Flying Start to 2006 for West Coast Line
02 Mar 2006
Virgin Trains are celebrating their best-ever West Coast performance figures, with 91% of trains running on time in the first month of 2006.
The result is a 22% improvement on the same period in 2005, and comes in the wake of a survey by rail watchdog Passenger Focus, who showed that 82% of passengers were satisfied with their journey. Customers satisfied with timekeeping and reliability also rose, going up to 80%, a 9% improvement. Virgin West Coast managing director Charles Belcher said: "These results speak for themselves. Virgin has worked very hard with Network Rail and Alstom to focus on delivering top class performance. 199 out of 217 trains run every day are now regularly arriving at their destination on time.”
Network Rail deputy chief executive Iain Coucher added: "We have set demanding targets and the recent performance on West Coast has been impressive. Delays caused by infrastructure are falling rapidly and this is a real tribute to the hard work put in to deliver improvements. However we are impatient to see more progress and we will continue to work with Virgin to ensure a better service for passengers."