Lord Adonis has been much exercised over the accuracy of PPM recently.
Only last week Her Majesty's Daily Telegraph suggested he was keen to tighten up the measure used to calculate on time arrival, so as to make the figure a more accurate reflection of time in the real world.
Of course no such strictures apply to the Noble Lord himself.
Why only this morning the High Speed Evangelist kept a bevy of TOC MDs waiting 20 minutes before he finally arrived to open the Stations Summit.
Fortunately right time arrival was achieved, but only after career railwayman, Chris Green, had jettisoned the final section of his presentation.
Leadership by example - shome mishtake shurley.
UPDATE: This from Strawbricking...
Instead of seeking to re-define "On time", currently within 10 minutes (for InterCity TOCs, Ed) at the "Final Destination", would not Lord A's attention be better directed at looking at trains which are late during their journey but still arrive "On time" because of the slack built into the time-table?
And then there are the ways in which the figures are "massaged", such as:
- "stop-skipping" - leaving out stations on the way to claw back a delay (but not leaving a trace on the system as a cancelled train),
- "early termination" - stopping short and starting the return journey to claw back delay (again not leaving a trace as a cancelled train)
- or cancelling a severely delayed train - thereby wiping out the delay minutes.
Trains that 'skip stops' or are cancelled entirely/midway already fail PPM, they're not 'massaged' out
To make PPM train must serve all booked stations and arrive at destination within 5 minutes (or 10 for Long Distance).
PPM is at least an improvement on Charter!
Posts
