At South Western Railway we know that you want a safe, reliable, punctual service. We’re committed to providing this, to help deliver the best service we can.
We continually measure our service reliability and punctuality and report on how we are performing against targets which are set in our Passenger’s Charter.
All our services are monitored every day, including Sundays and Bank Holidays and we have a range of performance metrics in place to measure the levels of performance we are delivering to our customers including;
Percentage of services cancelled (caused by SWR) – the percentage of passenger services which are cancelled for all or part of their planned schedule including those services that fail to call at any intermediate stations on route as planned. This measure only includes cancellations were SWR is responsible for the incident such as fleet issues, crew issues, stations, disorder etc.
Total percentage of services cancelled – the percentage of passenger services which are cancelled for all or part of their planned schedule including those services that fail to call at any intermediate stations on route as planned. This measure includes all cancellations such as Network Rail infrastructure issues, other operators and SWR cancellations as mentioned above.
Delay minutes per 1000 miles (caused by SWR) – total number of minutes SWR services have been delayed by where the incident is the responsibility of SWR. This number is normalised by the number of 1000 passenger service miles travelled by our trains.
Percentage of stops on time – percentage of station calls where the train arrived at the timetabled arrival time or earlier including early trains. For service origins, the timetabled departure time is used instead of the arrival time.
Percentage of stops up to 3 minutes delayed (OT-3) – percentage of station calls where the train arrived up to 3 minutes late after the timetabled arrival time or earlier including early trains. For example, trains that arrive 1 minute early, on time, 1 minute late or 2 minutes 59 seconds late all count as an OT-3 success. Any trains that are 3 minutes late or more count as an OT-3 failure. For service origins, the timetabled departure time is used instead of the arrival time.
Percentage of stops up to 15 minutes delayed (OT-15) – percentage of station calls where the train arrived up to 15 minutes late after the timetabled arrival time or earlier including early trains. For example, trains that arrive 1 minute early, on time, 10 minutes late or 14 minutes 59 seconds late all count as an OT-15 success. Any trains that are 15 minutes late or more count as an OT-15 failure. For service origins, the timetabled departure time is used instead of the arrival time.
Number of under capacity services – the number of passenger services with fewer seats or standing capacity (depending on service or time of day) than specified in the capacity statement approved by the Department for Transport. Services cancelled in full or in part are excluded from this metric as they are already accounted for under other performance metrics.
Percentage of under capacity services – as above but as a percentage of services that ran.
Number of booked services – number of services that have been timetabled. This number may be affected by infrastructure issues, engineering works and industrial action.
Period – a timeframe of typically 4 weeks, defined by Network Rail. There are 13 periods in each financial year which starts on the 1st of April and ends on the 31st of March.
Caused by SWR – These are incidents and delays where SWR is the responsibility. These include incidents that are directly within SWR’s control which may include:
- crew shortages
- driver errors
- fleet failures
- timetabling errors
- rostering errors
- station issues
- passenger assistance
These also include incidents that are not directly within SWR’s control but are still our responsibility to prevent any further disruption such as:
- passenger disorder
- vandalism
- ill passengers
- bird strikes
- external power failures to stations
Conversely, incidents that are not attributed to SWR include infrastructure incidents such as:
- signal failures
- points failures
- broken rails
- landslips
- bridge strikes
- trespass
- trees on the line
- extreme weather
- flooding
SWR is not directly responsible for the above infrastructure incidents, however, we are still responsible for ensuring services return to normal after an incident such as resolving issues with displaced crew and rolling stock as well as implementing alternative plans to minimise disruption to customers. An exception is the Island Line where SWR operates both the trains and the infrastructure where SWR is responsible for all delays.
SWR trains can also be delayed by other passenger or freight operators where we share the same tracks and stations.
The four lines and which stations these include that are detailed in the tables below can be seen in this map:
Download a PDF version of the map
Performance data by metric — Period 8 (15 October - 11 November 2023)
