TRAIN PERFORMANCE HIT BY SEVERE WINTER WEATHER

Thursday 23 Dec 2010

TRAIN PERFORMANCE HIT BY SEVERE WINTER WEATHER

Region & Route:: National

The severe winter weather continues to affect train performance across most parts of the country. During the 28 day period up to 11 December (period nine), especially in Scotland, the north east and across the south east of England train performance dipped to 81.7% of trains arriving on time compared with 89.4% for the same period last year.

Robin Gisby, Network Rail's director of operations and customer services, said: “Passengers will appreciate that these harsh weather conditions make it very difficult to maintain both capacity and punctuality. We took an early decision to keep as many people moving as possible by prioritising which routes to keep open to run the maximum number of trains possible. Reliability becomes more important to passengers than high levels of punctuality.

“As of today, the railway remains open for business although several train operators are running revised timetables because of some operating constraints with the infrastructure or a shortage of available trains. We are currently planning to run greater than 90% of a normal service. Regrettably, some services may not run and punctuality remains much lower than we would like. Our priority is to run as many services safely and reliably and to work jointly with the operators to provide the most up to date information to passengers.”

During period nine, 18 of the 19 operators saw their performance dip compared to the same period last year. Chiltern Railways was the most punctual operator during the period with 94.4% of trains on time. Fourteen operators saw significant movement in their performance (over three percentage points):

	*P9 2010*	*P9 2009*	*% point change*
First Scotrail	70.6%	89.5%	-18.9
Southeastern	71.3%	86.8%	-15.5
CrossCountry	76.4%	91.3%	-14.9
First Transpennine Express	75.1%	89.5%	-14.4
East Coast	71.8%	85.2%	-13.4
Virgin Train	70.4%	83.6%	-13.2
c2c	84.8%	97.1%	-12.3
Southern	75.9%	87.5%	-11.6
East Midlands Trains	82.3%	90.8%	-8.5
Northern Rail	80.8%	88.9%	-8.1
National Express East Anglia	84.3%	90.1%	-5.8
London Midland	85.9%	89.6%	-3.7
First Great Western	87.1%	90.4%	-3.3
Arriva Trains Wales	90.8%	93.9%	-3.1

Notes to editors

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 9 of 2010/11 - 14 November to 11 December 2010

Franchise

Punctuality P9

2010

Punctuality P9

2009

Moving Annual Average (MAA)

Arriva Trains Wales

90.8%

93.9%

94.6%

c2c Rail

84.8%

97.1%

95.4%

Chiltern

94.4%

97.0%

94.5%

Crosscountry

76.4%

91.3%

88.3%

East Coast

71.8%

85.2%

84.5%

East Midlands Trains

82.3%

90.8%

92.3%

First Capital Connect

84.2%

85.6%

88.8%

First Great Western

87.1%

90.4%

91.0%

First Scotrail

70.6%

89.5%

89.9%

First Transpennine Express

75.1%

89.5%

90.3%

London Midland

85.9%

89.6%

90.4%

London Overground

92.1%

93.3%

94.1%

Merseyrail

93.8%

95.4%

95.7%

National Express East Anglia

84.3%

90.1%

90.0%

Northern Rail

80.8%

88.9%

90.5%

Southeastern

71.3%

86.8%

87.4%

Southern

75.9%

87.5%

89.3%

South West Trains

87.9%

87.4%

93.1%

Virgin Trains

70.4%

83.6%

85.6%

National

81.7%

89.4%

90.7%

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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