Virgin Trains demands immediate improvements in track performance

2012-12-10 — /travelprnews.com/ — Virgin Trains today voiced concerns over the lack of progress made in improving infrastructure performance.

As the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) published its quarterly report on Network Rail performance, Virgin Trains expressed dismay that Network Rail has again fallen short of its performance targets over the last year.

More than 70% of delays to Virgin Trains services are caused by infrastructure faults and, despite the ORR repeatedly calling on Network Rail to improve or face a financial penalty, little has changed.

Because of this, Virgin Trains arranged for its Chief Operating Officer, Chris Gibb to work within Network Rail for the past five months to try to bring improvements.

Today, a report written by Chris and including 17 recommendations for improvement has been published by the ORR, and Network Rail has promised to implement the recommendations. The report can be found on the ORR website at http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/wcs-reliability-programme-191112.pdf

Tony Collins, Chief Executive Officer of Virgin Trains, said: “We have pressed time and again for improvement and been promised change. Yet still the performance of the West Coast route falls well short of any other part of the railway.

“We need effective and meaningful measurement and action by the regulator to bring about improvement and we will be pressing for this.

“Our customers have shown great loyalty and we owe it to them to demand far better infrastructure performance. We need Network Rail to take full responsibility and make sure that improvements are introduced quickly so that we can deliver the standard of service that customers rightly demand.”

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