Following further recent probelms, Cllr John Moss has recevied the following update from Transport for London
Dear Cllr Moss
Thank you for your emails about the West Anglia route. As your constituents have alluded to, service on London Overground over the past few days has been poor and on behalf of London Overground I would like to apologise for that. Disruption yesterday was largely caused by Network Rail infrastructure failures resulting in congestion on the route. These issues were compounded by rolling stock becoming unserviceable.
Since the introduction of our service and since we met earlier this year we have, as discussed then, monitored West Anglia performance particularly closely. With some exceptions, generally, the service has improved against the low in performance in June. Even during the Victoria Line blockade in August, statistically, services out of Liverpool Street have been improving measured against the Moving Annual Average (MAA) of performance:
The chart [attached] sets out performance on the West Anglia route in terms of the Public Performance Measure (PPM). Predominantly, delays and cancellations are caused by three factors (forgive me if this is over-explanation as I remember you have some knowledge of the railways):
· TOC (Train Operating Companies) on Self – where our own trains or staffing issues cause disruption
· TOC on TOC – where problems with other companies’ trains affect our services
· Infrastructure Issues – where Network Rail infrastructure issues cause disruption to trains (e.g. track circuit failures or points failures)
Since July, the greater part of major disruption to the West Anglia route has been caused by infrastructure failures. While we work very closely with Network Rail and other TOCs, when our passengers’ service is disrupted by factors outside our control, this is enormously frustrating.
In spite of the work we have undertaken, the performance of the route has not met our expectations in recent days, in spite of sustained periods where the service has operated well. When we last met we told you the steps we are undertaking, and engineering solutions we are implementing, to ensure the reliability of our rolling stock. Those solutions are in addition to the procurement of new rolling stock and the wider overhaul of existing trains on the West Anglia route. The work we have done to make our rolling stock more reliable has had a positive effect evidenced by the marked drop short-formed services on average. Self-evidently though, more units are failing than is tolerable and we are scrutinising why that is the case. In addition we are leasing additional rolling stock to resilience. We also continue our work with Network Rail to ensure infrastructure failures are minimised.