3.13 In most respects, good results have been delivered across the rail network in Great Britain in recent times.3 There has been:
• continuing improvement in safety;
• increasing passenger satisfaction;
• improved operational performance, with a 10 per cent improvement in punctuality since 2004
• major growth of rail and passenger freight markets – passenger journeys have grown by 83 per cent to 1.4 billion per year since privatisation;
• significant investment in extra capacity; and
• more frequent services and reductions in journey time.
3.14 Operational performance, which declined immediately after the rail accidents at Hatfield and Potters Bar, as urgent inspections were required on much of the network, has also seen steady improvement. In 2010-11, 90.8 per cent of franchised operators' trains arrived at their destinations on time.4 While performance was slightly lower for long-distance operators, at 87.9 per cent, the upward trend has been similar.
3.15 Following the accidents at Hatfield and Potters Bar, Great Britain rail costs rose significantly in the early 2000s, to the extent that real unit costs of the railway have only now returned to the levels of 1996-97. Sir Roy McNulty's recent independent analysis suggests that there is scope to reduce costs further, identifying up to a 40 per cent gap between Great Britain's rail industry unit costs compared with European comparators.5
3.16 In some areas, rail capacity faces some infrastructure bottlenecks, which means that the increase in passenger demand over recent years adds to the problem of rail crowding in peak periods. It is difficult to define rail capacity, as it encompasses many dimensions including length of trains and the number and frequency of services. Because of a lack of suitable data, this analysis has used a simple measure based on frequency of services. However, this fails to capture several aspects of capacity, access and availability. The critical issue for rail is to ensure there is sufficient provision of train capacity to meet demand.
3.17 The rail network transports approximately 90 million tonnes of goods per year. Rail freight delivers over a quarter of the containerised food, clothes and white goods, and delivers nearly all the coal for the nation's electricity generation. Rail freight has expanded by 60 per cent over the last decade.
3.18 In a recent independent study, it was found that the Great Britain rail system is significantly less utilised than the Dutch or Swiss networks, which both achieve higher punctuality scores.6 It also highlighted that total train operating costs excluding track access charges appear comparatively low, but total infrastructure costs, (including the rail track network), are the highest among a sample of anonymised European peer countries.
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3 Railways in Northern Ireland are devolved.
4 See Public Performance Measure chart in Chart 3.B.
5 Realising the potential of GB rail. Final independent report for the rail value for money study.
6 Civity, International whole industry containing train operating costs benchmarking, 2011