The rail watchdog is making more infor-
mation available to the
public, ensuring the industry and stakeholders have all the data they need to inform their decision making. Ashwin Kumar, Passenger Focus rail director, says the whole in- dustry should follow suit.
P
assenger Focus publishes the larg- est survey of passengers using Great Britain’s rail network. First
undertaken in autumn 1999, the National Passenger Survey (NPS) provides a net- work-wide picture of passenger satisfac- tion with rail services. By asking passen- gers their views of their last, ‘real’ journey, decision makers can monitor trends over time and across train companies.
Overall, Passenger Focus’ NPS paints a fairly good picture of the railway. The survey of more than 31,000 passengers shows that overall satisfaction has been rising gradually over recent years – with 84% satisfied in autumn 2010. In a situa- tion where the industry is getting steadily better, it is going to be less likely that pas- sengers will find a whole train company ‘in meltdown’. A more common experience for passengers will be pockets of poorer service while the average for the company increases gradually.
In such a situation, it is particularly impor- tant to be able to use passenger research and wider industry information to zero in on exactly where the problems are occur- ring. Much of this is already done inter- nally within the industry, but there is also an accountability gap.
Publishing steadily-improving average statistics that do not reflect the experience of many passengers has two risks: firstly, legitimately disgruntled passengers feel ignored by what they perceive as a railway ‘establishment’ that ‘hides’ behind average figures; and secondly, it can lead to train company employees pointing to average success and ignoring the legitimate con- cerns that might affect pockets of their service.
We have seen some letters from train companies in response to passenger com- plaints that are examples of this latter phenomenon. The reply might correctly state that passengers, on average, are hap-
108 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 11
pier than in the past - but that’s no com- fort if it happens to be your service that’s regularly late.
So, for the first time, Passenger Focus has published NPS results broken down for a route-by-route analysis. By doing this we can see on the best routes almost every passenger is satisfied, compared with only 72% on the lowest scoring.
The research found the best routes are Grand Central, Southeastern’s high-speed, Virgin Trains’ North Wales route and the impressive turnaround of the East Midlands’ Norwich – Liverpool service, which has improved substantially in the past two years.
The lowest scores were observed on First Capital Connect’s London – Bedford route, ScotRail rural services and National Express East Anglia main line routes to Ipswich.
“Punctuality is the biggest driver of passenger satisfaction – the key to keeping passengers happy is to run trains on time.”
Analysing the NPS in this way marks a huge step forward in transparency. Passengers can now get a much better idea of how their train services compare to others run by their company as well as those across Great Britain. The rail indus- try should be congratulated for agreeing to take this step.
It is now time for the industry to follow suit and publish their own figures in a similar vein.
The NPS shows that punctuality is the big- gest driver of passenger satisfaction – the key to keeping passengers happy is to run trains on time.
Yet it remains the case that most industry punctuality statistics are only published at a ‘whole train company’ level. For the pas- senger frustrated by what they consider to be frequent delays on their line, these global averages feel like a recipe for having their concerns ignored.
However, tighter geographical break- downs are only part of the story. The main
published punctuality figure – the Public Performance Measure – records the pro- portion of trains arriving at destination within five minutes of booked time, or ten minutes for long-distance services. Pas- senger Focus has recently published new research into the relationship between passenger satisfaction and train lateness.
With the help of CrossCountry, National Express East Anglia and Northern Rail, we have analysed how passenger satisfac- tion with punctuality shifts when trains are late.
The findings reveal that commuter sat- isfaction with punctuality starts to drop as soon as a train is only one minute late and then drops by as much as five percent- age points per minute of additional delay. Business and leisure passengers are a lit- tle more tolerant, being prepared to wait between four and six minutes before their satisfaction is affected.
The study also found that passengers’ ex- perience of delays tends to be more than that recorded by the industry as trains may be late at stations along the route, but make up time towards the end of the jour- ney and arrive at the final station accord- ing to the timetable. However, many pas- sengers commuting home in the evening have got off the train long before it reaches its final destination.
So the passenger experience of delay sug- gests a desire to understand whether trains arrive on time, rather than just within five or ten minutes, and to understand what happens along the journey, not just at the final destination.
Clearly the first is easier to solve – simply publish the right-time arrival statistics that are already produced and distributed widely within the industry.
The second issue is harder to address and there is a discussion to be had about the most effective measure of punctual- ity at intermediate stops. But if we are to reflect passengers’ experience of their journey in published statistics, these dis- cussions need to bear fruit.
Visit
www.passengerfocus.org.uk/nps Ashwin Kumar
FOR MORE INFORMATION
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