National Express Group, which runs franchises on the East Coast line and in Anglia, remains on track for strong year-on-year earnings growth in line with management expectations for the full year.

In its third quarter interim management statement, National Express says its revenue growth was 11 per cent on the East Coast route and six per cent on National Express East Anglia, an overall rail sector growth of nine per cent.

Also, with a recorded 91.2 per cent punctuality in the four weeks to 12 October, East Coast achieved its highest single month average since privatisation.

Group chief executive Richard Bowker said: “Growth across all our businesses has been strong, and we are on track to hit our targets for 2008. We remain confident that our public transport, products and services are well placed to deliver the value that customers are looking for.”

-    A continuing trend of performance improvement has been recorded by National Express East Anglia, which is achieving an average 92.5 per cent punctuality across all its routes compared with 91.5 per cent and 91.8 per cent for the previous two four-weekly periods.

The figures follow the August launch of NXEA and Network Rail’s second Joint Improvement Plan, which focuses on 10 key actions being taken to tackle operational and technical issues.