Overall satisfaction levels fall in National Rail Passenger Survey

Results of the UK’s National Rail Passenger Survey carried out by Transport Focus reveals an overall fall in rail passenger satisfaction in the autumn 2016 survey.

Transport Focus has published findings of the National Rail Passenger Survey carried out between 1 September and 20 November last year.

Figures suggest overall rail passenger satisfaction declined by two percentage points from 83 to 81 percent compared to autumn 2015. Furthermore, the proportion of passengers satisfied with punctuality/reliability also fell from 78 to 73 percent.  However, overall satisfaction has remained over 80 percent or higher since 2007.

In autumn last year, Transport Focus spoke with more than 29,000 passengers across Great Britain as part of the National Rail Passenger Survey. Carried out twice a year, the survey aims to provide the latest snapshot of passengers’ satisfaction through different aspects of their train service.

National Rail Passenger Survey key findings

For the long-distance operators the proportion of passengers who were very or fairly satisfied declined very slightly from 87 percent in autumn 2015 to 86 percent last year.

For regional operators 84 percent of passengers were very or fairly satisfied with their journey overall. This was a significant decline compared to autumn 2015 when 88 percent were satisfied.

London and the South East continued to lag behind other regional and long-distance journeys with overall satisfaction for operators falling two percentage points from 82 to 80 percent over the past year.

According to the survey, the highest ratings for overall satisfaction were achieved by Hull Trains (97 percent), Heathrow Express (96 percent), Merseyrail (95 per cent), Chiltern Railways (91 percent), Grand Central (91 percent) and Virgin Trains East Coast (91 percent).

The lowest ratings for overall satisfaction were given to Southern (65 percent), Thameslink (73 percent), Southeastern (77 percent) and Great Northern (78 percent).

Commenting on the findings, Jacqueline Starr, Rail Delivery Group Managing Director of Customer Experience – representing train operators and Network Rail – said: “We know we must do better. We’re sorry when customers don’t get the service they expect, including those affected by strikes. Everyone in the railway is working hard to make train journeys better from start to finish.

“After decades of under-investment and with passenger numbers soaring to 4.5million a day on thousands more trains, the railway is full in many places. Rail companies are working together to deliver more than £50billion of improvements, including more than 5,500 new train carriages, to tackle congestion and make journeys faster, more comfortable and more reliable. While we build the bigger, better railway the country needs there will be some disruption.”

Industry reaction

ScotRail Alliance Managing Director Phil Verster said: “Everyone who works on Scotland’s railway will be disappointed by these results –we always want our customer satisfaction to be going up. However, they come on the back of a difficult year for our customers. Operating a busy and complicated network is challenging at the best of times – and we are doing so during one of the largest investments in modernisation since Scotland’s railway was built in Victorian times.

“There is no alternative, though, to doing the work.

“When we brought in our Performance Improvement Plan we said that we wanted to make sure that we were doing everything we could to transform the railway for tomorrow, while bringing about better performance today. I believe that we are making good progress, but there is much to do.

“The latest round of statistics has shown that our punctuality and reliability is improving and bucking the national trend. That this has happened while we are still carrying out all of the work to deliver a new, more modern railway is down to the hard work, every day, of the 7,500 people who work for the ScotRail Alliance.”

Will Dunnett, Managing Director at Hull Trains says: “We’re delighted to be first once again for overall customer satisfaction; but what we’re particularly proud of is the level of consistency that we’ve demonstrated over the past four years.

“This is what matters to customers. Not one off results or occasional good service, but strong, consistent and exceptional service every single time over the long-term.

“The level of constancy we’ve shown is unprecedented in the long-distance rail industry and I’m very proud to see that our scores have moved forward in every metric ahead of the long distance sector.”

David Horne, Managing Director of Virgin Trains on the east coast said: “We are delighted to see Virgin Trains leading the results for long-distance operators. The £50M investment in our services is bearing fruit and we are happy to see that customers are seeing the benefits of our new interiors, more frequent services and our on-board entertainment app, BEAM. The work doesn’t stop here though as we continue to improve on the high quality service our customers have come to expect of us ahead of the launch of our cutting edge new Azuma fleet in 2018.”

Phil Whittingham, Managing Director of Virgin Trains on the west coast added: “We are proud to be building on the success of a franchise that is nearly 20 years old. We are continuing to make improvements to areas that we know are important to our customers such as station facilities, and introducing more convenient mobile tickets, whilst working with Network Rail to take our punctuality and reliability to a record high.”