Punctuality rises

A 3% increase in passenger numbers and increased revenue are two of the highlights from new ORR report into performance.

RECORD passenger journeys and revenues, a reversal of the decline in rail freight and an upturn in punctuality all figure in the Office of Rail and Road’s annual statistics for 2018-19.

Published on December 10, the compendium of annual statistics shows that 1.759 billion passenger journeys were made over the year, a 3% increase on 2017-18 and more than double that at privatisation.

Passenger revenues increased by 6.1% to smash the £10 billion barrier for the first time, while the number of passenger-kilometres and passenger train kilometres both increased - by 2.2% to 67.7 billion and 1.7% to 539.3 million respectively.

Passenger train punctuality improved by 0.7 percentage points to 63.4% of trains arriving within a minute of the scheduled time at their stops.

A 2.9% reduction in cancellations over the year was also recorded, despite there being 22 days where the network was regarded as ‘severely disrupted’ on a national level - eight more than in 2017-18.

Rail fares rose above inflation by an average of 2.8% in January 2019, compared with a 2.5% rise in the Retail Price Index. But season tickets continued to decline in popularity - they now account for 20.6% of ticket revenue.

The long decline in freight volumes due to power generation switching from coal to other alternatives has been reversed, with a 3% rise to 17.4 billion net tonnekilometres. Domestic intermodal traffic is now the freight railway’s main source of traffic, accounting for 39% of the total moved.

Freight train movements also rose in 2018-19 (to 220,711), after four consecutive years of decline. And performance of freight trains improved by 0.4 percentage point to 93.8% arriving within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival time.

Passenger complaints increased by 2.8% year on year to 30.1 per 100,000 journeys, although this is far fewer than the 131 received around the turn of the century.

The number of Disabled Persons Railcards in circulation continues to rise, up 7.4% to 239,037 in 201819. But the number of booked passenger assists has slowed, rising at its lowest annual rate since the current time series began (up 2% to 1.3 million).

High Speed 2 funding has driven an increase in government support for the railways (up 8.9% to £7.1bn), while the £112 million investment in stations by private companies is said to be the highest since 2006-07.

Safety remains a concern, with a 17.5% increase in train accidents (to 517) reported in 2018-19. 70% were on the main line network, 26% on non-main line systems including trams and metros, and 5% on London Underground.

The ORR’s statistics also reveal that carbon dioxide emissions have fallen - by 10.3% to 36.6g per passenger-km, and by 4.1% to 35.3% per freight tonne-km. This is partially attributed to increased use of electrification across the network.