The largest passenger satisfaction survey in the history of Britain’s railway has officially launched, marking a significant step towards placing customers at the heart of the network.
Known as the Rail Customer Experience Survey, this ambitious initiative aims to gather feedback from approximately 10,000 passengers each month, totalling an estimated 130,000 passengers annually. Travellers will be approached while en route to their destinations, providing a direct opportunity to voice their experiences and suggest areas for improvement.
The first set of results is expected to be made publicly available on an interactive online dashboard in Autumn 2025. This valuable passenger feedback will be used to help train operators enhance day-to-day services and inform industry decision-making, ensuring that customer needs and wants are at the forefront of systemic changes across Britain’s railways.
This collaborative survey is a joint effort between the Rail Delivery Group, Department for Transport, Network Rail, Transport Focus, and the Customer and Revenue Growth team, formerly part of the Great British Railways Transition Team.
Jacqueline Starr, Executive Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Rail Delivery Group, said: “The industry is excited to offer this new and meaningful way for customers’ voices to be effectively and consistently heard across the rail network. No matter which train operator you travel with or where you are headed, you’ll have the opportunity to speak directly to us and know that you’re being listened to. We’re going to make it easier for customers to share their views with the industry, and it will help the industry put those views into practice. Making a real difference for customers. And, as the industry moves towards the creation of Great British Railways, this helps us to make sure that where there is best practice, it is spread across the network so that everyone can benefit, no matter where they live.”
Rail Minister Lord Hendy said: “Great British Railways is putting passengers back at the heart of our transport network. Hearing directly from those that use our trains about how to improve them will help us return services to a standard we can be proud of again. We are proud to deliver this ambitious project alongside organisations across the rail sector, coming together to commit to change and improvements for the nation’s railways.”
Laura Shoaf, Chair of Shadow Great British Railways, said: “The launch of this survey marks a significant step forward for Britain’s railways. By launching the largest-ever passenger survey, Shadow Great British Railways partners are putting customers at the heart of everything we do. Talking directly to ten thousand passengers every month — while they travel — will give us an unprecedented understanding of the real passenger experience. As we progress toward establishing Great British Railways, this survey is a vital tool to identify what’s working well and best practices are shared across the entire network — so that all passengers benefit from consistent, high-quality service.”
Natasha Grice, Director at the independent watchdog Transport Focus, said: “It’s critical that we listen to what passengers tell us are the most important areas to improve upon when it comes to the experiences they are having across the rail industry. The new survey is going to do exactly that, by providing a significant increase in the amount of feedback we hear. This can only be a good thing, and will help us all to remain focused on delivering improvements to the passenger experience. As well as publishing our quarterly scorecard highlighting how operators are performing across a number of industry metrics, we will be producing a 6 – monthly official statistics report starting in May 2026.”
Suzanne Donnelly, Customer & Revenue Growth Director for Network Rail, said: “The launch of this survey is a powerful example of the whole railway sector coming together to deliver a step change in rail’s customer insight capability. Developed collaboratively by the Rail Delivery Group, Network Rail, the Department for Transport, train operating companies, and other partners, this programme puts the passenger voice at the centre of our shared decision-making. It lays a crucial foundation for understanding current customer needs and creating the right conditions for Great British Railways — which will ultimately help to rebuild public trust and encourage more people to travel by train.”
This new survey replaces the previous National Rail Passenger Survey and boasts more than double the sample size. Designed to be a continuous, rolling survey with no planned end date, it will cover the entire rail industry, consolidating elements from previous industry-level surveys for the first time. The innovative methodology leverages new technology to pinpoint the exact train a respondent is travelling on, aiming to fully reflect the everyday experience of rail passengers. This will provide a common framework for the entire industry to measure passenger satisfaction, with the resulting data offering new, universal benchmarks that can be compared across the whole network.
