RAIL bosses have hailed best-ever punctuality figures in West Yorkshire.

Metro has welcomed news that this week Northern Rail ran a record 97.73% of its Area trains, which serve busy West Yorkshire destinations, on-time.

On Tuesday, 1,120 of the 1146 Northern’s scheduled services in its Eastern operations area, which includes busy commuter routes to Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Wakefield and Halifax, ran on time.

Metro chairman Clr Chris Greaves said: “These results, which come in a week that showed another rise in the rail company’s annual punctuality rating to 89.6% are good news for West Yorkshire rail users.

“I would like to congratulate Northern on this achievement and the improvements they have made.

“Late-running and cancelled trains have become a favourite cliché of newsreaders and media pundits but these results show that in reality the vast majority of trains run, and run on time,” added Clr Greaves.

Some of the delays were down to mindless track-side vandalism or the theft of signalling cables, which cause great inconvenience and put passengers at risk.

Clr Greaves urged people to “shop” those responsible and help give train operators the best chance to continue running their services on time.