16.10.18
Britain’s worst railway stations for delays and cancellations revealed
The worst railway stations in the UK for late trains and cancellations have been revealed, with ten of the busiest seeing over half of all services delayed to some extent this year.
A survey from Which? found that Manchester Oxford Road station ranked the worst in Britain for disrupted services with 68% of its trains delayed by a minute or more.
The consumer group studied the 20 busiest stations in the UK, excluding London, and then the 10 busiest London stations since the beginning of the year using data from the website On Time Trains to find what they called “Britain’s train travel blackspots.”
York saw the second worst performance out of those stations ranked: 65% of trains departing from or arriving at York station were late of cancelled altogether.
Gatwick Airport, Birmingham New Street, Bristol Temple Meads, Manchester Piccadilly and Victoria, and Sheffield all saw less than half of their services depart on time.
Manchester’s Oxford Road station’s poor performance was even worse at peak times with 77% of trains not departing or arriving as scheduled.
In London, Clapham Junction ranked the worst with 54% of services delayed, with King’s Cross also ranking poorly for delayed services as well as having the worst percentage of cancellations among all ranked stations in the UK at 6%.
Which? said that despite the huge number of delays, the number of disrupted journeys that passengers could claim compensation for was “remarkably low.”
Most TOC’s don’t offer compensation for services delayed under 30 minutes, with only eight offering the Delay Repay 15 scheme.
Alex Hayman, managing director of public markets at Which? said: “Passengers have told us reliability is hugely important to them.
“People have been left deeply frustrated at the unacceptably high levels of delays and cancellations, which impact on their everyday lives.”
He added: “Passengers must be at the centre of the forthcoming government rail review – it must look at performance targets to drive improvements in punctuality and reliability for passengers.”
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