Mark Williams MP grills Arriva on performance

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 11th Nov 2008

Ceredigion's Welsh Liberal Democrat MP Mark Williams has today taken Arriva Trains Wales to task over the gap between their stated performance levels and the public perception of their performance at an evidence session of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee.

While Arriva Trains Wales talked of a 92.4% Public Performance Measure (PPM), Mark Williams pointed out that at last week's session, Passenger Focus stated that while Wales as a whole achieved a passenger satisfaction rate of 80%, satisfaction on the Aberystwyth to Shrewsbury line was around 40%. Mark Williams also questioned Arriva on the integration of rail and bus services, what was being done to avoid delays caused by engineering works, and how well engineering works were publicised. Commenting, Mark Williams said: "Arriva can say that 92.4% of their trains are on time as much as they like, but if only 40% of customers are satisfied with the service then this suggests that their numbers don't reflect the true feelings of those that use it. "I know from my conversations with constituents that most do not share this rosy picture, and to be fair to Arriva they acknowledged that this was the case. "The Cambrian Line itself only has a punctuality rate of 87.2% in the last year and 86.8% in the last four weeks. That means nearly a sixth of all trains don't arrive within 10 minutes of their scheduled time. "There is a very long way to go to get a reliable Cambrian Line service and it is important that Arriva Trains Wales work hard on improving the reliability of the service, and that Network Rail provide the infrastructure that is necessary to improve it." Notes:Arriva Trains Wales' punctuality and reliability figures are available here:http://www.arrivatrainswales.co.uk/Our_Performance2.aspx