Posted 5th March 2010 | 6 Comments
Passenger Focus calls for ‘right time’ railway
PASSENGER Focus is calling for the scrapping of the five or ten minutes margin which is allowed before a train is officially late. Five minutes is applied to commuter services and ten to intercity trains. However, ATOC has responded that it does not need Passenger Focus to remind it that punctuality is important.
The watchdog has been carrying out research on the National Express East Anglia network into passengers' attitudes to lateness, and although its latest survey shows that 83 per cent of passengers are satisfied with punctuality and reliability, Passenger Focus says this measure should be improved still further.
PF chief executive Anthony Smith said: “Passengers want their trains actually on time, not up to five or 10 minutes late. To drive passenger satisfaction higher, train companies and Network Rail should focus on running trains to the timetable – not just at the final destination, but at intermediate stations too. We found that less than half of passengers in this study get to their home station on time – even though many of the trains they caught will have counted as on time at the final destination. Longer term, we are calling on the industry to move towards a system which reports to passengers whether trains are arriving on time rather than within five or 10 minutes.”
However, the Association of Train Operating Companies said it already knew that time-keeping matters, saying: “Train companies devote much energy and resources to making sure that ever more services arrive on time, and don’t need Passenger Focus to remind them that punctuality and reliability are vitally important. Working with Network Rail, operators have achieved historically high levels of punctuality and Passenger Focus’s own figures show that 83% of passengers are satisfied with punctuality.
“But train companies are not complacent. As private sector operators, they are in the business of keeping their customers happy and will keep on working hard to continue to improve punctuality.”
Passenger Focus added that it would be passing its findings from the NXEA survey to the Department for Transport.
Reader Comments:
Views expressed in submitted comments are that of the author, and not necessarily shared by Railnews.
G. Tingey, London
Of course there's a VERY simple way of ensuring services are punctual.
SLOW THEM DOWN.
So that, in some cases, services are no faster than they were in 1922!
No, I'm NOT making that up, either.
Sam Green, Bournemouth, uk
Right time railway?Dont hold your breath! (you might turn blue!)
Patrick, London, England
Why does everyone get so worked up when trains are a few minutes late?? Train companies do their best all the time to keep trains running on time and ATOC certainly does not need Passenger Focus banging on at them about punctuality. So what if a train is 5 or 10 minutes late? It's hardly a disaster! Why do trains have to arrive at the exact minute it is advertised in the timetable anyway? I think it must be a British obsession about trains being on-time. You go to an airport and planes are regularly late, sometimes by as much as several hours or even more, but I don't see a mass riot kicking off at the airport, which is what I sometimes see at my local station when a train is only about 15 late!! Calm down people!
brian goss, Beeston, England
A somewhat arrogant & ill-worded response from ATOC!
The key point is that 5/10mins late is enough to cause passengers to miss a connection, and end up being hours late, so to call that 'on time' is completely unacceptable and needs to change.
I think growing awareness of this anomaly, amongst passengers and commentators, means that things are going to have to change, how long that takes, presumably depends on whether it requires a change of legislation?
I would ideally like to see a european standard and league table for train punctualiy like we have for bathing water quality etc.
The national pride factor would then either drive better punctuality or demonstrate that we're actually doing ok relative to our neighbours, whichever is actually the case.
Matt, Preston
The bus industry has a brillant way of dealing with the issue of punctuality, they simply print "at frequent intervals" in their timetables. If you don't know when the bus is due, you don't know if it's on time or not!
les Burge, leicester, england
I don't agree that ATOC doesn't need reminding about punctuality.
It certainly does and on time should mean on time at all station stops.
Also the TOCs have plenty of built in recovery times on a number of services to get to their final destination on time skewing true figures.