East Coast trains ‘worst for delays’

TRAIN passengers in Yorkshire suffer Britain’s most unreliable services, new figures revealed today.

Passengers on the Government-run East Coast line, which connects Harrogate, York and Leeds with London, suffer the most from delays.

Nationally, a total of 92.2% of trains ran on time in the period June 26 to July 23 2011 - compared with 92.6% in the same period last year, Network Rail said.

But the East Coast punctuality figure for July was only 81.7% - down from 84.7% in the same period of 2010.

Network Rail said East Coast services had been hit by “external factors” which included a lightning strike at Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire, four separate deaths, a line-side fire at Welwyn and cable theft.

The best-performing companies last month were London Overground and Merseyrail which both achieved trains-on-time figures of 96.1%.

Apart from East Coast, only three other train companies failed to run at least 90% of trains on time last month - Virgin Trains (86.9%), First Capital Connect (89.6%) and First Great Western (89.9%).