Although many of the demographics of people that now work from home predominantly and have seen a significant reduction in commuting journeys to say London or Manchester, are generally white-collar, office workers and probably had a car already.
-
Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
UK Rail Passenger Numbers Discussion
- Thread starter Snow1964
- Start date
- Status
Although many of the demographics of people that now work from home predominantly and have seen a significant reduction in commuting journeys to say London or Manchester, are generally white-collar, office workers and probably had a car already.
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
Class 170101
On Moderation
- Joined
- 1 Mar 2014
- Messages
- 8,661
How much has that had an effect really?
For example Abbey Wood to Liverpool Street would be an increase for Crossrail but not a decrease for the Underground neccessarily because Abbey Wood to London Bridge would be unlikely to use the Underground for their onward journey anyway as they probably walked into the City.
Kite159
Veteran Member
Or Liverpool Street to Paddington where previously passengers would have used LU now have the option of LU or National Rail.
Passengers for Canary Wharf using Lizzy rather than the jubilee, depending which way they arrive etc
Aren't the stats for NR?
Kite159
Veteran Member
Which get compared to 2019 when the central part of the Lizzy line wasn't open. So all those extra passengers which have changed from using LU to using Lizzy get counted to inflate the overall passenger numbers.
At XC we keep getting told that revenue is only at 66% of pre covid levels, which is not surprising given north of Derby the half hourly service hasn't returned, bar a few token services via Doncaster and the 170 routes are more often than not, an absolute shambles.
Sorry, should have replied to post above yours(which I may have misread anyway).
Adrian1980uk
Member
- Joined
- 24 May 2016
- Messages
- 840
This is a prime example of showing statistics aren't giving the full picture, it may well be physically impossible to return to 100 percent as the services have been reduced.
On a typical day XC are barely running 50% of the pre Covid timetable, (if you include the unreliable Nottingham-Cardiff service) so to achieve 66% revenue is quite impressive, imagine what the passenger % would be if XC reliably ran 100% of the pre Covid timetable.
We keep getting told that commuting into London has plummeted and leisure travel is booming, surely the DaFT should prioritise reinstating services on the likes of XC which carry large amounts of long distance leisure passengers.
dk1
Veteran Member
Commuting into London on many routes is down but plummeted is a bit strong. XC have been rather a basket case throughout especially when it came to training.
On a typical day, XC are planning to run 80% of their Pre Covid planned service (242 v 301 trains per day) and on a typical day actually run about 78%. Rather more than ‘barely 50%’.
Adrian1980uk
Member
- Joined
- 24 May 2016
- Messages
- 840
It would be an interesting analysis percentage of services vs percentage of passengers for each toc to see if there is a relationship
it would!
Fair enough, but I wonder what % of route mileage they are operating compared to pre Covid as virtually halving the long distance axis via Birmingham must equate to a lower than 78% ‘typical day’ average overall in mileage terms?
of end-to-end trains, yes, but numerous partial cancellations. Passenger miles over actual seat-miles would be another interesting metric, recognising double Voyagers hourly are replacing single Voyagers half-hourly (at least in theory). This data is readily available in railway systems (although probably not the same one), and may be considered less confidential than revenue (although I don't see why revenue should be considered confidential these days now that us tax payers are taking the risk on it).
Peterthegreat
Established Member
Probably because a lot of people were watching the football.
Yes, I'd forgotten about that !
Peterthegreat
Established Member
Certainly many services were very busy during the late morning and afternoon.
lammergeier
Member
- Joined
- 5 Oct 2017
- Messages
- 505
And rather less than the 91% previously stated in the now closed industrial action thread. I thought that figure was too high. It also masks the fact that many services are timetabled to stop short and some places have nowhere near an 80% service. The 170 routes being largely back to normal mask the reality for many passengers on the traditional XC long distance routes.
I just hope we don't get culled further in May as we're "only" taking 66% or whatever it is pre-covid revenue despite the actual service being far more cut back than the 80% claimed. The talk of HST withdrawal without replacement is hugely concerning.
I corrected the 91% figure I quoted, which was a genuine error on my part as I forgot the split service around the Luffenham Brifdue strike (which increased the services operating).
But the 170 routes being back to normal is a part of the cross country operation.
Latest ORR stats for July-Sept. Trips: 80%, Passenger km: 77%, Revenue: 71%. 5 strike days.
Revenue/trip ratio not good?
Revenue/trip ratio not good?
miklcct
Established Member
The fall of revenue / passenger km means that less people are getting ripped off by the extortionate anytime fares, which is a good thing.
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
A few standouts
TPE now bottom of the table for recovery compared to 2019 although with the abysmal service provision hardly a surprise and this from an operator that had taken 54m in subsidy payments upto end of July see DfT release yesterday.
AWC close 2nd to bottom again poor service provision although it worsened further since Q3 although hopefully now has the foundations to rebuild.
LNER (106%) and EMR !00%) two standout operators driving passenger numbers.
On the revenue side season tickets remains at a lacklustre 34% of 2019 and in the qtr was worth £164 million of franchised passenger revenue compared to £556 million earned three years ago. Reinforcing as we know that this revenue stream is the fundamental issue for railway finances and in all likelihood has limited scope for further recovery although clearly must be some substitution of daily ordinary and off peak fares taking place as ridership isn't that low. However, the industry really does need to reset its offering to reflect the change working arrangements and I would have thought not having to resource the high peak should save cost in the longer term although there is a lot of infrastructure there which still needs looking after.
The best example of why the railway needs to be careful about how it changes its service offering going forward is this chart showing clear correlation with operators who are running a decent service vs those that aren't. Hopefully DfT will see that as well before it goes hacking further into service frequency.
HSTEd
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 14 Jul 2011
- Messages
- 20,336
I don't think this graph shows this at all.
Indeed it shows that with some very minor exceptions (Hull Trains and GC are a bit dodgy given how they are negligibly sized compared to the average TOC) that there is little correlation between traffic and service provision.
The only real surprises are EMR and LNER in my opinion. Otherwise we have the two Metro operators doing better and the longer distance people getting pummeled pretty much across the board.
Last edited:
Worth noting that EMR have 'cannibalised' a lot of passengers from Thameslink with the new semifast Corby service. With Thameslink services not having been reduced to account for this, GTR's ratio of train-km to passenger journeys is lower than it would otherwise be.
Clearly the above graph demonstrates that there's a broad correlation between train-km and passenger journeys. Whether that's down to TOCs matching service levels reasonably well to demand, or demand being inhibited by reduced service levels, is obviously up for debate.
I'd posit that it's the latter, as leisure travel has long made up the majority of passengers on TPE and XC. With that market recovering strongly (as demonstrated by the likes of Hull Trains, Grand Central and LNER), you'd also expect TPE and XC to have recovered well. However, their reduced timetables and (more in the former case) awful reliability have put a lot of people off travelling.
Last edited:
HSTEd
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 14 Jul 2011
- Messages
- 20,336
Or LNER has cannibalised London-Scotland traffic from Avanti and that is flattering their stats.
Really hard to tell for sure without a more detailed breakdown which will never be released to the public.
I think people on this forum are vastly overestimating the number of people who are switching to LNER, and the extent to which this is having any material impact on LNER's or Avanti's revenue or passenger figures.
Those in the know might decide to travel from Glasgow to London via Edinburgh and the ECML for a more reliable journey, but it simply isn't an option the average person would even consider. Most people just won't use the train, or won't travel at all.
Even within LNER, anglo-Scottish traffic is only a proportion of traffic and even an uplift of former Avanti passengers couldn't offset the effect of major flows such as York, Newcastle and Leeds.
No, it really is very clear what is happening indeed.
tbtc
Veteran Member
I don’t think I trust anyone who looks at this middle of data and claim that they can tell a clear pattern (one which, coincidently, agrees with all of their existing assumptions about the railway!)
Firstly, I agree that we should ignore GC/ HT, given the small nature of the operations, can probably ignore Caledonian Sleeper and Heathrow Express too for similar reasons (although I guess credit to Heathrow Express for “only” losing 30% of passengers given the changes to flights etc)
LNER have done well for passengers, despite people on here complaining about how the single leg pricing is too expensive (albeit a ride that’s easy to get round, given the ability to buy a ticket for one stop further)
EMR have done well for passengers despite people on here complaining about the fact that some of their Turbostars have different coloured seats and the “Miles” mascot is the worst thing to happen to the railway, and the premature scrapping of trains in their fifth decade makes long distance travel to St Pancras unattractive (hey, maybe they are doing a good job and average passengers aren’t turned off by purple mascots or different coloured seats and maybe even don’t mind the occasional 180 instead of a train from the 1970s?)
Beyond those two stand out performers, the next best performing TOCs appear to be Merseyrail and London Overground. Good news, but this doesn’t tie in with the repeated claims on here that commuting has gone down hugely whilst the big increases have been in leisure services to scenic branch lines - you’d expect these two “urban” franchises to be struggling but instead they are outperforming the average TOC
There’s no way of knowing which of the other dots belong to who, but you’d expect to see a TOC like GWR doing better than Merseyrail/ London Overground if the Forum’s assumptions about leisure travel were correct. Instead, it seems like reliable simple networks are good and people trust what they know works
But constantly highlighting the fact that LNER are back above 2019 levels ignores the fact that they are a bit of an outlier and the majority of the railway has a long way to climb back
Firstly, I agree that we should ignore GC/ HT, given the small nature of the operations, can probably ignore Caledonian Sleeper and Heathrow Express too for similar reasons (although I guess credit to Heathrow Express for “only” losing 30% of passengers given the changes to flights etc)
LNER have done well for passengers, despite people on here complaining about how the single leg pricing is too expensive (albeit a ride that’s easy to get round, given the ability to buy a ticket for one stop further)
EMR have done well for passengers despite people on here complaining about the fact that some of their Turbostars have different coloured seats and the “Miles” mascot is the worst thing to happen to the railway, and the premature scrapping of trains in their fifth decade makes long distance travel to St Pancras unattractive (hey, maybe they are doing a good job and average passengers aren’t turned off by purple mascots or different coloured seats and maybe even don’t mind the occasional 180 instead of a train from the 1970s?)
Beyond those two stand out performers, the next best performing TOCs appear to be Merseyrail and London Overground. Good news, but this doesn’t tie in with the repeated claims on here that commuting has gone down hugely whilst the big increases have been in leisure services to scenic branch lines - you’d expect these two “urban” franchises to be struggling but instead they are outperforming the average TOC
There’s no way of knowing which of the other dots belong to who, but you’d expect to see a TOC like GWR doing better than Merseyrail/ London Overground if the Forum’s assumptions about leisure travel were correct. Instead, it seems like reliable simple networks are good and people trust what they know works
But constantly highlighting the fact that LNER are back above 2019 levels ignores the fact that they are a bit of an outlier and the majority of the railway has a long way to climb back
- Status