65%. That is the latest punctuality figure for the Tyne and Wear Metro – one of the lowest performance figures we have seen since we started reporting on these four weekly performance stats. It is also a major fall since the previous period and is lower by 3% than the same period in 2018.
These latest statistics relate to the four weeks between 10th November and 7th December – just including the period when the unions started their overtime ban which had started on 1st December. The previous four weeks – which were bad enough – has seen a figure of 75% whilst in 2018 it was pretty low anyway at 68% but 65% brings new levels of lowness for the Metro.
Two issues are reported as affecting performance in these four weeks, namely a “driver resource unavailable” on 1st December and low railhead adhesion on 4th December. Its interesting that these two dates have been chosen for these issues as judging by the regular updates on Twitter these have been ongoing issues for more than just two random dates during the period.
With the next set of stats including the full overtime ban plus the full strike days on 20th and 21st December it will be interesting to see how they take this into account as it could be that 65% is an optimistic figure…