ORR has requested and received regional performance improvement plans. Credit: Pixabay.

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has shared statistics that demonstrate a decline in the reliability of trains in Britain.

Significantly, the quarter October to December 2022 experienced 4.5% of all planned trains being cancelled. This is the highest cancellation since records began in 2014.

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Feras Alshaker, director, planning & performance at ORR, said: “Our official statistics confirm that train reliability is not good enough. Even on non-strike days, the number of trains being cancelled is too high and we know for some operators these figures will have been higher, due to pre-cancellations.

“There is no quick fix, but ORR is working closely with the industry to address these issues with train performance so that passengers can travel with confidence.”

According to ORR, the number of trains arriving at stops early or less than a minute after the scheduled time has increased.

Only 62.3% of trains arrived at stops on time this quarter, a 5.4% decline compared to the same period in 2022.

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This quarter has been disrupted by 10 national strike days and the impact of some severe weather.

ORR reveals that 23 days classified as severely disrupted and of the 4.5% train cancellations, 51.6% were due to train operators and 27.1% were due to infrastructure and network issues. The remainder of the cancellations were due to external incidents.

ORR cancellations statistics suggest Avanti West Coast, CrossCountry, TransPennine Express, GTR, and LNER cancelled the most trains on the day while Chiltern, Greater Anglia, and c2c cancelled the fewest.

In addition, Avanti West Coast, CrossCountry, and TransPennine Express recorded the lowest On Time scores.

ORR has requested and received regional performance improvement plans, which contain actions and milestones to inform the assessment of progress, from Network Rail.

Network Rail will also focus on establishing a timetable that is deliverable daily while ORR works with the Network Performance Board to promote best practice.