15.05.17
Cancelled or delayed trains hit national 14-year record high
The proportion of trains cancelled or significantly late (CaSL) in the last quarter of 2016-17 was the highest-ever nationally since 2002-03 and the highest in London and the south-east sector (LSE) for over 15 years, ORR figures have revealed.
In Q4, almost 4% of services were either cancelled or delayed by more than 30 minutes across the network, growing to a whopping 4.8% in the LSE – the highest figure since 2001-02.
Unsurprisingly, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) accounted for 73% of the year-on-year rise in the national CaSL, and for almost 80% of the rise in the LSE’s CaSL figure.
Across its services, GTR recorded the highest CaSL (6.7%) since the ORR’s time series began in 2004-05, racking up the largest amount of cancellations and delays of any other franchised operator.
Full cancellations accounted for 0.8 percentage point of the increase, with 36% of GTR CaSL failures in Q4 resulting from traincrew problems (up from 30% in the previous year). The operator also planned to run nearly 16,600 fewer trains in that quarter compared with Q4 in the previous year.
Shortly behind GTR was Virgin Trains East Coast (VTEC), with almost 6% of its services significantly delayed or cancelled altogether, although this was just 0.1 percentage point worse than the same period in 2015-16.
Open access operator Hull Trains recorded the worst CaSL figure of any other company, with almost 9% of its services affected. However, the ORR said the failure of a VTEC train at Retford contributed to the increased CaSL scores of both Hull Trains and Grand Central (6.3%) in the fourth quarter.
In terms of public performance measure (PPM), the national average stood at 89.1%, the lowest since 2006-07. Once again, GTR was the lowest-performing operator, with a PPM of 78.8% – although Network Rail figures from the first period this year already indicate that this trend might be starting to change, with the TOC no longer coming at the bottom of performance charts.
The best-performing TOC in Q4 was Merseyrail, excelling with a PPM figure of over 96%. This correlated with Network Rail’s more recent findings, where Merseyrail outshined all other operators with a performance of 98.2%.
(Top image c. Gareth Fuller/PA Wire)