Missing Punctuality Stats

[James Howard]

Shouldn’t January’s punctuality stats be up by now? Since they are for a 4 week period, they are now more than 4 weeks overdue. I went to check them because punctuality on my trains has been particularly woeful since Christmas. Both November and December were around the 90% mark for Sligo.

It would be interesting to look back at old figures because I feel that punctuality always seems to deteriorate markedly in the months coming up to a new timetable and then recovers immediately on the new timetable. But maybe this was because the timetable used to change in early December which co-incided with the end of leaf-slip season.

http://www.irishrail.ie/about-us/train-performance

[Mark Gleeson]

We believe this is a legal ploy to block compensation payments

As you must apply within 28 days of the date of travel, but you can't apply until the numbers come out

This has been raised with the NTA

[James Howard]

Also interesting, that 99.46% of Sligo trains ran in December despite the 1600 being cancelled for a fortnight due to lack of rolling stock. (or was it weather and hence left out of the stats).

[berneyarms]

Also interesting, that 99.46% of Sligo trains ran in December despite the 1600 being cancelled for a fortnight due to lack of rolling stock. (or was it weather and hence left out of the stats).

I'd be pretty sure that would be excluded on the grounds that there was a temporary timetable in place and that the punctuality/reliability statistics would be based on that.

In other words, the 16:00 was not planned to operate and as such it would not feature.

That would be what has happened across the water whenever there has been a similar situation with special timetables in place (quite a lot recently!!).

[James Howard]

It was planned to operate - it was on the published timetable. Then they changed the plan. How soon before the operation time doe the change in plan apply?

It's a complete waste of time collecting and reporting statistics if you're just going to fiddle the numbers to make them look better. Better off redeploying the resources involved to help customers.

[berneyarms]

It was planned to operate - it was on the published timetable. Then they changed the plan. How soon before the operation time doe the change in plan apply?

It's a complete waste of time collecting and reporting statistics if you're just going to fiddle the numbers to make them look better. Better off redeploying the resources involved to help customers.

If they publically announce that the train is cancelled for the foreseeable future, that does mean that it is effectively a timetable alteration - that's standard across the industry. The train was removed from the journey planners and as such was not planned to operate.

This has come up time and again on the British railway network whenever there has been a line closure and trains have been altered/cancelled for a sustained period. The view taken is that the revised timetable is taken as the standard to which the statistics are reported against.

That's clearly what is happening here.

If it's not in the journey planner then it is not planned to operate.

[James Howard]

It is obviously what happened but that doesn't make it anything other than a fiddle. If you said to people that a 4PM train for which Irish Rail were paid a subvention normally runs, is on the printed timetable in the station and was bookable at some point it the past but is not running, would you say they would consider that this train had been cancelled.

Many people would also consider a bus-substitution to be a cancellation but we won't even go there. It looks like these must have been left out of the punctuality figures as I find it hard to believe that 92% of Sligo services were within 10 minutes of time in December. It would be impressive if those numbers were real as they beat Cork, Galway, Rosslare and Belfast.

[James Howard]

So they finally got he January and February statistics up. I would seriously love to know how they calculate these as they bear no connection whatsoever to my experience of travelling on the Sligo line during the time. They had 93.3% and 93.7% punctuality in January and February when pretty much every train I took was 10 minutes late. For at least a week in January most trains were up to an hour late.

I obviously was extremely unlucky in my train selection because every single train I took seems to have been in the 6.3% of late trains in February. Thankfully things have improved dramatically in the last month.

[Thomas J Stamp]

Thankfully things have improved dramatically in the last month.

you've started to drive instead?

[Dublin13]

I started to drive - Don't regret it at all.

Unstil they do something about evening capacity to Malahide from Clontarf that won't change. Don't care if that is a new timetable or removing the four car trains, got fed up of being left behind and when I could get on being squashed like a sardine and having to get off at every station to let others off.