Summary
In the 2006-07 period 800,000 incidents led to 14 million minutes of delay to franchised passenger rail services, costing a minimum of £1 billion (an average of around £73 for each minute of delay) in the time lost to passengers. Such incidents include infrastructure faults, fleet problems, fatalities, and trespass.
This Report from the National Audit Office, 'Reducing Passenger Rail Delays by Better Management of Incidents' (HC 308), examines the delays to passengers on main line rail services and what needs to be done to reduce such incidents.
The Report also examines how well Network Rail and the Train Operating Companies work together along with the emergency services in resolving unexpected rail incidents.
Recommendations from the National Audit Office include:
- Network Rail should have in place procedures for notifying emergency services personnel of relevant telephone numbers to be used during incidents and should examine the costs and benefits of introducing a dedicated national telephone number for emergency.
- Train Operating Companies should implement the good practice guidelines issued by the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) for the accurate and useful initial information to passengers and frequency of updates. They also should use other means of communicating information, such as visual displays onboard trains.
- Network Rail should analyse its own incident review reports centrally to draw together lessons from across the network.
- Train Operating Companies should complete more detailed incident reports to cover best practice and lessons learned and further develop contingency plans for stations so staff can respond quickly to disruption.
- Organisations across the transport sector including Network Rail, the British Transport Police, and the Highways Agency should pool the lessons learned from the various rail incidents and the Department for Transport should encourage sharing of best practice and experience across the sector.
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