How Chiltern Railways have delivered against stakeholders feedback in 2024?
Last year Stakeholders identified the following priorities when asked what Chiltern Railways should focus on improving over the next 12 – 18 months.
- Delivering a reliable rail service – 38%
- Customer service improvements including onboard facilities on our trains – 26%
- Maintaining stakeholder relationships and delivering community projects – 19%
- Increasing seating capacity and reducing overcrowding – 12%
Delivering a reliable rail service:
Chiltern continues to perform highly in terms of punctuality, with the 3rd best performance amongst English train operators. Over the past 12 months over 90% of our services have arrived within 3 minutes their scheduled times. However, our communities are growing, and our stakeholders have exciting expansion plans, so we recognise we have more to do to increase seating capacity on the network. In June 2024 we introduced 6 additional mid-week services to reflect changes in customer demand. This includes additional morning and evening commuter services for stations including High Wycombe, Beaconsfield and Princes Risborough.
Our 12-month performance average and customers at Wembley Stadium
Improving our stations and on-board facilities:
Chiltern have delivered a number of customer improvements over the past year, including launching a £12 million refurbishment programme for our 24-year-old diesel trains. The first train (168003) is now in service and includes upgraded features including USB charging sockets, an enhanced Wi-Fi system and updated seating to make journeys easier and better for our customers. The entire fleet will be upgraded over the next 12 months
Our Property and Projects teams have also delivered several enhancement projects this year including carrying out a full deep clean of all Chiltern managed stations in the Spring. Completed improvement projects include a community refresh of Dorridge ticket hall and the replacement of station benches across our estate. Additional projects are also being delivered at present including an upgraded café, waiting area and customer toilets at Banbury station. We are also set to deliver a £3 million replacement of the car park at Bicester North station and refreshed toilets at Leamington Spa, Bicester North and High Wycombe stations in early 2025.
Over the next 12 months we are planning to continue to deliver further station enhancements, including a £500,000 re-painting programme starting with Banbury station. Subject to approval in our Annual Business Plan, this programme will be rolled out to all Chiltern managed stations next year.
The completed refresh of our first 24-year-old diesel train
Enhancing our stakeholder and community relationships:
To keep Stakeholders updated on our operations, we have increased and improved our regular communications on key business and operational updates. This has included sending Stakeholder and Community Newsletters, plus additional bulletins on key topics from communicating the impact of engineering works to updating on key projects at Banbury and Bicester North Stations. We are also expanding the Stakeholder team with a newly created Regional Growth Manager position to lead our engagement on growth projects across the network.
We are pleased to have been ‘highly commended’ at the National Rail Awards for our community rail project delivery and celebrated the 125th anniversary of London Marylebone Station alongside stakeholders and the local community on the 15 March 2024. This year we have expanded our Station Adoption network adding new groups at High Wycombe and Stoke Mandeville. Our Community Investment Fund will also provide £145,000 of funding to 11 community projects this year. We are looking forward to seeing the diversity of projects being delivered, from community artwork to rail confidence sessions for schoolchildren as we look ahead to celebrations to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the UK railway next September.
125th Anniversary Celebrations at London Marylebone
Increasing our seating capacity:
Customer travel patterns have changed significantly since the Pandemic, and we have made changes to our timetables in May 2023 and June 2024 to better match the capacity of our services to meet customer demand. We are aware that some peak commuter and weekend services remain overcrowded. We have an active business case with the Department for Transport to bring in replacement and additional carriages. Subject to approval from the Government later this year, we are planning to replace our ageing 47-year-old (Mark iii) carriages with younger trains and would also like to increase overall seating capacity by up to 20% on our Intercity route to Birmingham. This would provide us with additional carriages for our peak commuter and leisure markets, as well as the ability to serve a growing number of special events happening across our network.
We are also working closely with Network Rail and Great British Railways Transition Team to explore the preferred solution to decarbonise our commuter routes to Aylebsury and High Wycombe.