Train punctuality: the passenger perspective

05 November 2015

Transport Focus is pleased to have worked with Office of Rail and Road, to produce this research Train punctuality: the passenger perspective. 

This report combines two studies on passengers’ views of train punctuality.

The research found:

• passengers expect ‘on time’ to mean a train arriving within one minute of the scheduled time, not the current industry standard of five minutes (or 10 minutes for long-distance trains)
• there is low awareness of the current performance measures and a lack of trust in how the rail industry measures train punctuality
• for every minute of lateness, that is, after scheduled arrival time, overall passenger satisfaction declines by one and a half percentage points. Among commuters the decline in overall satisfaction is steeper at three percentage points per minute of lateness.

A more detailed version of this report can be downloaded here.