FirstGroup’s 100 per cent electric rail operator, Lumo, has won ‘Overall Best Operator’ at the World Passenger Awards shortly after celebrating its first year in operation.
The award comes as Lumo was recognised for its overall positive sentiment on social media from customers and excellence across all award categories, from a shortlist of 134 other rail operators from across the globe.
To calculate winning criteria, the World Passenger Awards partnered with Gateshead-based software company Wordnerds, using their pioneering text analytics tool to measure positive sentiment across several key areas for each category award.
Utilising Twitter as its main resource, over one million Tweets were analysed from across 40 different countries.
Lumo also won the ‘At the Station’ award, as Lumo staff were commended for their extra-mile customer service as a result of the visibility and helpfulness of Lumo staff when assisting customers boarding trains from the platform, and was a finalist for the ‘Access’ award category.
Martijn Gilbert, Managing Director of Lumo, said: “It is vital for the economy to have an affordable and sustainable means to travel long distances. We are thrilled that our customers have not only decided to travel with us for these reasons but have had positive experiences throughout our first year in operation as well.”
Launched in October 2021, Lumo estimates that it could have saved the equivalent CO2 emissions of 21,000 homes’ electricity use for an entire year by virtue of its passengers choosing its 100% electric trains rather than flying***. Its fleet has now travelled over one million miles.
*** 5,500 flights of 180 passengers = 26.33 tonnes of CO2 x 5,500 = 144,815 tonnes CO2. Rail is at least six times greener than travelling by air, meaning the CO2 equivalent savings are at least 120,680 tonnes of CO2. World Land Trust Carbon Calculator used for calculations. https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator#results used for equivalencies.
Photo credit: Lumo
