Train Strain Not Showing in Stats Says Survey

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03 February 2017 | Updated 01 January 1970

Four in five passengers (81 per cent) are satisfied with their train journeys overall, according to the latest independent nationwide survey commissioned by the Rail Delivery Group (RDG), yet rail companies acknowledge they must do better to improve services and reliability. 

The RDG refutes any suggestion that respondents to the survey were railroaded in to positive answers or the stats extracted kindly to conceal real obstructions and the organisation is promising a £50 billion-plus Railway Upgrade Plan and more than 5,500 new train carriages by the end of 2020.

Currently business and commuters users along with leisure travellers take 1.7 billion passenger journeys a year – more than 4.5 million a day on average (when they not fighting cancellations and strikes).

Overall satisfaction has been 80 per cent or higher since autumn 2007 with fewer than one in ten passengers dissatisfied, although the recently published figures show a two per cent drop in overall satisfaction among passengers surveyed in Autumn 2016 compared to autumn 2015.

Jacqueline Starr, Rail Delivery Group MD of Customer Experience, representing train operators and Network Rail, said: “We know we must do better. We’re sorry when customers don’t get the service they expect, including those affected by strikes. Everyone in the railway is working hard to make train journeys better from start to finish.

“After decades of under-investment and with passenger numbers soaring, the railway is full in many places. Rail companies are working together to deliver improvements and more new train carriages to tackle congestion and make journeys faster, more comfortable and more reliable. While we build the bigger, better railway the country needs, there will be some disruption.”

Eight per cent of passengers said they were dissatisfied while 11 per cent were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, according to the latest National Rail Passenger Survey by independent watchdog Transport Focus.

Article written by Brian Shillibeer | Published 03 February 2017

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