Transport Focus, one of EPF’s British members, recently commissioned research in order to gain a better understanding of the way that railway performance measures can best reflect passengers’ priorities. The research will help inform forthcoming decisions relating to a reset of the official passenger train performance measures.

The research was designed to explore passengers’ views and aspirations about train performance in general and to understand how train users felt punctuality should be defined. The work was carried out by Illuminas, an international specialist consumer markets consultancy. Transport Focus was working in partnership with the British national infrastructure manager, Network Rail, and the UK’s independent rail regulator, the Office of Road and Rail.

It comprised both qualitative and quantitative stages. The qualitative stage comprised focus groups and in-depth face-to-face interviews. The quantitative work involved a representative sample of two thousand interviewees, designed to help understand a balance of cohorts (age, gender, ethnicity, regional representation, PRMs, digitally excluded, etc.).

The headline findings confirmed that punctuality and reliability are key considerations for passengers. Passengers want the railway to deliver punctual trains that aren’t cancelled and which provide a seat for them to sit on. But it’s not just punctuality, cancellations and getting a seat that matter.

While punctuality is essential, passengers define success in more comprehensive terms, also placing priority on factors such as cleanliness, Wi-Fi/ mobile phone reception and air conditioning. Concerns about personal safety, particularly related to antisocial behaviour, also matter to some. Many passengers feel that, given what they are paying for their ticket, they are entitled to a punctual, reliable service as well as good customer experience.

But the research also highlighted another problem for the rail sector: passengers often have only a limited understanding of the way in which the sector works and, perhaps as a consequence, limited trust is a recurring theme in passenger assessment of railway performance. There needs to be more communication that credible performance measures exist and reassurance about how the figures are objectively calculated and independently monitored.

The detailed research can be found here.