Comment: Cancellation of trains

Barry Doe, RAIL Fares and Services Expert

A lot of figures are being produced regarding the progress being made following the recent timetable reduction, introduced to increase the stability of the May 20 timetable.

I have obtained figures from the Rail Delivery Group, and try here to present them in a useful form to aid understanding of what has been achieved.

In the December 2017 timetable, 22,000 (22k) trains were scheduled to run each day on a Mon-Fri. From May 21 this increased to 22.9k, and in the ‘temporary cuts’ that followed (after two weeks) from June 4, this was cut to 22.5k. The problem areas were Govia Thameslink Railway and Northern, and I now detail the changes just for those two operators.

GTR scheduled 3,470 trains per day pre-May 20, increased this by 435 trains to 3,905 a day from May 21, then cut 255 trains from June 4 to leave the current 3,650 scheduled.

Northern scheduled 2,630 trains per day pre-May 20, increased this by 175 trains to 2,805 a day from May 21, then cut 165 trains from June 4 to leave the current 2,640 scheduled.

In the first two weeks, GTR cancelled an average of 500 trains a day (13%) - hence 3,400 ran. Northern cancelled 300 a day (11%) - hence 2,500 ran.

On June 6, following the June 4 cutback, GTR cancelled 290 trains (8%) and ran 3,360, while Northern cancelled 110 trains (4%) and ran 2,530.

So the net result is that on a good day with the temporary timetable, GTR and Northern are running about the same number of trains as they did in the first two disastrous weeks - but they are cancelling far fewer percentage-wise.

In other words, the timetable is more predictable. However, it is still a poor performance - and both operators are actually running fewer trains than they scheduled in the December timetable, although (of course) Northern was already cancelling significant numbers in that period.