Published on: Tuesday, 6 August 2019
Last updated: Wednesday, 14 August 2019
Greater Anglia and Network Rail have made a public commitment to passengers in the region to work together to ensure that every effort is made to run a punctual and reliable railway in East Anglia.
For the last six months over 90 per cent of Greater Anglia trains have arrived on time, with record-breaking performance on some lines in the last few months.
The top five most punctual routes on the Greater Anglia network in the four weeks to 20 July were Ipswich-Felixstowe, 95.5 per cent, Marks Tey-Sudbury, 95.4 per cent, Norwich-Great Yarmouth, 94.6 per cent, Norwich-Lowestoft, 94.5 per cent and London-Harwich, 94.1 per cent.
Other routes with punctuality over 90 per cent included London-Southend/Southminster 92.3 per cent, and London-Colchester/Clacton/Walton-on-the-Naze 92.1 per cent.
Highlights of the last six months included a record-breaking four-month period of performance of over 94.7% from March to June on the Great Eastern Main Line between Norwich, Ipswich, Colchester, Chelmsford and London and six successive months over 92%, including 4 months over 94.3%, on the Southend Victoria to London line.
The two organisations have released a joint “performance commitment statement” as part of their successful ‘Every Second Counts’ campaign which has contributed to the increases in punctuality over recent months.
It states: “Network Rail and Greater Anglia are jointly committed to improving train performance and putting passengers first. Maintaining a consistently high standard is what our customers expect and deserve from us.
“We know that every second counts to them, as they rely on the railway to get to work, home, appointments and for leisure, and when something goes wrong, delays have a real impact on their lives.
“By working more closely together and investing in our route, we can improve both the reliability of our service and the lives of those who live, work and travel on the Anglia route.
“This statement represents our personal commitment that both Greater Anglia and Network Rail will work in partnership to improve performance by both proactive measures and improving our response to incidents, reducing the length of delays affecting passengers, and improving our communications during these events.”
It goes on to state that this will be achieved through a performance and safety-driven culture, more ambitious targets, regular performance summits, preparing jointly for the challenges of each season, better resourcing to enable a swift response during incidents, investigation of incidents to identify root causes and prevent recurrences, a plan to reduce the number of train failures by at least 10%, using new systems and technology to prevent and identify and analyse performance issues, and rewarding colleagues for successful solutions.
The commitment is signed by Jamie Burles, Managing Director of Greater Anglia and Meliha Duymaz, Route Managing Director for Network Rail.
Greater Anglia’s Managing Director, Jamie Burles, said, “We have already been putting this commitment into practice, and customers are seeing better train performance as a result, but by publishing it, we are being open and honest with our customers and clear that we are doing everything we can to provide a train service that they expect and deserve.”
“In recent weeks there have been some incidents that have affected the service for our customers, including the heatwave, but we are determined to keep on improving the reliability and punctuality of our railway.
Meliha Duymaz, route managing director for Network Rail Anglia, said: “We know that every second counts for our passengers, which is why we’re spending an additional £10m on a range of measures to improve punctuality, including removing as many long-standing speed restrictions as we can, preventing incidents, but reacting swiftly when they do occur.
“While there has been some recent good performance, we know we need to consistently deliver more trains on time. That’s why we will continue to work tirelessly with Greater Anglia to improve reliability and make journeys better for everyone.”