Greater Anglia was the most punctual long-distance train operator in the country last year, winning the accolade for the second year in a row, new independent figures reveal. According to a new, even more stringent punctuality measurement, requiring trains to arrive within 59 seconds of their scheduled time at every stop along their journey, 77.05% of its Norwich – Ipswich – Colchester – London Intercity services ran on time during 2021 – 10% more than the second best performing operator during 2021. The score is a slight improvement on 2020 as well, when Greater Anglia was also named most punctual long-distance operator. The figures were announced by Modern Railways Magazine’s Fourth Friday Club and the Chartered Institution of Railway Operators at the industry ‘Golden Whistles’ awards 2022. The Chartered Institution of Railway Operators measured all UK train services for 12 months up to 12th December 2021 on a moving annual average using industry data. They used the new ‘on time’ measurement where trains have to arrive within 59 seconds of their scheduled time, including at all intermediate stations on the journey rather than just at the destination station. This is gradually replacing the national ‘Public Performance Measure’ (PPM) which classes a service as on time if it arrives at its destination within 5 or 10 minutes of its scheduled time, depending on the route and is the punctuality measure in Greater Anglia’s current contract with the Department for Transport. It has been the standard national measure since regular rail performance results started being published in the 1990s. During 2021, Greater Anglia saw record-breaking PPM punctuality across all of its routes – recording its best ever annual average punctuality of 94.81 per cent, up from 92.97% in 2020, with Intercity trains reaching an annual average punctuality result of 94.82% – up from 91.56% in 2020 . The rail industry has committed to working towards using the ‘on time’ figure as the standard measurement. Greater Anglia’s Head of Performance and Planning, Keith Palmer, said: “Although there is more to do to continually improve our performance, this result is a reflection of the huge amount of hard work that has been put in from all at Greater Anglia, alongside our colleagues from Network Rail, to keep performance high.” “Along with Network Rail, we’ve invested millions in reliability improvements across the entire network and the continued roll out of our fleet of brand new trains is helping to provide the consistent and improving levels of service that our customers expect.” Philip Sherratt, Editor of Modern Railways magazine, commented: ‘Greater Anglia has demonstrated consistently strong performance by winning the Gold Whistle for best Long Distance operator for the second year in a row, and indeed it improved performance further over the last year. This is a testament to the hard work put in by so many across the company to maintain high standards.’
