In some ways, this story is typical Guardian reporting on rail issues.
I do wonder if one positive step that could be made is a call for TOCs to produce a separate table of 'peak' punctuality statistics: say, Mon-Fri, 06:30-09:30? It seems to me that is I was making a decision as to whether or not to commute, this information might start to be more useful than current performance stats.
I started commuting Durham - Newcastle in September, and on Monday I had my first ever 15 min+ morning delay: while individual services may be delayed or cancelled, there's enough trains to get you in. This, on the whole, seems pretty impressive in comparison to stories from some parts of the country, and potentially the contrast of performances between TOCs in the peak would be more revealing than current stats.
Extract of story below (though note I strongly disagree with this forum policy):
I do wonder if one positive step that could be made is a call for TOCs to produce a separate table of 'peak' punctuality statistics: say, Mon-Fri, 06:30-09:30? It seems to me that is I was making a decision as to whether or not to commute, this information might start to be more useful than current performance stats.
I started commuting Durham - Newcastle in September, and on Monday I had my first ever 15 min+ morning delay: while individual services may be delayed or cancelled, there's enough trains to get you in. This, on the whole, seems pretty impressive in comparison to stories from some parts of the country, and potentially the contrast of performances between TOCs in the peak would be more revealing than current stats.
Extract of story below (though note I strongly disagree with this forum policy):
It all started when I was glancing idly at a Southern Railway performance poster while waiting for a delayed train. The posters are displayed around the network and proudly demonstrate how rail companies have hit their target for service performance – or at least how they have run close to it. But as I stared at the poster I wondered how more than 80% of trains were supposedly running on time, yet my experience was nothing like that.
At first I thought a couple of bad days on the trains were clouding my perception, and in reality most trains were running on time. But it didn’t ring true, so from the beginning of 2016 I started to keep a record of my journeys, comparing the time I should have arrived at my destinations with when I actually did (or in some cases failed to).
Between the beginning of January and mid-April I had lost more than 24 hours due to delayed or cancelled trains. And as I write in early May, that figure is now more than 29 hours, which doesn’t include two days where I couldn’t travel because of a strike. It is a testament to how badly our rail services perform and how this is masked by clever presentation of the data.
For the rail companies I use regularly, Southern and Thameslink, both run by Govia, the latest official public performance measure (PPM) was that 82.5% of services were on time. But when I looked at my figures the picture was completely different: around 37% of services had arrived within five minutes of their scheduled time. Some might argue that my figures can’t show how the service is performing overall as they are for a limited number of journeys on limited routes and therefore statistically irrelevant. I am not saying they are definitive, but they do show that my experience is nowhere near the one the rail firms say I should be getting. I am one of hundreds of people who do the same or similar journeys and we all get affected. I wonder if more of us recorded our journeys whether their data would be closer to mine or that of the rail companies?
I commute daily from Horsham in Sussex to London, and I usually finish my journey at London Bridge or City Thameslink. Until last year I was commuting 32 miles to Chichester on near-empty trains, which cost me about £1,600 a year for a journey of about an hour door-to-door. But, for a better job and salary, I traded it in for the packed trains to London, increasing my journey by just six or seven miles. However, the fare rose to just short of £4,000 a year. The journey time also went up – it’s often more than two hours door-to-door, and that’s without delays. Thankfully, I generally get a seat most mornings, but a change at East Croydon means standing on packed trains. There are days when I’ve been unable to board a train because of the overcrowding...