Great Western Coffee Shop

The reports of how many trains arrive on time are to be shaken up, and the result could be to make train reliability appear to drop drastically.

At the moment, trains are deemed to be late if they arrive more than 5 or 10 minutes late, depending on the type of service. It’s now been agreed that the late running reports will calculate lateness to within the minute.

The new-style report from the Rail Regulator (ORR) shows that 64.7% of stations were arrived at on time in the year to June 2019. That compared to a train punctuality score of 85.9% in the same period a year ago, but that was based on the older scoring method, which gave trains a lot more time to arrive before reporting as late for duty.

Detailed information on the causes of train delays is also included in the report for the first time, providing greater accountability into the problems on the railway.

The latest figures also show that 2.8% of trains were cancelled in the last year, down 0.1pp from the previous year.

More than half of all cancellations were down to train operating companies, for reasons such as a train fault, while 27.8% of cancellations were down to Network Rail operations and infrastructure such as track and signalling faults. 17.1% were caused by issues such as severe weather and trespassers.

In the south-east England region, the train operator performance scores were:

83.2% – c2c
82.0% – Heathrow Express
76.7% – TfL Rail
70.9% – Govia Thameslink Railway
70.6% – London Overground
68.8% – Southeastern
68.5% – Chiltern Railways
66.6% – Greater Anglia
63.5% – Great Western Railway
59.7% – South Western Railway
45.5% – Virgin Trains West Coast
41.0% – London North Eastern Railway