Travel chaos: 237,000 rush hour trains cancelled since 2019
EMBARGO: 22.30 Thursday 28th March
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Average of 130 morning rush hour trains cancelled every day since 2019
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Most cancelled train in Britain is the 6.40am from Cardiff to Nottingham
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Lib Dems warn “passengers are having to roll the dice every day” as trains cancelled at short notice
A shocking 237,000 morning rush hour trains have faced cancellations since 2019, figures uncovered by the LiberalDemocrats have revealed.
This is equivalent to an average of 130 morning service trains being cancelled per day. The data, obtained from Network Rail through a Freedom of Information request by the Liberal Democrats, shows the total number of trains between 6am and 9am that have been either been fully or partly cancelled since 2019.
2023 saw 55,829 morning rush hour train services either fully or partly cancelled, a 10% rise on the previous year and the worst of any year since 2019. The most cancelled service was the 06:40 train from Cardiff Central to Nottingham, with passengers facing a staggering 68 cancellations in 2023, more than once every five days. The train operator with the worst record was Northern Trains with 25,578 morning services cancelled since 2019.
It comes as passengers are hit with painful rail price hikes, with fares rising by 5% in 2024 and 5.9% in 2023. The Liberal Democrats are calling on the government to tighten powers to sanction failing train operators, along with a freeze on rail fares.
Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Transport, Wera Hobhouse MP said:
"The Conservative Government has hammered passengers with rail fare hikes and a train network that simply cannot be relied upon. Passengers are having to roll the dice every day, uncertain as to whether they will get to their final destinations on time, or even at all.
"To add insult to injury, instead of sorting out the near unusable network, ministers have punished passengers with ever higher ticket prices.
"This Conservative Government has let rail operators fail their customers without any fear of punishment. It's time for the government to freeze rail fares for passengers, and sanction train companies who are running rail services into the ground."
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
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237,000 trains between 06:00 and 9:00 have been cancelled since 2019, which is 130 every single day.
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107,860 full cancellations and 129,308 part cancellations.
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The number represents 4% of all planned services (6,036,105)
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The number of cancelled morning services has risen by 10% in the past year.
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The 06.40 service from Cardiff Central to Nottingham was the most cancelled train in Britain last year, suffering 68 full or part cancellations in just 12 months.
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The train operator with the worst record was Northern Trains which saw 28,578 commuter services cancelled since 2019.
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Rail fares rose by 3.8% in 2022, 5.9% in 2023, and 4.9% in 2024.
Data can be accessed here: Train Cancellations FOI
Text of FOI and notes:
The number of part and full cancellations of services between 06:00 and 09:00 in each
of the calendar years a) 2019, b) 2020, c) 2021, d) 2022, e) 2023 broken down by train
operator.
The time and route of the service with the most part and full cancellations in the
calendar year 2023 and the train operator responsible for the service. A hypothetical
example of the response requested: the 07:12 between Kings Cross and Edinburgh,
LNER, suffered a part or full cancellation 22 times in the calendar year 2023, the most
of any service in that year).
Response:
We do not record the time a train is cancelled so we have provided data for cancellations
to trains that were due to depart their origin station between 06:00 and 08:59. We have
also provided the number of trains originally timetables to depart during this time so you
can compare how many train were scheduled to run against how many actually ran. We
have not included planned or scheduled cancellations.
Part cancellations:
A partial cancellation, where the train still runs but doesn't call at all stations.
