Track Record 27, April to June 2006 - Public Transport Victoria

Track RecordVictoria’s Public Transport Services2.4 Passenger compensationThrough their partnership agreements, train and tram operators are required to provide service levels above a governmentsetthreshold. This arrangement applies to punctuality – ‘Was the service on time?’ – and reliability – ‘Did the serviceactually run?’.Operators must report to customers on a monthly basis on whether or not they have met these minimum servicerequirements.Should an operator not meet minimum service level requirements, compensation (usually in the form of complimentarytickets) must be provided to customers. This compensation applies only to passengers holding valid periodical tickets offour weeks or more who travelled on the service concerned, during the month in question. Applications for compensationare made directly to the operator.Since June 2000, operators have been required to apply Compensation Codes on a monthly basis and to report the resultsto customers. On 1 June 2005, Connex and Yarra Trams launched a new Customer Service Charter, with enhancedcustomer service targets. Table 5 sets out the threshold service levels for each operator. This section outlines whetherfranchisees met these minimum service requirements.Table 5. Service level thresholds for compensation purposes 20Metro trains V/Line Passenger Metro tramsPunctuality 92% 92% 80% 21Punctuality is defined as the percentage of scheduled services that ran on time. On time for compensation purposes isconsidered within five minutes of timetable time for metropolitan trains and V/Line Passenger trains and within oneminute early or up to six minutes late for trams.Reliability 98% 22 96% 95%Reliability is defined as the percentage of scheduled services that actually ran. The exception is trams, where reliabilityis measured by the percentage of actual service kilometres delivered compared to the scheduled kilometres.Metropolitan trains and trams exceeded the specified minimum performance standards during April, May and June 2006and therefore compensation was not payable.For the June quarter 2006, eligible V/Line Passenger train customers were able to claim compensation 23 due to punctualityfalling below the 92 per cent threshold.20 Under the Customer Service Charter launched on 1 June 2005, Connex and Yarra Trams now have a two-tier threshold arrangement for passenger compensation;the more stringent threshold level is shown in this table.21 This threshold punctuality level of 80 per cent for tram services relates to the average of the punctuality at the second, third and fourth of the five monitoring pointsalong the length of the route.22 Under the enhanced customer service requirements of the new Customer Service Charter (launched on 1 June 2005), the service delivery level threshold forConnex rose from 96 per cent to 98 per cent on 1 July 2005. The threshold was previously lifted from 95 per cent to 96 per cent on 1 June 2005.23 During the period relating to Regional Fast Rail works, V/Line Passenger service performance and the Compensation Code is assessed by corridor rather than for thenetwork overall.12