Still off the rails: 1 in 3 trains don’t run on time

MORE than a third of trains fail to run on time, leaving millions of passengers stuck with a substandard service, figures show.

In the year to June 30, 35.3 per cent of services were delayed, with the worst-offending companies running trains which were delayed almost two-thirds of the time.

The figures, from the Office of Rail and Road, show Hull Trains had the worst on-time rate at 36.8 per cent, followed by TransPennine Express with 38.7 per cent and London North Eastern Railway at 41 per cent.

Only 64.7 per cent of the country’s trains arrived within a minute of the scheduled time, up 2.5 percentage points compared with the year before.

For the first time, rail firms were ranked by the number of arrivals that reached each station within one minute of the scheduled time. In the past,

trains arriving up to ten minutes late were recorded as on-time and punctuality was based on arrivals at final destinations.

Passenger watchdog Transport Focus said the scale of delays was ‘not acceptable’, especially given that fares are set to rise by 2.8 per cent in January.

And transport secretary Grant Shapps indicated that an upcoming review of the railway would seek to punish firms by withholding profits from those failing to run punctual services.

The figures showed the best performing firm was C2C, which runs between Essex and London’s Fenchurch Street, with 83.2 per cent of trains arriving within a minute of schedule.

The Rail Delivery Group’s Susie Homan said: ‘There is more to do but over the last year, while we’ve added thousands of extra services we’ve also seen train punctuality start to improve.’

‘Scale of delays is unacceptable’