Conclusion 8

The rail sector’s performance for passengers and the taxpayer is not good enough and has not been for some time.13 The Office of Rail and Road reported 3.8% of trains were classified as cancelled in 2022–23, along with 86.3% of trains arriving at their final destination on time, meaning that 13.7% were delayed. These levels of performance in 2022–23 were at or worse than levels in 2019–20.14 ‘Passengers must receive high-quality, consistent services day in, day out’ was one of the ten key outcomes that the Department aimed to deliver through its rail reform programme.15 The Department told us that increasing revenues and passenger numbers are the absolute priority.16 It stated further that it knows from its research that the thing customers care most about is whether their train is going to turn up and is it going to run on time.17 Network Rail acknowledged that reliability is one of the biggest issues, and described four other passenger priorities: 8 C&AG’s Report, para 2.10 9 Q 10 10 Q 9 11 C&AG’s Report, para 1.5 12 Q 89 13 C&AG’s Report, para 16 14 C&AG’s Report, para 1.6 15 C&AG’s Report, Figure 2 16 Q 39 17 Q 49 10 Rail reform: The rail transformation programme “…punctuality of your service, the ability to get a seat, the sense that you are getting a fair fare—in other words, that you are not being diddled—and, if something is going wrong, that you get a sense that somebody is looking out for you”.18