Passengers call for rail industry to make report card public

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Passengers have thrown their support behind the Government’s push for a transparent, accountable and value for money rail industry by publishing more information about train performance.

Passenger Focus, with the Office of Rail Regulation, has today published research which shows passengers believe that if rail industry performance was under closer scrutiny services would improve.

Passengers thought that for the information to be meaningful it needed to be broken down by their particular route.

Currently the industry publishes the Public Performance Measure which shows average punctuality for train companies overall.

However, the measure records trains arriving on time if they reach their final destination with 10 minutes on long distance services and five minutes on shorter journeys.

Passengers also thought that by publishing more information, organisations like Passenger Focus could champion improvements and help address problem hot-spots on their behalf.

Anthony Smith, Passenger Focus chief executive, said:

“Passengers have an appetite for knowing more about how their services are performing. Comparing services with others run by the same train company and those running across Britain will help the industry, government and Passenger Focus, plan and prioritise improvements for passengers benefit.”

The research found passengers wanted information to be presented simply, to be accessible and to report on areas like punctuality and reliability, investment, comfort, fares, staff, station facilities and journey times.

1 COMMENT

  1. Hear hear. I am tired of reading of PPMs in the 80s and 90s, when one of the services I regularly use languishes in the 60s and 70s, by the ten-minute rule. Under the current system, specific systematic failures, where is actually very difficult to run a train on time, are masked by the parts of the network where by and large trains are always on time because the system has been set up properly. This is wholly unfair on the people who have have to use the former kind of service all the time.

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