10.08.15
National rail performance dips in period 4
National performance on the railways has dipped back below 90% over the past month, with the PPM figures for period 4 slipping to 89.4%.
The figure, which covers performance for 28 June to 25 July, is down on the 91.2% recorded during the previous period, and is also down on the 91% in period 4 last year.
The Caledonian Sleeper performance has begun to trend upward under Serco in the latest operator PPM figures, published by Network Rail. The operator’s latest PPM figure for period 4 is 92.7%. This is higher than the 86.7% it posted a year ago as part of ScotRail. It is also higher than the 90.1% recorded in period 3.
Latest figures show that once again Southern is the worst-performing operator, recording a PPM of 82.5%, considerably down from both 85.7% in period 3 and 89.1% in the same period last year.
Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) also reported a decrease to 82.5% compared with 88.4% in the same period last year. Additionally it reported an increase in cancellation and significant lateness, from 2.8% last year to 5.4% this year.
Grand Central and TfL Rail both reported improvement this month, with the former up 4.2% from the same period last year, and the latter up 5.8%.
TfL Rail took over the London Liverpool Street to Shenfield metro services from Abellio Greater Anglia on 31 May.
Delay Split figures, which show who was responsible for train delays of three minutes or more, once again attributed most delays (59%) to Network Rail due to infrastructure, operations or external issues.
The highest PPM was again recorded by c2c, which stood at 97.5%, compared to last month’s 97.3% figure. However it is marginally lower than last year’s PPM for the same period, which stood at 97.6%.
Julian Drury, c2c’s managing director, who featured in RTM earlier this year, said: “We are all proud at c2c that our unrelenting focus on punctuality has delivered such a reliable train service for our customers. We aim to build on this with a host of new improvements that combined will provide more capacity, deliver greater value for local passengers, and ensure they receive excellent customer service.”
Despite this, 58% of c2c delays were caused by the operator itself during this period, compared to the 39% caused by Network Rail.
Network Rail has today (10 August) been fined a potential £2m for breaching its licence over its poor performance on Southern, GTR and in Scotland in 2014-15.
