Greater Anglia took hundreds of thousands of customers to work, home and leisure destinations in 2021 – but which routes were the most punctual? Over the past 12 months, Greater Anglia has seen record-breaking punctuality across all of its routes – recording its best ever annual average punctuality of 94.81 per cent. The company runs a wide variety of routes and services from London Liverpool Street to Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire. These range from the busy London Liverpool Street to Norwich, Cambridge North and Southend Victoria services to more rural lines such as Ipswich to Lowestoft or Norwich to Great Yarmouth. Greater Anglia can now reveal which were the top ten most punctual routes in 2021. Position Route Percentage of trains arriving on time (annual average) 1 Norwich to Great Yarmouth 98.35 per cent 2 Marks Tey to Sudbury 97.48 per cent 3 Norwich to Lowestoft 97.33 per cent 4 Norwich to Sheringham 97.16 per cent 5 Ipswich to Felixstowe 96.28 per cent 6 London Liverpool Street to Southend Wickford to Southminster 95.67 per cent 7 London Liverpool Street to Harwich Town 95.56 per cent 8 Norwich to Cambridge / Stansted Airport 95.48 per cent 9 London Liverpool Street to Ipswich / Norwich 94.76 per cent 10 Ipswich to Lowestoft 94.65 per cent Other routes also saw high percentages of punctuality, including London Liverpool Street to Hertford East and Stratford to Meridian Water attaining 94.67 per cent along with Ipswich to Cambridge and Peterborough at 93.77 per cent. The London Liverpool Street to Colchester, Walton-on-the-Naze and Clacton routes, meanwhile, achieved 94.54 per cent. The London Liverpool Street to Cambridge and Ely along with Stratford to Bishop’s Stortford services had 93.35 per cent punctuality while London Liverpool Street to Stansted Airport came in at 92.02 per cent. Overall, punctuality on the West Anglia routes – Cambridge/Bishops Stortford/Hertford East to London Liverpool Street was 94.01 per cent, while on Great Eastern routes – Norwich/Ipswich, Colchester/Clacton/Southend/Harwich/Braintree to London Liverpool Street – it was 95.16 per cent, Norwich- London Liverpool Street Intercity performance 94.82 per cent and overall rural route performance was 96.09 per cent. Jay Thompson, Greater Anglia’s train service delivery director, said: “These fantastic punctuality results are 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 “We are continually refining our processes and thinking about how we can reduce delay to our customers, never resting on our laurels to ensure that our trains are always as on time as possible.” Greater Anglia continues to work hand-in-hand on a joint punctuality drive with Network Rail, as they have for many years. This ensures the focus on driving down delays remains high with joint performance initiatives being introduced, including continuing weekly meetings to analyse even the smallest of delays to see how the company can avoid them in the future. There have also been added benefits from the impact of Greater Anglia’s new trains, which offer both performance and service resilience improvements, as well as further work from Network Rail on infrastructure reliability. Brand new regional bi-mode, intercity electric and Stansted Express electric trains were all already in service by the start of 2021. Meanwhile, 2021 also saw more new five-carriage commuter trains, built by Alstom, introduced onto the network that come with fast Wi-Fi, air conditioning, underfloor heating and a wheelchair area and accessible toilet on every train. The trains also come with space for bikes and new improved passenger information screens. The trains and their modern systems will lead to greater reliability improvements as more are gradually introduced and the older trains from the 1980s are removed from service. In its continual drive for improved performance, Greater Anglia and the rest of the rail industry will also be reporting more stringent ‘on time’ punctuality measurements in the future, based on punctuality at all stations along a route rather than the end destination These provide a tougher and even broader measure than the PPM figure which measures a train arriving at its final destination within five minutes of the scheduled time or ten minutes for long distance services. Greater Anglia has a range of measures in place to keep people safe while travelling including good ventilation with either air conditioning which sucks in fresh air every six to nine minutes or opening windows in its older trains, as well as doors which open at stations. The company is continuing with enhanced cleaning and sanitisation paying particular attention to high touch areas such as push buttons and grab handles. The company is thanking the high number of customers who are wearing face coverings on trains and stations, which is once again mandatory.
