This year’s Golden Whistles pointed to West Coast as an inter-city route to watch for performance tricks. TONY MILES reflects on progress on the route
The last year has seen a dramatic improvement in the punctuality of Virgin West Coast (VWC) services, with the train operating company (TOC) rising up the performance league table. In the first period of the 2017/18 railway year, 91.7% of VWC trains arrived within 10 minutes of advertised time (the benchmark for the Public Performance Measure [PPM] score for inter-city trains). 66.5% of all services arrived exactly on time or early.
Compare those figures with a year earlier. Virgin West Coast had finished the 2014/15 railway year with an average PPM of 86.0% and with only 54% of trains having been early or on time over the previous 12 months.
PARTNERSHIP
Coming as the TOC celebrated its 20th anniversary as the operator of the West Coast franchise, the improvement was the fruit of work started at the end of 2012 when former Chief Operating Officer Chris Gibb completed a report into the state of the infrastructure on the southern section of the West Coast main line. Also relevant was a more recent improvement in the maintenance regime under Network Rail’s …
