15 February 2008

Dear Colleagues,

This week we released the most recent results from our Passenger’s Charter monitoring.  You will know that twice each year we ask 2500 passengers what they think of our services and complete 2500 ‘mystery shopper’ observations.  Then we publish the results - “warts and all”.  I do not know of any other business which is so open about its performance. 
 
The good news is that our passengers on the railways rate services at an all time high.  Our basic product is a fast journey arriving on time.  We are winning on the rail network – our ‘on time’ performance is very good, as are the value for money, comfort and staff helpfulness scores.
 
We also put a lot of work into getting information out to passengers, so it is good to see our call centre topping the passenger’s charter standard by answering 96% of all calls within 30 seconds – we take around 3,500 calls per day and receive 9000 hits a day on www.translink.co.uk.
 
But our bus passengers’ satisfaction ratings have slipped slightly – they are clearly frustrated with the extra congestion they see every day.  As I said last week, bus speed in Belfast is the big problem we have to get an answer to. Everyone using the roads today can see the slower traffic – our buses are getting caught too; slower buses means later buses.  
 
Our passengers are saying loud and clear they want an answer and that means more priority for buses on the roads.  Credit is due to our colleagues driving the buses for highlighting the issue so well in the media last week.
 
More priority for buses will get even more people on Metro and mean less congestion all round. The congestion costs us an extra £3million per year – that’s money we should be spending on more buses and an even better service.
 
Thanks to investment and hard work over the past few years public transport in Northern Ireland is a real success story – we don’t want to see these gains lost.  We must continue the hard work with our partners in Roads Service to put more bus priority on the ground.  Where this has been done it has worked - the M1, M2 and Antrim Road are great examples.
 
Faster public transport works for everyone – it means healthier, more sustainable and efficient living.  As I said last week this is a key message and we lose no opportunity to get it across.

Philip O'Neill,

Acting Chief Executive

No other business is so open about its performance