UK Rail Passenger Numbers Discussion

[12LDA28C]

It is not a good reason not to provide decent level of comfort for the other 90-95% of the time on same route. And of course many lines have no infrastructure capacity problems, just a lack of rolling stock, to utilise the existing platform lengths. The marginal cost of adding a coach (when available) if it means can sell extra 50+ tickets shouldn’t rule it out as a reasonable concept.

This isn't BR with rakes of spare coaches lying around in sidings unused. 'Adding a coach' is not a realistic option for most operators and if it was, the cost certainly wouldn't be 'marginal' - for example, how much has been spent on extending the Pendolinos?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Maybe if Covid hadn't happened Northern would have been allowed to order another batch of CAF DMUs for growth & to replace some of the 150s/155s (as they are a small microfleet). Who knows what might have happened if the world didn't go crazy in march 2020

There was absolutely no sign of that back then. None at all. Just refer back to some older threads.

 

[yorksrob]

If you do end up with a crush load, I'm not convinced that you will squeeze that many more standees in an austere suburban layout train than in one with slightly more comfortable, lower density seating.

The people on the crush loaded service are going to be uncomfortable anyway, so you might as well design one where people will be comparatively comfortable the rest of the time.

 

[Kite159]

There was absolutely no sign of that back then. None at all. Just refer back to some older threads.

Who knew what the OLR had up their sleeve when they were forced to take over from Arriva in February of 2020?

 

[AM9]

There are very few sections of the network where it is virtually impossible to lengthen platforms, close up signalling headways, or add reversible centre lines to allow overtaking and increase capacity.

In many cases it is just needed for hour or two on certain days of the week, so more an affordability issue.

It is not a good reason not to provide decent level of comfort for the other 90-95% of the time on same route. And of course many lines have no infrastructure capacity problems, just a lack of rolling stock, to utilise the existing platform lengths. The marginal cost of adding a coach (when available) if it means can sell extra 50+ tickets shouldn’t rule it out as a reasonable concept.

@philosopher's comment was specifically about class 700s and more generally prompted by Bald Rick's post listing all the new classes,- most of which were either outer suburban commuter or IC trains. Many of those trains are running at maximum length for the infrastructure and there is evidence that even longer trains then c.250m can effectively reduce actual capacity owing to extended times clearing speed restrictions and extended headways at stations owing to passenger clearing times.
The Thameslink route ran for 25 years with conventional 'comfortable' rolling stock, - even being reinforced in the noughties with Electrostars, but the demand growth curve required a significant uplifty in capacity, hence the class 700s, extending all practicable platdorms to 240m, massive investment in improving capacity in the core reliably, and a serious remodelling of the Waterloo East to Bermondsey corridor including rebuillding London Bridge. So no cheap fix with a few extra cars there.
It's naïve to pretend that there's always opportunity to lengthen platforms (which must be done at every stop) or close up headways, the TL and XR cores demonstrate the pinnacle of what can be achieved with very costly signalling, yet still the capacity per train metre has to be maximised. As for adding a reversible centre track, not in the south east, most railwaylands have been slimmed down to the minimum of whatever the two (or four) running lines require.
So in most cases, the limit of what can be achieved within budget has been reached. If more is justified to give some passengers a more comfy ride, then it is fair for those passengers to pay more for that comfort rather than make everybody, including non-rail travellers for the benefit of the few.

 

[mrmartin]

Is

Latest transport use figures from DfT
(column G is rail) comparison to pre covid

15th Oct 95%
16th Oct 95%
17th Oct 94%
18th Oct 94%
19th Oct 94%
20th Oct 93%
21st Oct 92%
22nd Oct 93%
23rd Oct 92%
24th Oct onwards are provisional

Daily domestic transport use by mode

Daily usage of selected domestic transport by mode for Great Britain.

www.gov.uk

Are these figures passenger numbers or passenger kms?

 

[Starmill]

Would it? Pre COVID much of the railway was creaking under the strain of severe overcrowding at most times of day. It had really got quite unpleasant, and was likely to end up self-limiting if something wasn't done about it - and there was no suggestion that anything would be, e.g. ordering of more stock to solve overcrowding on the likes of Northern or XC.

I think that the way that the government see it is that any route which isn't regularly overcrowded, or at minimum all seats occupied, isn't running efficiently and is wasting resources. Certainly this applies on urban and suburban commuter services in England.

 

[gazzaa2]

Would it? Pre COVID much of the railway was creaking under the strain of severe overcrowding at most times of day. It had really got quite unpleasant, and was likely to end up self-limiting if something wasn't done about it - and there was no suggestion that anything would be, e.g. ordering of more stock to solve overcrowding on the likes of Northern or XC.

What's happened is the peaks during the week have eased somewhat post-Covid due to widespread homeworking/hybrid working. Rush hour into London and the big cities was particularly bad. Obviously the downside is less revenue from annual season tickets etc but the way it was wasn't sustainable. It was worse up north as well.

The problem now is demand for leisure travel has gone UP, especially at weekends, yet services have reduced (Covid timetables), less trains run even in a reduced timetable (staff shortages) and most TOC's have chronic rolling stock shortages as well. This results in very bad customer experiences for many passengers, when added to the myriad of other things that go wrong on the railway in day-to-day.

 

[Snow1964]

Latest transport use figures from DfT
(column G is rail) comparison to pre covid

15th Oct 95%
16th Oct 95%
17th Oct 94%
18th Oct 94%
19th Oct 94%
20th Oct 93%
21st Oct 92%
22nd Oct 93%
23rd Oct 92%
24th Oct onwards are provisional

Daily domestic transport use by mode

Daily usage of selected domestic transport by mode for Great Britain.

www.gov.uk

The DfT seems to have revised figures downwards in its latest update, for same dates now showing between 81% and 89%

Figures in column G (rail) for most recent 7 days are between 78% and 83%. So on average Operators should be operating at least 83% of pre covid timetable or train length

However it is noticeable that some columns are now showing 100% or higher at weekends, with column B (commercial vehicles at 125%), even TfL tube is showing 90-94% at weekends which suggests weekends could be lot busier on rail, but rail operators are clearly asleep to getting weekend trains as busy as other modes.

Data is still on same link as above, but it is a 1000 line excel sheet, so not really viewable on small devices

 

[aavm]

Ticket revenue £8 billion (pre-covid was £10 to 11 billion). Revenue "recovery improved steadily earlier this year but has now ‘flatlined’"
Average fare: £7.40 with 65% online/PAYG
"trains are running on average across all journeys with 75% spare capacity"

So, revenue down 20%. Mind the gap!

Source: https://busandtrainuser.com/2022/11/27/growing-rail-revenue/

 

[Bald Rick]

Ticket revenue £8 billion (pre-covid was £10 to 11 billion). Revenue "recovery improved steadily earlier this year but has now ‘flatlined’"
Average fare: £7.40 with 65% online/PAYG
"trains are running on average across all journeys with 75% spare capacity"

So, revenue down 20%. Mind the gap!

Source: https://busandtrainuser.com/2022/11/27/growing-rail-revenue/

And that doesn’t allow for inflation. Ie that £10-£11bn Pre Covid would be £12-£13bn now even if there was no growth in passenger numbers. Add in growth of 2%pa and revenue should have been £13-£14bn.

 

[43066]

And that doesn’t allow for inflation. Ie that £10-£11bn Pre Covid would be £12-£13bn now even if there was no growth in passenger numbers. Add in growth of 2%pa and revenue should have been £13-£14bn.

Funny how the money is always there when needed for ideological reasons.

How was the proposed income tax cut for those on £150k+ being funded?

For that matter, how did the government afford to recently let me pay thousands of pounds less in stamp duty land tax on a property purchase, than I would have done for the exactly the same transaction 6 months ago*?

*I’m not really complaining about that one.

 

[Ken H]

Funny how the money is always there when needed for ideological reasons.

How was the proposed income tax cut for those on £150k+ being funded?

For that matter, how did the government afford to recently let me pay thousands of pounds less in stamp duty land tax on a property purchase, than I would have done for the exactly the same transaction 6 months ago*?

*I’m not really complaining about that one.

Income tax drops for higher paid usually increase government revenue due to the laffer effect.

All the covid stuff was done by printing money. Thats inflationary. As we are seeing now.

 

[Bald Rick]

Funny how the money is always there when needed for ideological reasons.

All Government spending decisions are ideological at the basic level.

How was the proposed income tax cut for those on £150k+ being funded?

That didn’t happen. Quite the reverse!

 

[30907]

All Government spending decisions are ideological at the basic level.




That didn’t happen. Quite the reverse!

But it would have been funded by borrowing?

 

[Class 170101]

All Government spending decisions are ideological at the basic level.




That didn’t happen. Quite the reverse!

In the absence of any answers from Truss and Kwarteng I'd go with borrowing firstly if the Laffer curve effect as quoted by @Ken H above didn't materialise.

 

[JamesT]

But it would have been funded by borrowing?

Initially by borrowing, on the expectation that the extra economic activity promoted by lower taxes would eventually result in higher government revenue.
In economics this is known as the ‘multiplier effect’, those in favour of higher public spending will tend to argue that government spending has an amplified effect through the economy compared to leaving it to individuals or the private sector, whereas those in favour of a small state will argue the opposite.

 

[387star]

Sundays diverted Bournemouth to Waterloos were heaving by Havant with every seat taken despite being ten coaches

 

[Snow1964]

DfT have just updated usage figures vs pre covid
Most recent figures from column G (national rail)

16th Nov 91%
17th Nov 93%
18th Nov 99% (highest I have seen finalised figures)
19th Nov 97%
20th Nov 97%

figures for 21st - 25th all 90+% but provisional
figures for 26th onwards also provisional but bit lower.

Daily domestic transport use by mode

Daily usage of selected domestic transport by mode for Great Britain.

www.gov.uk

Clearly these might be masking local variations, but last time I looked some operators were not doing at least 97% of pre covid service levels.

 

[HSTEd]

DfT have just updated usage figures vs pre covid
Most recent figures from column G (national rail)

These figures are based on journeys rather than passenger-km.

This could result in higher results than you would otherwise expect because since coronavirus started there has been a substantial modal shift from London Underground to National Rail (Crossrail!).

Crossrail could easily screw the results up given how many people it moves. And in any case the problem is a journey from Tottenham Court Road to Paddington is measured the same as a journey from Kings Cross to Aberdeen.

EDIT:

Something like 4.1 million National rail journeys were made per day before coronavirus (3bn entries and exists, so 1.5bn entries per annum), or about 29 million a week.

Crossrail's passenger counts are now apparently exceeding two million a week alone.

 

[baz962]

Funny how the money is always there when needed for ideological reasons.

How was the proposed income tax cut for those on £150k+ being funded?

For that matter, how did the government afford to recently let me pay thousands of pounds less in stamp duty land tax on a property purchase, than I would have done for the exactly the same transaction 6 months ago*?

*I’m not really complaining about that one.

You and your mansion again. Stop bragging

 

[43066]

You and your mansion again. Stop bragging

Now you know where all that overtime is going

.

 

[yorksrob]

DfT have just updated usage figures vs pre covid
Most recent figures from column G (national rail)

16th Nov 91%
17th Nov 93%
18th Nov 99% (highest I have seen finalised figures)
19th Nov 97%
20th Nov 97%

figures for 21st - 25th all 90+% but provisional
figures for 26th onwards also provisional but bit lower.

Daily domestic transport use by mode

Daily usage of selected domestic transport by mode for Great Britain.

www.gov.uk

Clearly these might be masking local variations, but last time I looked some operators were not doing at least 97% of pre covid service levels.

These are good figures.

I hope the opposition parties smack the Government with them when they try and justify cuts with their usual old flannel.

 

[Kite159]

These figures are based on journeys rather than passenger-km.

This could result in higher results than you would otherwise expect because since coronavirus started there has been a substantial modal shift from London Underground to National Rail (Crossrail!).

Crossrail could easily screw the results up given how many people it moves. And in any case the problem is a journey from Tottenham Court Road to Paddington is measured the same as a journey from Kings Cross to Aberdeen.

EDIT:

Something like 4.1 million National rail journeys were made per day before coronavirus (3bn entries and exists, so 1.5bn entries per annum), or about 29 million a week.

Crossrail's passenger counts are now apparently exceeding two million a week alone.

Agreed there, the passengers using the Lizzy between Paddington & Whitechapel/Abbey Wood which didn't exist in 2019 will be inflating the ridership in 2022 so it can't be compared like for like.

 

[Trainbike46]

Agreed there, the passengers using the Lizzy between Paddington & Whitechapel/Abbey Wood which didn't exist in 2019 will be inflating the ridership in 2022 so it can't be compared like for like.

while this is clearly true, an increase in passenger numbers is good news for the railway overal. Specifically while some parts of the network are still severely limited in service, undoubtedly displacing passengers elsewhere. Some passenger-km data would be nice, but is presumably much harder to collect.

And you can mostly avoid this by looking at a TOC basis, and simply excluding Elizabeth line. Though that still isn't like-for-like as some GWR numbers will look lower than expected due to handing over services to Elizabeth line between 2019 and now.

 

[mrmartin]

Really would be much better to have stats on a passenger km basis rather than trips. I imagine those would show the impact of TPE/Avanti chaos a lot more too... Avanti et al comprise relatively few journies but a lot of passenger kms given the average journey is likey to be 20x or more the length of the average EL journey!

 

[Trainbike46]

Really would be much better to have stats on a passenger km basis rather than trips. I imagine those would show the impact of TPE/Avanti chaos a lot more too... Avanti et al comprise relatively few journies but a lot of passenger kms given the average journey is likey to be 20x or more the length of the average EL journey!

Numbers on a TOC basis do help a little here too, but yeah passenger-kms would be better

 

[jagardner1984]

Would be interesting for someone to do a "former rail user" poll.

Try and establish some proportions of home working / actual strike based disruption / actual TOC incompetence / perceived strike disruption / perceived incompetence / (a myriad of others), as respective factors in suppressing the level of demand.

Certainly as someone who would love to ditch the plane on Short Haul for good, the myriad of "disruption update" messages and emails for journeys I am doing in the next week (at a vastly inflated cost from the easyJet, and yes, I booked weeks in advance), don't make it a straightforward and stress free choice for me to do so.

 

[philosopher]

Would be interesting for someone to do a "former rail user" poll.

Try and establish some proportions of home working / actual strike based disruption / actual TOC incompetence / perceived strike disruption / perceived incompetence / (a myriad of others), as respective factors in suppressing the level of demand.

Certainly as someone who would love to ditch the plane on Short Haul for good, the myriad of "disruption update" messages and emails for journeys I am doing in the next week (at a vastly inflated cost from the easyJet, and yes, I booked weeks in advance), don't make it a straightforward and stress free choice for me to do so.

My guess is that the numbers of completely former rail users is very low. With home working, in most cases this leads to reduction rather than elimination in the number of rail trips. With strikes I suspect most people work around them by travelling on a different day. With TOC incompetence, again I think most passengers will try to work round it by travelling on a different day or with a different operator.

Abandoning rail in many cases will involve buying a car, which is very costly.

 

[squizzler]

Numbers on a TOC basis do help a little here too, but yeah passenger-kms would be better

According to Modern Railways (December, p67), in 2022 Q1 passenger trips across the board had already recovered to 76% and passenger kilometres to 81% those of 2019 Q1. The table shows all the TOCs.