YOUR report from Wednesday, February 17 states that punctuality on the railways has reached its lowest point in more than a decade, and that figures show that performance declined by almost five per cent during the year ending December 2016.
This statement is not supported by the figures, which actually show that around nine out of ten trains ran on time in 2016 (88.4 per cent), roughly the same proportion as in 2015 (89.6 per cent).
Rather than comparing the full year figures you have compared figures for the period Nov-Dec 2015 with Nov-Dec 2016 – which were adversely affected by Storm Angus. This is not, however, representative of overall performance.
In fact, year on year performance improved for the majority of periods in 2016.
Performance today is around 6six points higher today than it was when we began operating the Great Western franchise ten years ago.
ANDREW MELLORS
Engineering director, GWR
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