Elizabeth line is the most reliable train in the UK
(Picture: Crossrail)The Elizabeth line has quickly become the most reliable train line in the country, official figures have revealed.
The £20bn line only opened on May 24, when services began running under central London between Paddington and Abbey Wood.
It had been visited by the Queen, in one of her final engagements in the capital, a week earlier.
Quarterly figures from the Office of Rail and Road on Thursday showed 88.1 per cent of its trains were on time between April and June - the best performance of all 24 UK operators.
The figures included the performance of TfL Rail, as the services on its western and eastern branches - in and out of Paddington and Liverpool Street - were known prior to its central section opening.
Only 1.8 per cent of the 60,573 TfL Rail or Elizabeth line trains due to run over the three months had to be cancelled.
Avanti West Coast, which runs trains on the West Coast Main Line, faced new shame as its performance was revealed to have worsened.
Only 46.5 per cent of its trains arrived on time, down from 51 per cent between January and March - meaning it remained the least reliable operator in the UK.
A total of 7.8 per cent of Avanti West Coast trains were cancelled between April and June. However it did try to run 19,875 trains - up from 17,734 in the first three months of 2022.
Didn’t take long for the Elizabeth line to become the most reliable line in the country - while less than half @AvantiWestCoast trains were on time, latest stats @railandroad reveal pic.twitter.com/fneS6ztaIz
— Ross Lydall (@RossLydall) September 15, 2022
The ORR figures showed that Greater Anglia was the second most punctual railway, with 87.4 per cent of trains on time, followed by c2C (81.6 per cent) and London Overground (79.1 per cent).
Chiltern and Greater Anglia (each 1.5 per cent) had the fewest cancellations, followed by Southeastern and c2c (both 1.8 per cent).
Govia Thameslink planned to run most trains - 260,576 over the three months - though this was more than five per cent fewer than the same time last year.
Across the railway industry, 72.6 per cent of trains ran on time but 89.6 per cent were regarded as “punctual” as they arrived within five minutes of their scheduled time.
Network-wide cancellations averaged 3.1 per cent. This excludes the thousands of trains that did not run dueing the three days of strike action by the RMT in June.
Overall, 1.67 million trains were planned to run over the three months - up 2.6 per cent on the same period last year but still 15.2 per cent down on pre-pandemic services in 2019.
Avanti West Coast chartered four additional “relief” trains to Euston on Thursday, with three more to come on Friday - plus the same number in the opposite direction - in an attempt to head off criticism over the services available to passengers looking to travel to London to pay their respects to the Queen.
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, and Manchester City Council leader Bev Craig said they had seen “numerous complaints” and called for a “significant improvement in customer service”. Passengers had reported short-notice cancellations and shorter trains.
Today, Andy and @ManCityCouncil Leader Bev Craig have written to Avanti West Coast regarding the need to support people wishing to travel from the North West to London to pay their respects to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. pic.twitter.com/unvxnspdd0
— Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham (@MayorofGM) September 14, 2022
The extra trains will provide about 16,000 extra seats. But Avanti said it was “acutely aware” that its trains were likely to be extremely busy over the weekend. It has been forced to limit its timetable after drivers refused to work overtime.
Great Western Railway has begun running additional services between Paddington and Reading. A “limited number” of additional early morning and late night services, possibly going further west, to help passengers get home from the capital, are also planned until Tuesday.
