Late trains woe for Shropshire rail travellers
The rail companies which provide almost all most of Shropshire's services each have two trains arriving at their destinations significantly late every day, new figures have revealed.
Analysis of Office of Rail and Road data found that nationally 5,250 trains were between 30 and 119 minutes late between July and September last year.
Arriva Trains Wales trains are very late on 0.23 per cent of their journeys, the figures revealed, equating to two services per day meaning that two of their trains are late per day.
Two London Midland services, which runs a lower proportion of the total number of services, also turn up late each day, the figures show – but that reflects a lower proportion of the total number of services, at 0.19 per cent.
It means that one out of every 441 trains on Arriva Trains Wales' network are significantly late, compared with one in every 525 services run by London Midland, and one out of every 54 Virgin services on the West Coast line. Virgin Trains West Coast, which runs the direct Shrewsbury to London, delivers five trains late to their stations a day – a ratio of 1.9 per cent of the total.
The figures do not include trains that were two hours or more late.
James MacColl, of the Campaign for Better Transport, urged train companies to make more effort to ensure passengers receive compensation when services were significantly delayed.
He said: "Late-running trains can be very frustrating, but far too few passengers understand when they're due compensation or how they should go about claiming it.
"With record numbers of people now relying on the railways – and technology like electronic tickets becoming more widespread – this needs to change."
Mr MacColl called for operators to make sure passengers knew their rights and to ensure everyone affected by major delays got some of their money back automatically when possible.
"With big investment going into the railways, it's also essential that the whole industry works together to minimise disruption and keep the trains running to time," he said.
A spokesman for the Rail Delivery Group, representing train operators and Network Rail, described timetables as a "promise to passengers" and insisted "we never want people to suffer delays or disruption".
He added: "Train operators and Network Rail are working hard together every day to deliver a better, more punctual railway and to give people better information when things do go wrong.
"The rail industry has cut the number of incidents causing delays every year, but a busier network means that incidents can have a greater knock-on effect."
The Caledonian Sleeper – which runs overnight trains between London and Scotland – was the operator with the highest percentage (3.7%) of its services suffering from this level of disruption.
The second worst performance was by First Hull Trains (2.7 per cent), followed by Virgin Trains East Coast (2.6 per cent) and Grand Central (two per cent).
