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New ORR rail punctuality statistics will help industry focus on boosting performance for passengers

19 September 2019
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New-style stats from the Rail Regulator (ORR) show today that 64.7% of stations were arrived at on time in the year to June 2019.

The statistics use the new ‘On Time’ punctuality measure, which registers trains as being on time only when they arrive at station stops within one minute of schedule.

The more widely-reported measure for punctuality - public performance measure (PPM) - registers trains that arrive within 5 or 10 minutes of their scheduled arrival time, dependent on the service. ‘On Time’ is measured at station stops along the route whereas PPM only measures punctuality at each train’s final destination.

The new-style measurement will help industry provide a better service to passengers by pinpointing the issues that cause delays and assisting it to focus on the solutions with better and more useful data.

Using the new-style calculations shows a 2.5pp improvement from last year’s calculations.

Lyndsey Melbourne, ORR Head of Information and Analysis, said:

"We are publishing these new measures of punctuality and reliability to aid transparency of train performance and to help the industry focus on exactly where problems are arising and therefore direct their efforts on finding a solution – so passengers will benefit as solutions are found more quickly and more trains arrive on time."

Today’s 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.

To see the full release, tables and interactive charts go here: https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/performance/passenger-rail-performance/

Notes to editors

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  1. The Office of Rail and Road is the UK’s rail regulator and strategic roads monitor for England. Follow us @railandroad.
     
  2. The role of these new statistics differs for Scotland. Based on the High Level Output Statement (HLOS) set by Scottish Ministers, they still hold to account against PPM and Right Time Arrival (RTA) targets. In the event of performance being below expectations, they will use other metrics to provide further insight on the route’s contribution to overall network performance.