Abellio Greater Anglia invests a further £1.5m in performance and service delivery initiatives

Abellio Greater Anglia is to invest afurther £1.5m in a new programme of performance and service deliveryinitiatives, designed to give customers a better service by improvingpunctuality and service consistency across its network.

Fully recognising customers want betterperformance after a challenging few weeks, the train operator will implement aseries of actions to improve train reliability including modifications totrains, recruitment of additional staff and further upgrades to trainpresentation standards. The key actions are:

• Reliability modifications to the doors onClass 315, 317 and 321 electric trains used on Great Eastern and West Angliaservices to and from London;
• More overnight door maintenance and repairresources at key locations such as Colchester, Southend, Orient Way (London),Chingford and Cambridge to tackle and prevent disruptive door faults - helpingimprove punctuality on services to and from London;
• Modifications and upgrades to theelectrical and mechanical systems on the Class 315, 317 and 321 electric trainsused on Great Eastern and West Anglia services to and from London;
• Further enhancements to the Class 90locomotive maintenance regime (these locomotives are used on the Norwich -Ipswich - Colchester - London intercity services);
• Improving the maintenance depot systems forchanging train wheels and motors;
• Additional resources to further strengthenthe round the clock technical support for the train fleet;
• Four additional engineers and technicalsupport staff to help deliver the performance improvement schemes as quickly aspossible (in addition to the 6 announced last month);
• Fourteen additional cleaning staff (inaddition to the 40 extra staff announced last month) to continue the focus andinvestment on cleaner trains.

The programme of initiatives will startimmediately and be delivered progressively over the next six months to helpimprove punctuality and wider service delivery across the company's network,after the difficult recent period. Although Abellio Greater Anglia's annualpunctuality results place it 10th out of the 22 UK train operators (with anannual average of 90.7% against a national average of 89.3%), the last fewweeks have not been good enough. The autumn is traditionally a more difficultperiod for UK train performance, but this year has been especially problematic- primarily due to infrastructure faults such as track, signalling and overheadline problems, plus an increase in problems due to weather-related disruptionand an increase of over 50% in the number of fatality incidents (suicides)compared to 2013. In addition, therehave been Abellio Greater Anglia’s own train faults, plus freight companies’train faults.

Abellio Greater Anglia is working veryclosely with Network Rail, who is actively targeting a more reliableinfrastructure performance in the New Year.

In the meantime, the train operator isplaying its full part in improving performance by implementing this programmeof performance and service delivery initiatives. The investment follows on from£20 million worth of service upgrades announced in April 2014 and a further £10million of upgrades announced in November 2014.

Abellio Greater Anglia Managing DirectorJamie Burles said: "We are sorry that recent performance has not beenreliable enough. We are listening to our customers' feedback every day and weare anxious to address their concerns. This extensive programme of performanceand service delivery initiatives is deliberately designed to address issuesregarding recent performance head on. By investing further in the reliability andcondition of our fleet of trains, we expect to see improvements in trainpunctuality over the coming months. Some actions will have a quicker impactthan others, but in tandem with all the work Network Rail is doing to addressinfrastructure problems, we are determined they will make a positive differencein 2015.

“In addition, the recently announcedservice quality investments to the on-train environment for a number of ourcarriages, plus other improvements to Sunday timetables and station facilities,mean that customers should see a real, positive difference to service standardsover the next year, building on the train, station and timetable upgrades wehave introduced over the last 12 months. We are fully committed to delivering abetter service in the short term, as well as continuing to work effectivelywith regional stakeholders to secure longer term investment and upgrades forour region's railways."