New figures have been released and reveal that punctuality was unaffected by the implementation process of the summer timetable this year (2019).

These new figures that were released earlier today by the rail industry themselves show that the timetable change for the summer that took place last week that added around 1,000 extra services were implemented and applied in a way that it did not impact punctuality of the services available.

In the week that followed the change of timetable, a percentage of 86.5% of the trains arrived within three minutes of the time that their arrival was scheduled for with PPM* at a percentage of 89%. While effort is being used to improve these figures, they compare in favour of the timetable with an average of 83% of services arriving within 3 minutes of their scheduled time and an annual PPM average of 86% over the last year.

The new services that are being added will see journeys improve through more frequent and more comfortable services. Over the previous two years, train companies have in fact introduced more than 4,000 extra services, this means significant progress has actually been made towards the industry’s 2017 pledge of delivering an additional 6,400 services in each week by early 2020 and early 2020s.

On top of more than 2,000 extra services being added since the year of 2017, the North of England is benefitting largely from the new timetable with better links to and from the area of Carlisle, recently added direct services between Chester and Leeds and also additional services running directly between Cumbria and Manchester Airport. In Scotland, the new timetable means that there are faster journeys being made between the country’s main cities and in the South West, there will be extra services on weekdays running between the areas of Exeter, Plymouth and Penzance, plus additional extra services will run between Exeter and Bristol.

Around the capital, the new timetable means that there will be much more frequent services during peak times into Waterloo, four new Norwich-in-90 services and the number of Thameslink services travelling through the centre of London each way during peak times is now up to one every three or so minutes.

Introducing 1,000 additional services, extra stops and longer trains onto one of Europe’s busiest railways have posted a very significant-sized challenge. It has required over 40,000 alterations to the timetable to be made and took months of work for hundreds of rail workers. Working together train companies and Network Rail themselves implemented lessons learned from previous years changes to the timetables to ensure that these changes didn’t affect the reliability and they took precautionary measures so that any issues that came up could be solved quickly within a short time.

What did the officials say?

Paul Plummer, chief executive of the Rail Delivery Group, which represents train companies and Network Rail, said:

“Introducing 1,000 new services a week onto one of Europe’s busiest railways was a huge challenge. The fact it was accomplished with minimal disruption is testament to the hundreds of rail workers who made it happen. This new timetable is a small but important step in our big plan to deliver thousands of additional services and improved carriages over the coming years to make journeys better and ensure the railway is fit for the future.”

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