New figures from the Strategic Rail Authority show that local provider South West Trains remains the least punctual service in London. However, the performance of the service has seen a marked improvement from previous levels with 7% more trains running to timetable than at the same time last year.

South West Trains claim that the new timetable implemented at the end of last year is already showing benefits which will lead to further improvements in performance.

South West Trains’ Managing Director, Andrew Haines, said: “While we recognise that some passengers will feel they have lost out due to extended journey times, we believe that overall the new timetable has benefited the majority of passengers as our performance figures show that more trains are running on time. The emphasis now is on bettering these figures and further driving down delay.”

Quarterly performance figures from the SRA show that 80.3% of trains ran on time in Quarter 3 (October to December 2004), an increase of 3.9 percentage points, from 76.4% in the same period in 2003. However South West Trains only managed to get 72% of trains to run within 5 minutes of the time-table during peak times. Silverlink users fared better with 82% of trains on time.

The performance for services over the whole day was better with South West achieving 77% punctuality which was an improvement on the same period last year.

Overall services in London and the country showed steady improvement in terms of punctuality.

SRA Chairman, David Quarmby said, "This is the second successive year of significantly improved performance during the very difficult Autumn quarter. It shows that the foundations laid by the industry for a better railway are sound and are being built upon both by Network Rail and the train operating companies."

Public Performance Measure by train operating company

Percentage of trains arriving on time 2004-05 Q3

	2004-05 Q3	2003-04 Q3	Year to 31 Dec 2004	Year to 30 Sept 2004
London and SE operators - all day
c2c	92.4	83.6	91.7	89.5
Chiltern Railways	91.3	91.6	91.9	91.9
First Great Western Link	80.3	76.7	83.2	82.3
ONE	86.9	-	-	-
Silverlink	83.3	77.7	82.2	80.8
South Eastern Trains	80.5	74.2	83.6	82.2
South West Trains	77.0	69.9	77.4	75.7
Southern	78.3	74.6	80.7	79.8
Thameslink	84.7	71.3	81.0	77.6
WAGN*	86.6	79.8	87.6	84.9
Sector Level	81.9	76.3	83.2	81.8
London and SE operators - peak
c2c	92.2	83.7	90.5	88.4
Chiltern Railways	87.3	87.2	89.1	89.1
First Great Western Link †	68.9	69.5	76.7	76.8
ONE	83.9	-	-	-
Silverlink	82.0	85.1	85.0	85.8
South Eastern Trains	75.1	69.0	78.5	77.0
South West Trains	72.0	67.6	74.2	73.1
Southern	72.4	68.7	77.1	76.2
Thameslink	78.1	60.3	75.0	70.6
WAGN*	84.2	72.6	85.1	80.7
Sector Level	77.7	72.1	80.2	78.8

* WAGN now covers only Great Northern services.

† Formerly Thames Trains.