UK Rail Passenger Numbers Discussion

[mrmartin]

Well the Government is going about it in completely the wrong way.

The railway was recovering quite nicely before the current strikes (caused by the Govt) and initiatives like those proposed in Scotland such as the removal of peak-time fares could have further encouraged people back to rail.

Cutting costs by not allowing TOCs to employ enough staff to run a full train service would appear to be the very definition of a false economy.

I agree. I imagine the labour cost for Avanti of a guard and a driver (not sure if anything else is required to run a 390?) on a London Manchester trip, all in (inc pensions, employer NI etc) can't be more than £1000. It's causing the cancellation of 600 seats, which means even 10 passenges paying £100 would clear the labour costs. If it was full at an avergae price of £50 passenger then there's £30,000 of revenue being "lost" for £1,000 max of labour costs. It is slightly bananas.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Clawing back revenue would be a lot easier if the railway was running in a way that enabled and encouraged people to actually use it but, as we all know, large parts of it currently aren’t. The government are the ones actively preventing that state of affairs from changing.

Absolutely but the NRC model won't help that all and i can't believe that a govt that espouses the private sector has entered into these contracts. They need to be amended to incentivise the TOCs to grow revenue with some sort pain/gain share mechanism that makes it worth their while to increase ridership because they earn additional income above the mgt fee.

 

[30907]

Re the data, below is from the Thameslink Website. So follow up question is how accurate is 'on train counting equipment'? at Ravensbourne you could well believe you're in the middle of Hertfordshire, Kent please! Golf course and all! Bellingham onwards was where traditionally these trains were loaded to capacity.

Ravensbourne is peculiar (I grew up round there and remember when Crab Hill past the station was unmade because it had crossed into Lewisham....) - towards Beckenham large and expensive properties (except where it has been demolished and replaced with flats) but towards Bromley Hill rather denser housing, especially beyond the golf courses. Estate agents certainly think Ravensbourne is worth a mention for properties in that area!
Parking round the station isn't impossible though you have to pay, so I wonder whether there has been a gradual increase in park-and-ride commuting over the years since Thameslink started.

But I agree the stats look peculiar.

 

[paul1609]

I don't think this doom and gloom is warranted (though industrial relations are a real real problem).

At the end of the day there was always going to be a move away from office based commuting to WFH. This was already happening in London, pre pandemic. A lot of people used to WFH on Fridays. Covid just massively accelerated it.

There is no reason that the railways cannot be on a good financial position with more leisure travel vs business/commuting.

Back in the 1980s airlines really only catered to business travel. Now it's increasingly completely the opposite, with low cost carriers dominating the market with mostly leisure travel.

That's the way I see the intercity railways going. Much better yield optimisation by selling a lot more seats, even if it is at a lower cost. First class removed, etc. The low cost train operators are doing very well in various countries.

The regional railways potenitally will require more support in the medium term, passenger usage will grow though - population is increasing and the roads are not a viable contender for many big cities (and even if they are now in smaller cities, will continue to get worse and worse as traffic increases).

The problem is that resolving the current industrial difficulties requires an awful to of extra money up front. So you will basically have all the ever since covid support continuing plus the wage increases and extra overtime. That will recover some of the lost revenue on the minnow TOCs like AWC, LNER as extra leisure traffic but its unlikely that will ever recover the lost business revenue. If there's nobody in the London Office as all the staff are working from home in Tunbridge Wells, Ipswich etc there's absolutely no point in somebody travelling down from Newcastle for a meeting.
When you get to the big boy franchises like GTR and SWR its difficult to see where the revenue lost from the 50-60% reductions in arrivals in the morning peak at London Terminals is going to come from its not the leisure market because the fares are by comparison so low.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Absolutely but the NRC model won't help that all and i can't believe that a govt that espouses the private sector has entered into these contracts. They need to be amended to incentivise the TOCs to grow revenue with some sort pain/gain share mechanism that makes it worth their while to increase ridership because they earn additional income above the mgt fee.

The original franchises were better than the NRCs, though I think the idea of the NRCs was that GBR would be that guiding mind. It's all a bit like Castlefield, really. A combination of the Ordsall Chord, Oxford Road rebuild, Deansgate closure and Piccadilly Platforms 15/16 would have likely brought real benefit to one of the most congested rail corridors in the UK. But only doing one part of it, the Chord, destroyed it. Similarly, NRCs make sense with GBR, but are awful without it, with meddling politicians and non-competent* civil servants micromanaging the shop.

If we aren't going with GBR, going back to something like franchises with significant commercial freedom would be far better, ideally bid on the basis of a more qualitative "this is what we have to spend, what can you do" rather than a race to the bottom.

* Not incompetent, just not competent at running railways.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Dec 2022 ==

When you get to the big boy franchises like GTR and SWR its difficult to see where the revenue lost from the 50-60% reductions in arrivals in the morning peak at London Terminals is going to come from its not the leisure market because the fares are by comparison so low.

One thing about the South East commuter franchises is that they have huge amounts of extra capacity that was used twice a day - that's about as expensive as can be. Remove the need for that and you potentially have a much simpler, cheaper railway with a clockface timetable and 8 car trains all day - much more like what exists away from the South East - plus e.g. removal of through running to London from Uckfield and the likes. There are big savings to be made there, and while it does have more peak extras than expected this sort of resilient approach has been applied to the new LNR timetable - though I don't think there's been a day of full service yet to see how it actually works!

 

[sheff1]

This was my question from a while ago when I commonly used split tickets on XC for peak/off peak journeys. However, the average punter probably isn't aware of how much they can save by using split ticketing sites.

Not sure who the average punter is, but I notice when travelling on Saturdays that football supporters (a noticable % of travellers) seem very aware of split ticketing.

People have said on here that the increase is in short rather than long distance leisure travel, but does someone on a day trip from Sheffield to Bristol and back using 4 separate day return tickets qualify as one long distance leisure trip or 4 short ones ? If they are using advances is it 2 long distance journeys or 8 short ones ? Many similar and longer distance day trips are being made every Saturday (assuming there is no strike of course)

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Dec 2022 ==

One thing about the South East commuter franchises is that they have huge amounts of extra capacity that was used twice a day - that's about as expensive as can be. Remove the need for that and you potentially have a much simpler, cheaper railway with a clockface timetable and 8 car trains all day - much more like what exists away from the South East

8 car trains all day .

 

[robert thomas]

Realistically its not cutting costs in terms of pre-covid support, its trying to claw back the 30% of revenue that's missing since the beginning of the pandemic.
That's the real problem the rail industry as existed in 2019 is just no longer viable. The government has bailed it out for 3 years and won't continuing in to the future.

Remember that it was the government which decided to keep rail services running and then ordered people not to use them.Hence lack of revenue.

 

[sk688]

I'd say so, the Paddington to West of England services are generally very well loaded still, admittedly this is mostly leisure travellers.

The Paddington to Bristol services have also seemed to be very well loaded , most journeys from Bath to London have been pretty busy , and that was before the Christmas market surge

 

[12LDA28C]

The problem is that resolving the current industrial difficulties requires an awful to of extra money up front. So you will basically have all the ever since covid support continuing plus the wage increases and extra overtime.

An awful lot of money has been lost to the railway and the greater economy in general because of these strikes, maybe a decent pay deal at the start might have prevented that, not that the Government gives a toss about that.

The Government told people not to travel during the pandemic and is now trying to deal with the fallout of people following that advice. As the saying goes, you reap what you sow.

 

[greyman42]

The Government told people not to travel during the pandemic and is now trying to deal with the fallout of people following that advice. As the saying goes, you reap what you sow.

Yes it was stupid advice which i ignored.

 

[SussexSeagull]

Not sure who the average punter is, but I notice when travelling on Saturdays that football supporters (a noticable % of travellers) seem very aware of split ticketing.

Football fans tend to have message boards where they talk to each other and share knowledge and are actually fairly experienced train travellers as they can do up to 20 or so a year (although many have migrated to coaches or driving during the current problems on the trains).

 

[The Ham]

I agree. I imagine the labour cost for Avanti of a guard and a driver (not sure if anything else is required to run a 390?) on a London Manchester trip, all in (inc pensions, employer NI etc) can't be more than £1000. It's causing the cancellation of 600 seats, which means even 10 passenges paying £100 would clear the labour costs. If it was full at an avergae price of £50 passenger then there's £30,000 of revenue being "lost" for £1,000 max of labour costs. It is slightly bananas.

Even a 10% pay rise would (at most, as personally those numbers could be a little high) be an extra £100, which would be covered by a few extra passengers.

Not sure who the average punter is, but I notice when travelling on Saturdays that football supporters (a noticable % of travellers) seem very aware of split ticketing.

People have said on here that the increase is in short rather than long distance leisure travel, but does someone on a day trip from Sheffield to Bristol and back using 4 separate day return tickets qualify as one long distance leisure trip or 4 short ones ? If they are using advances is it 2 long distance journeys or 8 short ones ? Many similar and longer distance day trips are being made every Saturday (assuming there is no strike of course)

It's one of the reasons (pre Covid) I looked at rail growth based on regions (for example London to North West) when discussing growth on the railways.

However if you look at the passenger km travel rate (so unless you're splitting a ticket which requires you to double back, would rule out nearly all variations from split tickets) this has also seen the same growth pattern as numbers traveling (i.e 5/6 quarters of growth and the one quarter where it fell the following quarter was higher than the quarter before, so still an upwards tend).

There's variations between TOC's but the overall is upwards.

The TOC specific data doesn't go back before 2011 but the current quarter (13.7) isn't far behind the April to June 2011 value (13.9), so probably broadly correlates with the circa 2010 figure which I've previously highlighted as the rough passenger number figure that we are currently comparable to.

If many more are using split tickets, that could explain some of the reduction in income (although probablya fairly small amount).

 

[Jimini]

Football fans tend to have message boards where they talk to each other and share knowledge and are actually fairly experienced train travellers as they can do up to 20 or so a year (although many have migrated to coaches or driving during the current problems on the trains).

You’d be surprised to see the amount of away fans who have Two Together railcards, for example. Jokes aplenty when the TMs come round to do a ticket check and two skinheads pop up on the front

 

[Bald Rick]

Interesting if you look at the spreadsheet where the graphs come from, weekday car traffic is consistently 92-94% of pre-covid, with 100% on weekends. So it seems reasonable that WFH is reducing overall road journeys by about 7% at most. Although fuel prices going up 30% may have had some effect.
National rail figures are 7-day rolling averages so you can't compare weekday/weekend figures and I haven't seen them elsewhere, but I'd assume a higher proportion of rail trips are for commuting journeys thefefore I'd expect the drop in commuting passenger numbers to be >7%. The overall numbers are bouncing around between 85-90% for the last few weeks.
The tube figures are roughtly 75-78% weekday and 90-95% at weekends.

Having a look at the National Travel Survey stats for 2019, indicates 20% of car trips were commuting, 47% surface rail trips were commuting, and 60% for tube travel.
If the 7% drop in weekday traffic was solely from a reduction in commuting, this would be a 35% reduction in commuting trips, which is higher than I'd expect across the population. But applying the 35% drop to railand tube commuting journeys would give an expected (0.35*47 = 16 drop )84% of pre-covid passenger numbers for surface rail and (.35*60 = 21% drop) 79% for tube, which isn't too far off.
For surface rail, 84% on weekdays and say 105% on weekends would give 90% overall which seems to be not too far off where we are. I'd guess the drop in commuters might be > 105% but business travel will also have dropped, possibly by more, which was about 10% of rail journeys in the 2019 survey figures so that would knock a few % off. Weekend figures might also be >105% given the various anecdotes I've read, but I've not seen any actual figures.

That‘s a decent analysis with that data.

Commuting is reduced about 40% on the rails. This is overwhelmingly driven by the London situation, as commuting across the rest of the country put together is still rather less than half of all commuting.

The problem is that there's two schools of thought:

Let the railways earn at much at they can by running a half decent service (but with some limited cuts, where these can be shown to actually save money)

Try and cut costs until there's no level of support needed

Government is definitelyin the first school of thought. There is no suggestion of cutting costs until there is no support needed - that railway doesn’t exist in this country, or at least, very little of it.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

That‘s a decent analysis with that data.

Commuting is reduced about 40% on the rails. This is overwhelmingly driven by the London situation, as commuting across the rest of the country put together is still rather less than half of all commuting.

The high peak is costly to run so a reduction of trains in the peak should allow less poorly utilised resources to be displaced saving operating costs albeit the fixed infrastructure is still there. However, with train miles lower and this will lower gross annual tonnage and there ought to be routes that can be dropped back a track category saving on maintenance interventions.

 

[Ken H]

The high peak is costly to run so a reduction of trains in the peak should allow less poorly utilised resources to be displaced saving operating costs albeit the fixed infrastructure is still there. However, with train miles lower and this will lower gross annual tonnage and there ought to be routes that can be dropped back a track category saving on maintenance interventions.

And capex should see a reduction as and when renewals are due.

 

[sheff1]

It's one of the reasons (pre Covid) I looked at rail growth based on regions (for example London to North West) when discussing growth on the railways.

However if you look at the passenger km travel rate (so unless you're splitting a ticket which requires you to double back, would rule out nearly all variations from split tickets) this has also seen the same growth pattern as numbers traveling (i.e 5/6 quarters of growth and the one quarter where it fell the following quarter was higher than the quarter before, so still an upwards tend).

There's variations between TOC's but the overall is upwards.

The TOC specific data doesn't go back before 2011 but the current quarter (13.7) isn't far behind the April to June 2011 value (13.9), so probably broadly correlates with the circa 2010 figure which I've previously highlighted as the rough passenger number figure that we are currently comparable to.

If many more are using split tickets, that could explain some of the reduction in income (although probablya fairly small amount).

Interesting, but I still don't know whether someone using, say, 4 split tickets on a lengthy leisure journey is recorded as taking 1 long distance journey or 4 short distance journeys.

 

[Watershed]

Interesting, but I still don't know whether someone using, say, 4 split tickets on a lengthy leisure journey is recorded as taking 1 long distance journey or 4 short distance journeys.

4 journeys - there is no way of automatically linking up the tickets, even if they're bought in one transaction. But splitting is still a relatively marginal pursuit in terms of the percentage of overall journeys that involve it, and is unlikely to substantially impact figures.

 

[Horizon22]

If an operator has this clear a picture of loadings should be easy to target where extra capacity should be provided but of course they wont be allowed to as teh rest of the day trains will be under utilised. the industry needs to get smarter in matching capacity to where demand is even if that means messing around with service frequency to avoid more trains being needed.

"Messing around with service frequency" is of course much easier said than done. Adding in these services wrecks havoc with timetable planning especially somewhere with multiple flat conflicts like the Catford Loop for Thameslink.

The drop in commuting and business is largely a structural change, not really related to TOC performance troubles, although they won’t help. Long distance leisure (or increase in leisure generally) won’t cover the revenue shortfall unless prices rise dramatically, which will then push the demand backwards.

The current revenue model for the industry is bust, as the latest quarterly ORR figures show.

Pretty much. Lots of cut price advances are fuelling the weekend boom but peak figures are still sluggish (with exceptions). I'm interested to see how Scotrail's experiment goes.

I don't really think the DfT / Treasury has the nous to work this out though fully though; maybe in a cack-handed way but the slide towards cuts only which certain may be warranted in certain places (weird peak specials and fringe routes being served by London & SE TOCs have generally already been removed) the easy stuff has already been hacked off. Some of the rest might be difficult to reverse. It's a complex picture and could have unintended knock on impacts to overall revenue.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 20 Dec 2022 ==

Interesting if you look at the spreadsheet where the graphs come from, weekday car traffic is consistently 92-94% of pre-covid, with 100% on weekends. So it seems reasonable that WFH is reducing overall road journeys by about 7% at most. Although fuel prices going up 30% may have had some effect.
National rail figures are 7-day rolling averages so you can't compare weekday/weekend figures and I haven't seen them elsewhere, but I'd assume a higher proportion of rail trips are for commuting journeys thefefore I'd expect the drop in commuting passenger numbers to be >7%. The overall numbers are bouncing around between 85-90% for the last few weeks.
The tube figures are roughtly 75-78% weekday and 90-95% at weekends.

Having a look at the National Travel Survey stats for 2019, indicates 20% of car trips were commuting, 47% surface rail trips were commuting, and 60% for tube travel.
If the 7% drop in weekday traffic was solely from a reduction in commuting, this would be a 35% reduction in commuting trips, which is higher than I'd expect across the population. But applying the 35% drop to railand tube commuting journeys would give an expected (0.35*47 = 16 drop )84% of pre-covid passenger numbers for surface rail and (.35*60 = 21% drop) 79% for tube, which isn't too far off.
For surface rail, 84% on weekdays and say 105% on weekends would give 90% overall which seems to be not too far off where we are. I'd guess the drop in commuters might be > 105% but business travel will also have dropped, possibly by more, which was about 10% of rail journeys in the 2019 survey figures so that would knock a few % off. Weekend figures might also be >105% given the various anecdotes I've read, but I've not seen any actual figures.

Solid analysis I'd say! As you say business travel has probably plummeted.

 

[miklcct]

4 journeys - there is no way of automatically linking up the tickets, even if they're bought in one transaction. But splitting is still a relatively marginal pursuit in terms of the percentage of overall journeys that involve it, and is unlikely to substantially impact figures.

How are journeys counted if Oyster / contactless is used and the system can't distinguish between London Underground / National Rail, for example, Amersham - Harrow-on-the-Hill?

 

[The Ham]

Government is definitelyin the first school of thought. There is no suggestion of cutting costs until there is no support needed - that railway doesn’t exist in this country, or at least, very little of it.

Whilst government as a whole may have that thought there's definitely some perception that some think otherwise. For example, how can the railways get on with making as much money as possible when there are ministers briefing against increasing pay and harming working conditions rather than getting a deal done and letting the industry continue its growth in passenger numbers to minimise the level of support needed.

Whilst in theory paying staff 104 rather than 110 would mean a lower subsidy, that's only the case if income is unchanged, if by allowing the strikes to continue income stays at 70, or worse actually falls, rather than growing to (say) 77 the level of support may actually need to increase.

 

[JamesT]

Pretty much. Lots of cut price advances are fuelling the weekend boom but peak figures are still sluggish (with exceptions). I'm interested to see how Scotrail's experiment goes.

I don't really think the DfT / Treasury has the nous to work this out though fully though; maybe in a cack-handed way but the slide towards cuts only which certain may be warranted in certain places (weird peak specials and fringe routes being served by London & SE TOCs have generally already been removed) the easy stuff has already been hacked off. Some of the rest might be difficult to reverse. It's a complex picture and could have unintended knock on impacts to overall revenue.

Scotrail are also running a reduced timetable compared to pre-pandemic, so it’s not just Whitehall with the inclination to cut. They lopped off even more at the height of their industrial action.

 

[HSTEd]

Whilst in theory paying staff 104 rather than 110 would mean a lower subsidy, that's only the case if income is unchanged, if by allowing the strikes to continue income stays at 70, or worse actually falls, rather than growing to (say) 77 the level of support may actually need to increase.

But if the government win they will be paying rail staff something like 80 or less because the headcount will absolutely collapse.

The amount of pay increase being offered in the negotiations is not the important part of the negotiations - as we have discussed to death. And I'd rather not discuss it again given that will probably get yet another thread locked.

EDIT:

You are also suggesting that the strikes will be kept up indefinitely, I doubt they will continue forever whatever happens.

 

[Snow1964]

The problem is that resolving the current industrial difficulties requires an awful to of extra money up front. So you will basically have all the ever since covid support continuing plus the wage increases and extra overtime.

Strictly there is an alternative with no money up front. Where Government and DfT don’t move, workers striking lose so much in wages, they eventually decide striking is costing them more than an potential gain from better settlement.

Unfortunately this seems to be way we are moving, as clearly whlist the strikes continue, DfT is not prepared to allow changes that might grow passenger income.

Sad, but seem to be in a lose, lose, stalemate at moment, where passenger numbers stagnate or fall.

 

[43066]

But if the government win they will be paying rail staff something like 80 or less because the headcount will absolutely collapse.

What makes you think that?!

You do realise DOO won’t be everywhere overnight even if the government “win”.

 

[HSTEd]

You do realise DOO won’t be everywhere overnight even if the government “win”.

Yes, but it will move relatively rapidly once the union impediment is removed.

Given that the savings will be over the entire rest of time, the implementation time will be short by comparison.

 

[43066]

Yes, but it will move relatively rapidly once the union impediment is removed.

Given that the savings will be over the entire rest of time, the implementation time will be short by comparison.

I think you’re well and truly putting the cart before the horse in assuming it will move rapidly, or at all.

The “union impediment” won’t be removed as the RMT it isn’t accepting DOO everywhere, but agreeing it in principle. That won’t necessarily prevent future disputes over implementation.

It also doesn’t take account of ASLEF who will either refuse DOO outright or require a substantial pay rise. Plus the government shows no inclination to spend money on upgrades to make DOO implementable.

The DOO clause was clearly more about preventing a deal and generating headlines the government could spin.

 

[dk1]

Team briefing at work today. Amongst other mainly safety things discussed, we where told how excellent performance & reliability is at Greater Anglia but also that revenue is now far better than what it was expected to be earlier this year. Yes the industrial action is having an impact but on the whole things are very much improving.

 

[thealexweb]

These figures reinforce what I see during my commute. Pre-COVID I was squeezed in to a corner on a rammed 319. Now when so occasionally get the train there’s seats for all.

 

[43096]

Team briefing at work today. Amongst other mainly safety things discussed, we where told how excellent performance & reliability is at Greater Anglia but also that revenue is now far better than what it was expected to be earlier this year. Yes the industrial action is having an impact but on the whole things are very much improving.

It would be interesting to know which area of GA’s business is driving that. Is the step-change in quality from the FLIRTs on the “Regional Railways” routes behind it? If so, it shows what can be done if the TOC has the right product.