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National Rail helps deliver an outstanding Olympic Games

12/08/2012

With trains the most popular way to travel to London 2012 events, a historic increase in capacity and high levels of punctuality, the railway has helped show the world that Britain can deliver an outstanding Olympic Games.

• Around 55% of Olympic spectators, up to five million people, used rail for part of their journeys to events, a larger share than the Tube or roads.
• Since the opening ceremony, train companies have run 12.4 million extra seats, an increase of 18.5% on normal services, believed to be the most sustained increase in capacity in the railway’s 187-year history. Today alone, train companies are providing 1,146,072 additional seats, an increase of 63%.
• As well as running a total of 74.9 million seats, the railway performed exceptionally well. Since the first day of the Olympics, the available data shows that the daily average punctuality and reliability of National Rail ranged from 91.5% to 94.7%.

The railway has worked at full capacity for more than two weeks, with train companies running extra services and longer trains, and extending the timetable to cater for late running events. The normal schedule of maintenance for trains and major track and signal work was bought forward and done before the Games to make sure train companies can run as many services as possible, an approach which would be unsustainable all year round.

Michael Roberts, Chief Executive of the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC), said: “As the world's attention has been on Great Britain, the railway has played its part in showing that Britain can deliver an outstanding Olympic Games. Millions of passengers from here and abroad have been able to rely on their train to get them to their destination and home again, from early in the morning until well past midnight.

“A big thank you goes to all our passengers who planned ahead and helped the railway to run smoothly. We are also indebted to our fantastic staff and colleagues across the rail industry who with good humour have worked flat out to deliver the first truly successful public transport Olympics.

“We now look forward to the Paralympics when the railway will be equally focused on helping passengers get to and from events reliably and safely. Once London 2012 is over, our plan is to use the experience of the Games to learn how we can continue improving services and delivering for passengers."

Notes to Editors

Train performance is determined by a measurement called PPM (Public Performance Measure). It combines figures for punctuality and reliability into a single performance measure. PPM is the percentage of trains on time compared to the total number of trains planned.

During 1-4 September 1939, many normal train services were suspended by the four train operators of the day so that thousands of children could be evacuated from London and some other large cities. The official war history of just one of the operators, the LMS, records that it ran 1,450 special trains during four days, which carried about 500,000 children. The return of troops from the Channel ports after the Dunkirk evacuation in June 1940 involved the transport by rail of 330,000 men over a few days.

Hundreds of extra staff from train companies and Network Rail have been working at the busiest stations across the capital and throughout the South East of England.

More than 300 extra customer information screens have been set up at stations in and around London to provide passengers with the most up-to-date travel information.

More than 452,574 spectators travelled to Olympic events using special 2012 Games Train Ticket sales.

Members of the armed forces working at the Games to keep London 2012 secure are able to travel to and from venues within London by train free of charge by showing their military ID card to rail staff.

Fully-staffed trains have been kept on standby at different points of the capital, ready to head off to stations should they become especially busy.

ENDS