A CALL has been made for an investigation into why the punctuality of London to Scotland trains on the East Coast Main Line reached a seven-year low in the first month of being brought back into public control.
Just 62.6% of London North Eastern Railway's (LNER) Anglo-Scottish services arrived within 10 minutes of the scheduled time between June 24 and July 21, according to Network Rail data.
This was lower than any four-week period under its predecessor Virgin Trains East Coast, which operated from March 1, 2015 until June 23.
It was the worst punctuality figure for the route since December 2010.
Perth-based bus group Stagecoach and Virgin Trains, which had a 90% and 10% stake in the venture respectively, handed over control in June after running it since 2015.
Trains on the vital route between London and Scotland are now being run by the Department for Transport's (DfT) Operator of Last Resort, branded as LNER.
LNER said the many of the issues were beyond its control and involved a combination of hot weather, infrastructure problems and the introduction of new timetables.
Dr John McCormick, chairman of the Scottish Association for Public Transport said there needed to be an investigation into what is going wrong.
He said: "The majority of the delays these days are down to infrastructure failures which are the responsibility of Network Rail. Timetables are also a Network Rail issue.
"I think there is needs to be an investigation into these failures to find out if some of the signalling equipment or other equipment needs to be replaced. A spokesman for LNER said: "We have had a challenging period due to a number of external factors, many of which were beyond our immediate control."
These include hot weather, infrastructure problems and the introduction of new timetables which caused disruption at key locations such as London King's Cross and Leeds.
He added: "Now that the transfer to LNER is complete we will bring a renewed focus to the operating detail of running the railway.
"We continue to work with Network Rail and other operators to identify areas where further improvements can be made and to drive these forward to consistently improve the customer experience."
The first LNER service departed from Newcastle to London King's Cross at 7.54am on June 24.
The development came after operators Virgin and Sir Brian Souter's Stagecoach, could no longer meet the promised payments in the £3.3bn contract.
LNER are to operate until a public-private partnership takes responsibility for both trains and track operations in 2020.
It was the third time in a just over a decade that the government has called a halt to the East Coast franchise.
The East Coast route connects London King's Cross to stations in the North and Scotland including York, Leeds, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness.
The latest analysis does not take into account the disruption chaos on July 27 when hundreds of rail passengers were left stranded after lighting strikes damaged signalling.
LNER had advised passengers not to travel "due to the extreme weather conditions and signalling failure".
British Transport Police said officers had to hold back passengers trying to get on platforms at Leeds station.
Network Rail was approached for comment.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel