‘Still work to do’ despite improvements in Transport for Wales’ reliability

Latest figures show Transport for Wales’ reliability is improving as more services run on time across the Wales and Borders network.

The Office of Rail and Road’s (ORR) quarterly figures for July to September, published today (11 December), show TfW had the biggest improvement in punctuality of all UK train operators, with a 4.9 percentage point increase to 84.1%. The second biggest increase was East Midlands Trains’ 1.4 percentage point improvement.

ORR figures for the previous quarter – April to June 2025 – also showed TfW had the biggest improvement in punctuality of all the UK train companies for that period.

Overall TfW has moved up to 12th out of the 24 companies for performance.

The achievement follows a contentious period for the rail operator, whose services recorded more than a million minutes worth of delays in 2023.

The total delays, revealed as part of an investigation by the S4C current affairs programme Y Byd ar Bedwar into the standard of service provided by the public transport operator, came during the worst year on record since TfW took over the Wales and Borders network in 2018.

The Y Byd ar Bedwar team also discovered that more than 83,000 contacts had been made by dissatisfied passengers to the operator between 2020 and the show’s airing.

In 2025, however, TfW achieved the highest overall satisfaction score among train operators serving Wales scoring 88%, up from 84% in June, according to Transport Focus.

They attributed the improvement in their services to value for money, for which TfW placed 2nd out of all the UK operators, and strong performances both in crowding on board (83% satisfaction) and personal safety on board (91%), both above regional and national averages.

Additionally, cancellation figures also improved by 1.4 percentage points for the period from July to September, which was the 4th biggest improvement in the industry, moving up to 16th out of the 24 companies for cancellations.

This was despite a number of incidents of cable theft on the Rhymney Valley lines in September, which caused a significant number of cancellations and damage costing more than £750,000.

TfW noted that the improvements took place during a busy period in terms of passenger numbers, which increased over the summer for several major events including the opening two nights of Oasis’ reunion tour.

Marie Daly, Chief Operating Officer at TfW, said: “This is the second quarter of significant improvement in our punctuality performance as we focus on delivering the best-possible service for our customers.

“There is a lot of hard work being put in by TfW and our industry partners at, Amey in Wales and Network Rail to drive continuous improvement in how quickly we get things moving when there is a delay and identifying regular issues and hotspots so we can fix them.

“We are now regularly delivering the best performance in the industry on the Core Valley Lines and we are focussed on replicating these brilliant results right across the Wales and Borders network.

“We know there is still work to do, but as more of our £800m fleet of brand-new trains come into service we are aiming to improve performance and the customer experience across the network.”