Thursday 30 Sep 2010
SEPTEMBER SEES ALMOST 94% OF TRAINS ON TIME
- Region & Route:
- National
Almost 94% of service on Britain’s railway during September ran on time, with Chiltern Railways being the most punctual.
The figures were released today in Network Rail's regular monthly report on train performance. During the period from 22 August to 18 September, 93.5% of services arrived on time. This compares to 93.6% in same period last year.
Robin Gisby, director of operations and customer services, said: "September has been a good month for delivering a high-quality, punctual service to the millions of passengers and freight users who rely on train services every day."
In all, 13 of the 19 operators saw their performance improve compared to the same period last year, with Virgin Trains seeing the biggest improvement (up to 91.3% from 89.0% last year). The rest saw marginal movements in performance with no operator seeing significant movement (more than three percentage points).
Mr Gisby concluded: "Performance for services using the East Coast main line is presently running below the very high standards we set ourselves. Working closely with the train operator, joint action plans are in place, and we expect performance to improve over the coming months."
Notes to editors
- East Coast services suffered delays caused mainly by factors outside its control. A significant cable theft at Newark on 10 September brought the East Coast Main Line to a halt for many hours and a couple of overhead line problems on 31 August, south of Peterborough, involving First Capital Connect services also had a major impact
- 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 it, 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 is also more than Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Portugal and Norway combined
Period 6 of 2010/11 - 22 August to 18 September 2010
Franchise | Punctuality P6 2010 | Punctuality P6 2009 | Moving Annual Average (MAA) |
Arriva Trains Wales | 96.1% | 95.9% | 95.1% |
c2c Rail | 96.6% | 95.8% | 96.6% |
Chiltern | 97.3% | 96.6% | 95.2% |
Crosscountry | 92.1% | 91.5% | 89.9% |
East Coast | 85.2% | 88.0% | 85.9% |
East Midlands Trains | 94.1% | 93.8% | 93.0% |
First Capital Connect | 91.9% | 93.2% | 89.2% |
First Great Western | 91.1% | 94.1% | 91.7% |
First Scotrail | 94.0% | 93.7% | 91.2% |
First Transpennine Express | 93.4% | 95.8% | 91.8% |
London Midland | 92.5% | 90.7% | 90.9% |
London Overground | 94.6% | 92.9% | 94.2% |
Merseyrail | 95.7% | 95.5% | 96.3% |
National Express East Anglia | 93.3% | 92.2% | 90.9% |
Northern Rail | 93.7% | 93.3% | 91.5% |
Southeastern | 93.1% | 94.4% | 89.1% |
Southern | 92.0% | 92.7% | 90.6% |
South West Trains | 95.8% | 95.6% | 93.2% |
Virgin Trains | 91.3% | 89.0% | 86.9% |
National | 93.5% | 93.6% | 91.5% |
PPM
PPM is a % measure of passenger trains arriving ‘on time’ at their scheduled destination. For long distance trains ‘on time’ is within 10 minutes of the timetabled arrival time, for all others it is within 5 minutes.
Heathrow Express, Grand Central, Hull Trains, Eurostar and Wrexham and Shropshire are not included in the National PPM.
MAA
Moving annual average
Note: The data contained within this report is for initial indications only and is subject to change in subsequent publications |
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