Train performance hit by severe Winter weather

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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

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