Transport User Voice – March 2022 – What matters most to rail passengers?

24 February 2022

Reliability key to rail recovery

How satisfied were you with your last train journey?

More than eight in 10 rail passengers (88 per cent) were satisfied with their most recent journey in our Rail User Weekly Survey.

Our weekly survey of 500 passengers across Great Britain looks at people’s experiences of travelling by rail in the last seven days. They rate their overall journey, how punctual their service was, value for money of their ticket and several Covid-related safety measures.

We analysed the results and found that satisfaction with punctuality and reliability remains the most important driver of overall satisfaction, followed by the level of crowding onboard the train.

Rail commuters were almost as satisfied as leisure passengers, with the data indicating less crowded trains are improving the commuter experience.

The results from the survey published 9 February, also cover overall passenger satisfaction by individual train operating companies from the 12 weeks we spoke to passengers.

The top three operators were:

  • c2c (95 per cent)
  • London Northwestern Railway (94 per cent)
  • Great Northern, East Midlands Railway and Merseyrail (91 per cent).

The best performing operators tend to perform best on punctuality and reliability and level of crowding (12-week average results):

  • for the punctuality and reliability of the service, passengers were most satisfied with Merseyrail (94 per cent), c2c (91 per cent) and Chiltern Railways (89 per cent)
  • passenger satisfaction with the level of crowding was highest on c2c (82 per cent), Merseyrail (81 per cent) and Thameslink (80 per cent).

As more people return to the railway a relentless focus on punctuality and reliability is now needed from operators to help ensure rail is an attractive option. Passengers want services they can rely on to get them where they need to be, when they need to be.

You can see the full survey results here.

 

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