Passengers travelling in England will be shown how often their trains are delayed and cancelled on screens at stations under plans by the transport secretary to hold operators to account.
Louise Haigh promised to increase transparency by publicly displaying punctuality performance of train operating companies, including those run by the government, on screens at most stations.
The government would not provide details on when these would be rolled out, but it is understood that existing screens would display data that would mirror that compiled by the Office of Road and Rail (ORR).
The ORR produces a rail passenger performance report every quarter charting the number of cancellations and percentage of services delayed by each train operating company. This also shows whether operators’ performances have improved compared with the previous quarter.
Haigh told MPs: “We are committed to full transparency, and I can announce today that we will be fully transparent with passengers by displaying performance data at stations to demonstrate how the railway is working and allow the public to hold us to account as we deliver change.”
The comments came as the transport secretary gave an update on the performance of operators since the Labour government came into power.
This included on LNER, which runs between London and Edinburgh on the east coast mainline, where she said performance had improved since a resolution between the government-run operator and the train drivers’ union Aslef after a long-running dispute.
In August, Aslef called off industrial action that would have involved members striking for 22 days from the start of September to late October.
The union’s LNER staff launched the action after members voiced concerns about drivers being asked to work outside rostering agreements. This was resulting in fewer drivers volunteering for rest day shifts and more cancellations because of driver shortages.
Haigh said that since an agreement had been struck between the unions and LNER, there had been zero instances of trains being cancelled because of a lack of drivers, compared with 179 in the month before.
“When I started this job, one of my first actions was bringing an end to rail strikes,” said Haigh.
“These figures clearly show that resetting industrial relations is already having a direct impact for passengers through more reliable services.”
Responding to Haigh, Gareth Bacon, the shadow transport secretary, said: “We know that while in some cases it has been necessary in the short term to bring rail operators into public control, it has not made the difference on performance that the government would have us believe.
“It takes only a cursory glance over passenger rail performance statistics to see some of the rail operators operating under public control have done little, or nothing, to improve cancellations or delays in relation to other operators.”
