It’s safe to say that trains up and down the UK are having a fairly bad time of things at the mo. With ongoing strikes, delays and cancellations, rail travel is an all-round sore subject for us Brits.
But some rail operators are much less reliable than others and recent statistics from the Office of Rail and Road have officially revealed the very worst of the bunch.
Researchers named and shamed Grand Central, a branch of Arriva trains, as the country’s biggest culprit for train cancellations and chaos. They found that Grand Central, which runs trips between London and west Yorkshire, called off 9.4 percent of all journeys over the past month. That’s nearly one in every ten services!
CrossCountry, another member of the Arriva group serving several of the UK’s major cities, came out as the second-worst, cancelling 6.2 percent of its trains. Landing in third place was Northern Trains (owned by the state), which slashed five percent of services.
Heathrow Express was next on the list, with five percent (one in twenty) of its journeys cancelled and Great Western Railway (which actually also runs the Heathrow Express) followed with 4.4 percent of its services abandoned.
Anthony Smith, chief executive of passenger advocacy body Transport Focus, told MailOnline: ‘Cancellations make life miserable for rail passengers and too many are being let down by rail operators.
‘Passengers want to see a relentless focus on reliability and clear, accurate information from train operators so that they can plan their journeys with confidence. A more reliable and better value for money railway must arrive soon for passengers.’
Train turmoil and Time Out
From our up-to-date guide to all the strikes and industrial action taking place on the UK rail network to covering the worst stations for cancellations and proposed rail fare increases, we at Time Out are always making sure this country‘s often-shoddy rail network never catches you unawares.
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