Two Sheffield stations among worst performing in country

Sheffield station and Meadowhall station are both in the bottom 20 of worst performing stations in the country, according to data from a Freedom of Information request.

At Sheffield station, more than half of all trains are not departing on time, with 57.3 per cent of all services running late - the 12th worst figure in the country.

And Meadowhall is even worse, with 62.5 per cent of all trains not leaving the station on time - making it the fifth-worst place to catch a train in the UK.

Other bad performing stations include Lancaster, where 63.5 per cent of all trains leave late - the worst in the country - as well as Manchester Oxford Road, Wakefield Westgate and Durham.

The best performing station is Cardiff Bay - where almost 94 per cent of all trains leave on time - ahead of Falmer, Chingford, London Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 and Kirkdale.

Out of the top 20 worst performing stations for punctuality, 13 are in the north of England, and five are in Birmingham or the West Midlands.

Of the top 20 best-performing stations, 15 are in the south of England, with eight of those in Essex and six in London. Two Merseyside stations also make the top 10.

The data was collected by York-based staff scheduling software provider RotaCloud.

To find out how likely trains in your area are to be late visit https://rotacloud.com/departurebored.

Nigel Spetch, vice-chair of the South Yorkshire Transport Users’ Association said the statistics made for ‘disappointing, but unsurprising reading’.

He said: “The problem is widespread across the entire network and only substantive measures and actions, which will come at a cost, will cause meaningful improvement.

“Years of under-investment by governments of all flavours coupled with increasing demand have resulted in significant under-capacity at various pinch points.

“Sheffield is one such place, as indeed are Leeds, Doncaster, Manchester and the Trans-Pennine corridor between Leeds and Manchester.

“What is both lacking and needed is a change of focus towards the service offered to the passenger, rather than what appears to be a focus on cost limitation.

“In the long run, it is to be hoped that such measures would in fact bring benefits in passenger satisfaction, and drive passenger - and thereby revenue - growth.”

A spokesperson for the Rail Delivery Group, an organisation which represents train operators and Network Rail, said: “We know how frustrating delays can be which is why we’re doing more to tackle them from spending billions on major upgrades to ease congestion, to running public campaigns to reduce trespassing.

“So that passengers know the level of service they can expect, the rail industry has adopted the most rigorous to-the-minute measure of punctuality in Europe and has launched an online tool so people can check the past reliability of their specific train, not just their station.”