We’ve been concerned for some while about Southeastern’s growing use of “Station Skipping” to get trains back on time. Essentially this reduces recorded delays on trains by increasing delays for customers. It’s good for Southeastern because their performance is measured by how much trains are delayed, not by how much passengers are delayed. But is station skipping recorded properly? We’ve been trying to find out.

To keep station skipping in check the “Public Performance Measure” (PPM) rules are supposed to count a train as a “fail” if any stations are skipped – whether or not the train reached its destination within the 5 minute PPM threshold. That’s not wholly effective as a deterrent to skipping: Southeastern now often station-skip on a train that has already failed its PPM (each train can only fail once) in order that the next service using that stock will be on time – so halving the number of PPM “fails”. That looks like gaming the performance measurement system.

Network Rail’s PPM monitoring system automatically records arrival times at the destination, whether Southeastern like it or not. But the system does not automatically record station skipping – it is only recorded if Southeastern submit a “Fail to Stop” report. Do Southeastern always do that, bearing in mind that it is against their commercial interests to do so?

We’ve been trying to find out. We’ve used the Freedom of Information Act to access Network Rail’s records of a few sample trains that we know skipped stations. Network Rail have resisted giving this information out – accusing us of being “vexatious”. But we’ve persevered, and yesterday Network Rail finally gave us the details on the first two trains, on which we had been seeking since 25 November – over three months delay, and over treble the statutory time for responses to FOI requests.

One of our test trains was the 0720 from Tunbridge Wells to Charing Cross on Monday 5 September 2016. There was a points problem at London Bridge that morning and Southeastern decided not to stop Charing Cross-bound trains at London Bridge between around 0730 and 0830. We know the 0720 did not stop because (a) one of our Committee was on it and (b) Southeastern acknowledged on Twitter that trains were not stopping.

However Network Rail have admitted that “we were not informed by the Train Operator of any failed to stop for this service”. Although the automatic system actually did show incomplete stop and start times at London Bridge, Network Rail seem to have regarded this simply as a data error. As far as Network Rail’s database is concerned, the train did stop everywhere it was supposed to.

So Southeastern seem to have failed to report the “Fail to Stop” at London Bridge. As a consequence they will have avoided any performance penalty that the station skipping should have given.

Is this an isolated mistake? Or is it part of a systematic under-reporting of station-skippng?

We think that:

• Network Rail should allow public online access to their records of individual train performance measurement so that everyone can check whether their own trains’ timing and stoppng has been correctly recorded for performance purposes. The train timings are available in real time – but at the moment station skipping and other manual amendments are not.
• There should be proper, independent, continuous, audit of the performance figures – not least because there is a lot of public money at stake.
• There should be a substantial penalty each time a Train Operating Company like Southeastern fail to report a performance shortfall that would count against them.