Published on: Friday, 12 April 2019
Last updated: Tuesday, 16 April 2019
Punctuality on parts of the Greater Anglia network last month was amongst the best of the last two decades, with performance improving for the fourth month in a row, according to the latest statistics.
On average across the network more than nine out of ten trains were on time, with punctuality even better than that across many routes.
During the four weeks from 3-31 March, 91 per cent of Greater Anglia trains were on time, with punctuality on the Great Eastern Mainline between London Liverpool Street and Essex and Suffolk hitting 94.8 per cent - the best figure in almost six years and one of the best month's performance results of the last 15 years.
Meanwhile performance on the Intercity service between Norwich and London was 93.1 per cent – one of the top four months for performance of the last 20 years.
Average punctuality for Greater Anglia’s rural lines was 90.5 per cent, although performance on individual lines was much higher in some cases.
The top five performing routes on the Greater Anglia network in March were Norwich-Sheringham, at 96.9 per cent, Norwich-Lowestoft, 96.1 per cent, Marks Tey-Sudbury, 95.9 per cent, London-Colchester/Clacton/Walton 94.9 per cent and London-Southend/Southminster 94.3 per cent.
Performance on the Ipswich-Felixstowe line was the best it has ever been, at 94 per cent.
Jay Thompson, Greater Anglia train service delivery director, said: “We’ve been working really hard to improve our performance, and it’s good to see that for the fourth railway performance period in a row punctuality has increased.
“We know how important it is to our customers that our trains run on time. Our focus now is to get a consistent level of service across the whole network – to get all our punctuality statistics into the 90s, or better, on all of our lines.
“We are carefully monitoring all of our services, looking at what causes every single minute of delays and how to prevent a similar delay another time.
“We’re working closely with Network Rail to react faster when delays occur and to get services running back to normal as quickly as possible.
Steve Hooker, Network Rail Anglia chief operating officer said: "We introduced a new performance improvement campaign called Every Second Counts four months ago, which focuses on the top eight causes of delay, and put aside a £10m booster fund to tackle these key areas.
“The early results are promising, but we are not complacent and will continue to seek better ways to improve reliability for our passengers. Together with Greater Anglia, we’re working harder and in smarter ways to improve train punctuality and make journeys better for everyone.”
On the West Anglia route, between Cambridge and London Liverpool Street, performance was 86.7 per cent, but the first three months of this year have improved on 2018 – up from 85.7% to 87.8%.
Additional initiatives Network Rail is undertaking on the West Anglia route are expected to further increase punctuality in the coming months.
At the same time, Greater Anglia, is looking at other improvements which might be made, including adjusting stopping patterns of trains to prevent persistent delays.
Other punctuality results by line include London/Harwich 93.5 per cent, London-Ipswich/Norwich 93 per cent, Norwich-Great Yarmouth 92.5 per cent, East Suffolk 92.5 per cent, Ipswich/Peterborough/Cambridge 87.6 per cent and Norwich-Cambridge 78.3 per cent. Performance on the Norwich to Cambridge line is now starting to improve after Network Rail undertook work to remove a major speed restriction, relating to track condition, which had been the primary cause of delays on the route.
Performance figures, including cancellations and shortened trains are available on the Greater Anglia website .
The statistics quoted are the latest Public Performance Measure (PPM) figures for 3-31 March.