAIN PERFORMANCE DELAY MINUTES FALL YET AGAIN

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National

Following today’s publication of the SRA’s ‘National Rail Trends’, which shows that 83.1% of trains ran on time in the final quarter of 2003/4 (a 2.6% improvement), Network Rail is pleased to announce that Network Rail delay minutes have continued to fall in the first quarter of 2004.  ·        Network Rail delay minutes in April were 913,864, 10% better than the same month last year ·        Delay minutes in May stood at 797,894, 9% lower than May last year – and the lowest single month since September 2000 ·        Over the two months, around 85.4% of trains ran on-time as defined by the public performance measure (PPM) A Network Rail spokesman, commented; “Month after month, Network Rail delay minutes continue to fall, with a near 10% reduction over the first two months of this year and May seeing the lowest level of delay minutes since September 2000.  Passengers and freight customers rightly demand still more, but we now demonstrate improvement which is unambiguous and indisputable.” Today’s SRA figures show that last year Network Rail recorded the best annual performance for four years.  In the twelve months to 31 March 2004, delays attributed to the company fell by more than one million minutes to 13.7 million. The rate of improvement accelerated during the course of the year with the second half showing a 20% improvement over the last six months of 2002/3.