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WC/XC - Better Performance

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Guinness

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05/07/2006

Better performance by Virgin Trains revealed as National Rail Trends yearbook is published

More trains on time. Many more passengers travelling. Fewer complaints.
Punctuality UP, passenger numbers UP, complaints DOWN – these improvements by Virgin Trains are revealed today in an official report.
Improved timekeeping by both Virgin West Coast and Virgin CrossCountry is published by the Office of Rail Regulation in the National Rail Trends yearbook, covering the 12 months to March 2006.
The report shows that in the final quarter of 2005-06, the Public Performance Measure (PPM) for Virgin West Coast improved to 89.3 per cent from 74.7 per cent since the same quarter of the previous reporting year, and Virgin CrossCountry, Britain's longest distance operator, improved to 86.4 per cent from 82.7.
In the year to March 2006, passenger journeys on Virgin West Coast increased by 21.6 per cent to 18.5 million and Virgin CrossCountry continued its steady improvement of recent years to achieve 20.6 million passenger journeys, an increase of 7 per cent on 2004-05. Fewer complaints were received from customers.
The good news about this success follows hard on the heels of last month's revelation by Passenger Focus that many more passengers have become satisfied with Virgin Trains during the past year. The independent national rail consumer watchdog's Spring 2006 National Passenger Survey showed that overall satisfaction with the Virgin West Coast journey experience rose to 90 per cent, up ten points from Spring 2005, and to 84 per cent with Virgin CrossCountry, up one point.



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Latest Figures from NR (up to 27th May)




2811_PPMActual.jpg


A general rise in Performance Figures across the network although FGW closely followed by GNER been the worst performers in Long Distance services.
 
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Nick W

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I didn't think central were good. They must have tons of gap time.

Looks like the misery line is doing pretty well.

How did one and their duff Skodas get over 90% :s?
 

yorkie

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It appears Chaz has pasted a Virgin Trains press release.

Nick W said:
I didn't think central were good. They must have tons of gap time.

Looks like the misery line is doing pretty well.

How did one and their duff Skodas get over 90% :s?
I think Central have more of a problem with cancellations (including turning a train around before it reaches its destination), relatively poor customer relations and tatty trains - at least that's in my experience - but none of these factors will have any bearing on the table published, which only shows the percentage of trains that are less than 10 or 5 minutes late.

An article on the figures from a Yorkshire perspective can be found here:

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/yorknews/display.var.820255.0.york_trains_more_on_time.php

Regarding MML, I am surprised that as high as 4.8% of trains are over 10 minutes late, given that they operate over relatively short distances (for an "InterCity" operator ) distances padded with a massive amount of slack time. TPE has less slack time and operates over longer distances, but a TPE train that runs from Newcastle to Liverpool that is 5 minutes and 5 seconds late misses the target, a MML train that only does Derby-London is 9 mins 55 seconds late is counted as "on time".

Virgin CrossCountry have an incredible amount of slack time, approximately 1 hour on some routes, so you'd expect them to be less than 10 minutes late 90% of the time.

Also note that the measures do not in any way measure the quality of service (despite what the original article says - it's a different issue), the likelihood of getting a seat, and they do not indicate how the delays are attiributed - most delays will not be the fault of the TOC in question.

You can only get a very limited amount of information from these results.
 

yorkie

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Chaz said:
Yes. Your point been?
None really, but I do think that a PR from a TOC should be labelled as such, to avoid any confusion (Any TOC is likely to say the figures are good for them;)).
 

TicketMan

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yorkie said:
It appears Chaz has pasted a Virgin Trains press release.


I think Central have more of a problem with cancellations (including turning a train around before it reaches its destination), relatively poor customer relations and tatty trains - at least that's in my experience - but none of these factors will have any bearing on the table published, which only shows the percentage of trains that are less than 10 or 5 minutes late.

Actuall Yorkie thats incorrect

The table shows Public Performance Measure (PPM) results To pass PPM, a train must arrive within 5 minutes (10) for former Intercity operators) of the published (i.e passenger timetbable) arrival time. It must also make all booked station stops, and start and end at the booked points. Therefore a service started short of it's origin, or turned round early, will fail the PPM and this will be reflected in the table.

The idea of turning a train round before it's destination is to improve the overall PPM - although 2 services will fail (the outward which is being terminated and the return working which will miss it's origin) there is more chance of the next service acheiving PPM.

Hope that makes sense.
 

Lewisham2221

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I think Yorkie pretty much hit the nail on the head with the bit about most delays not being the fault of the TOC. If it's a delay caused by a train fault, staff absence or whatever, then by all means attribute the blame to the TOC. However these sort of tables are pretty bad at reflecting the real picture in terms of who is to blame.
 

TicketMan

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Makes no difference who is at fault - the government has made it very clear that they are only interested in PPM results - passengers increasingly come second unfortunately
 

devon_metro

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Well, that's good news for Virgin!

Just need fGW to improve now. Although it's not really the TOC, It's the GWML.

Virgin is quite lucky running over some of the newest rails in the country with a modern signalling system for a majority of their routes!
 

Lewisham2221

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dvn1357 said:
Virgin is quite lucky running over some of the newest rails in the country with a modern signalling system for a majority of their routes!
On the WCML maybe, but XC trains tend to find themselves travelling along heavily congested routes, staring at red signals whilst the 'main' operator on the line gets priority.
 
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