UK Rail Passenger Numbers Discussion

[yorksrob]

Wow that is a drop which must be helping the DfT's target.

Not that it will make any difference if they've set their heart on cuts.

 

[Xavi]

That’s a certainty. 3-5 years away.

It was said in the context of the extra core Elizabeth Line passenger count. It will be sooner than 3 years.

 

[Trainbike46]

I’m not aware of any proposal to employ more traincrew that has been rejected by the DfT, but I am aware of several proposals to do so that have been approved, and at least two where it has been the DfT that has proposed / required it of the TOC. Of course I’m not aware of all the examples.

Thank you for confirming!

That’s a certainty. 3-5 years away. Of course by then we should have been at around 125% of Pre Covid passenger numbers.

I'm not sure it is reasonable to expect the railways to have grown passenger numbers during the pandemic, and a lot of the improvements to cater for this increase in passenger numbers were also delayed by covid

 

[12LDA28C]

Enough drivers to run the timetable isn’t the same as employing enough drivers?

Of course not. Employing say 80-90% of a full complement of drivers and relying on RDW and overtime to cover the shortfall may be enough to run the timetable but it leaves a TOC exposed if there is any kind of overtime ban or drivers just decide that they don't need/want to work overtime any more, whether officially as part of industrial action or unofficially. Better to employ a full establishment of drivers at every depot surely?

Just the same as NR relying on overtime / RDW to man signalboxes, as we have seen over the last few weeks.

 

[dk1]

Of course not. Employing say 80-90% of a full complement of drivers and relying on RDW and overtime to cover the shortfall may be enough to run the timetable but it leaves a TOC exposed if there is any kind of overtime ban or drivers just decide that they don't need/want to work overtime any more, whether officially as part of industrial action or unofficially. Better to employ a full establishment of drivers at every depot surely?

Just the same as NR relying on overtime / RDW to man signalboxes, as we have seen over the last few weeks.

I’ve never known the railway any different since the mid-80s. It’s always ran on overtime.

 

[12LDA28C]

Thank you for confirming!

I'm not sure anything has been confirmed here. In my post I mentioned drivers and maintenance staff. It is absolutely certain that at least one TOC has been prevented from employing sufficient maintenance staff which resulted in severe curtailment of services during the recent RMT overtime ban. It is not only drivers required to run a railway.

The railway has traditionally been run on RDW and overtime and goodwill on the part of the staff. During an industrial dispute goodwill is in short supply and we have all seen the result an overtime ban has had on the railway during the last month.

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I’ve never known the railway any different since the mid-80s. It’s always ran on overtime.

Indeed. It's cheaper to do that than to employ a full complement of staff.

 

[dk1]

I'm not sure anything has been confirmed here. In my post I mentioned drivers and maintenance staff. It is absolutely certain that at least one TOC has been prevented from employing sufficient maintenance staff which resulted in severe curtailment of services during the recent RMT overtime ban. It is not only drivers required to run a railway.

The railway has traditionally been run on RDW and overtime and goodwill on the part of the staff. During an industrial dispute goodwill is in short supply and we have all seen the result an overtime ban has had on the railway during the last month.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jan 2023 ==



Indeed. It's cheaper to do that than to employ a full complement of staff.

Not that myself or any other employee have complained about that fact & lapped up the extra in all railway positions I’ve held over the years. Even nowadays we have a full quota of drivers at my depot yet overtime & free day working are rife as is declined leave at weekends.

 

[12LDA28C]

Not that myself or any other employee have complained about that fact & lapped up the extra in all railway positions I’ve held over the years. Even nowadays we have a full quota of drivers at my depot yet overtime & free day working are rife as is declined leave at weekends.

Of course ASLEF are fundamentally against RDW as more drivers employed full time means more union members and more subs. Not that that has prevented them sanctioning RDW at various TOCs for many years, allowing drivers to earn substantially more than their base line salary, but you know that.

 

[43066]

I’ve never known the railway any different since the mid-80s. It’s always ran on overtime.

And you mean the 1880s .

 

[dk1]

And you mean the 1880s .

Exactly. It’s how it works.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jan 2023 ==

Of course ASLEF are fundamentally against RDW as more drivers employed full time means more union members and more subs. Not that that has prevented them sanctioning RDW at various TOCs for many years, allowing drivers to earn substantially more than their base line salary, but you know that.

Yes, I can count on one hand the amount of times that RDW has temporarily not been sanctioned with us & id still have fingers to spare. It never lasted long.

 

[Bikeman78]

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.

Agreed. Many of us on this forum predicted that this would end badly. No wonder the country is screwed if the people in charge could not foresee this.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Agreed. Many of us on this forum predicted that this would end badly. No wonder the country is screwed if the people in charge could not foresee this.

But even without that (and on the basis of "reduce, reuse, recycle" being the right order for that I'm not sure less travel is a bad thing) the utter rubbishness of the railway is preventing people using it.

Avanti for instance STILL have not released any tickets for Sunday, just three days ahead, leaving the sites falsely saying "sold out" when in fact those trains have simply never been on sale. Near enough everyone who was planning a weekend by train has already decided to fly, go by coach, drive or not bother. It'll be lovely and quiet for my journey no doubt (which I'm going to do on a walk-up purchased from a non-planner TVM), but as a taxpayer I utterly resent it.

 

[The Ham]

But even without that (and on the basis of "reduce, reuse, recycle" being the right order for that I'm not sure less travel is a bad thing) the utter rubbishness of the railway is preventing people using it.

With travel it's Reduce, Walk, Cycle, Public Transport. (There's variations, in that e-bikes, scooters, buses and trains make the list longer and it's not always straightforward as to where each choice sits - a battery bus is worse than an EMU but better than a DMU, although it still depends on how far each option is traveling)

Using the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle example it would be the same the councils make it hard to recycle as people wouldn't reduce any further than they already do and then they wouldn't recycle. As such there would be more going to landfill, which is counter productive to

It's where, if there was a significant program of building HS lines, arguably there should be a corresponding policy to reduce road and/or flight capacity to limit the extra rail capacity just resulting in more people traveling. However we're still a long way from that, as we're still adding capacity to our road network, with some schemes being known to require more road building to cater for the next bottleneck in the network.

 

[Goldfish62]

Agreed. Many of us on this forum predicted that this would end badly. No wonder the country is screwed if the people in charge could not foresee this.

Absolutely, especially as while those in government could hardly hide their glee telling us every night that public transport was dangerous and we must not use it, there has not been any similarly enthusiastic campaign to actually positively state that public transport is now safe to use. This has clearly impacted on the more risk averse in Society, eg the elderly and clinically vulnerable. I know two elderly people who now refuse to use public transport and drive everywhere instead simply because no one in authority has told them it's now safe.

Add to this the apparent institutional inability of the railways to provide a reliable service on a daily basis, plus the bizarre messaging from the RDG that they don't want us to use the hundreds of trains operated on strike days it's actually surprising how many people do still use the railways.

 

[Bikeman78]

Last Saturday, I drove to North Woolwich and caught the tube. if the tube was on strike, Id have caught the bus or boat or uber.

I've been in London on Tube strike days. It's a nightmare. It took 90 minutes to go five miles by bus. I'd have walked if it wasn't raining. The delay was caused by a combination of traffic gridlock and massively extended stops because people tried to get on an already rammed full bus. The poor driver looked like she was going to give up in despair. After a while she stopped between stops to drop people off which sped things up very slightly.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jan 2023 ==

Enough drivers to run the timetable isn’t the same as employing enough drivers?
Put it this way, Avanti employed enough drivers to run 9 or 10 trains an hour out of Euston on a consistent basis in 2019, but they’ve now added 100 drivers and it’s not enough. Try explaining that to the man on the Euston omnibus!

How many people have left in that time? Or are you taking into account people that have left? How much rest day working was required to run the service in 2019?

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Add to this the apparent institutional inability of the railways to provide a reliable service on a daily basis, plus the bizarre messaging from the RDG that they don't want us to use the hundreds of trains operated on strike days it's actually surprising how many people do still use the railways.

Actually the railway has done pretty well this week freed of industrial action to show that it can deliver a reasonable reliable service. Of course it could be better but just bashing it down isn't going to help it recover and be sustainable over the long term.

I agree some operators seem to be hell bent on pushing passengers away but I went to Edinburgh and back both on strike days by LNER and they were certainly quite happy to promote services they could run which were well utilised even in FC. The incentives are all misaligned at the moment and the govt must realise by now that the DfT are incapable of running services and the model needs an urgent makeover to one that puts the onus back on the operators.

 

[Horizon22]

Exactly. It’s how it works.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jan 2023 ==



Yes, I can count on one hand the amount of times that RDW has temporarily not been sanctioned with us & id still have fingers to spare. It never lasted long.

Yeah there's always some low-level churn as well as sickness / annual leave, trainees, off-track and route-restricted drivers etc. I don't think overtime/RDW will ever go away, but I can understand why it would be good to reduce the reliance on it.

Also, the railway is clearly not the only industry reliant on overtime (or agency) to plug gaps.

 

[yorksrob]

Absolutely, especially as while those in government could hardly hide their glee telling us every night that public transport was dangerous and we must not use it, there has not been any similarly enthusiastic campaign to actually positively state that public transport is now safe to use. This has clearly impacted on the more risk averse in Society, eg the elderly and clinically vulnerable. I know two elderly people who now refuse to use public transport and drive everywhere instead simply because no one in authority has told them it's now safe.

Add to this the apparent institutional inability of the railways to provide a reliable service on a daily basis, plus the bizarre messaging from the RDG that they don't want us to use the hundreds of trains operated on strike days it's actually surprising how many people do still use the railways.

And yet the irony is that a high proportion of former passengers do want to return to rail to some extent, yet this Government is incapable of running a service.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jan 2023 ==

Actually the railway has done pretty well this week freed of industrial action to show that it can deliver a reasonable reliable service. Of course it could be better but just bashing it down isn't going to help it recover and be sustainable over the long term.

I agree some operators seem to be hell bent on pushing passengers away but I went to Edinburgh and back both on strike days by LNER and they were certainly quite happy to promote services they could run which were well utilised even in FC. The incentives are all misaligned at the moment and the govt must realise by now that the DfT are incapable of running services and the model needs an urgent makeover to one that puts the onus back on the operators.

Let's see how well LNER do if the Government force them to scrap a large proportion of their fleet.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Let's see how well LNER do if the Government force them to scrap a large proportion of their fleet.

LNER must be returning money to govt now as the last update on NRC payments showed them close to break even. Anyhow i guess you mean the 91's and that would just mean LNER will have to pull back from some of the off route destinations they serve. Can't see how they can make money out of the Inverness service with crews having to lodge for instance and DfT be quite happy to leave Scotrail to serve the internal Scottish market.

 

[yorksrob]

LNER must be returning money to govt now as the last update on NRC payments showed them close to break even. Anyhow i guess you mean the 91's and that would just mean LNER will have to pull back from some of the off route destinations they serve. Can't see how they can make money out of the Inverness service with crews having to lodge for instance and DfT be quite happy to leave Scotrail to serve the internal Scottish market.

Quite possibly, although I'm not sure pulling Anglo-Scottish services out of Inverness would do the Tory party's Unionist credentials any favours.

My suspicion is that it would involve a lot of double sets becoming single sets most likely and resulting overcrowding.

 

[dk1]

Yeah there's always some low-level churn as well as sickness / annual leave, trainees, off-track and route-restricted drivers etc. I don't think overtime/RDW will ever go away, but I can understand why it would be good to reduce the reliance on it.

Also, the railway is clearly not the only industry reliant on overtime (or agency) to plug gaps.

No of course it isn’t. It’s just quite high profile and always attracts interest as this forum proves very well.

Tomorrow for example & at my depot alone we have 7 drivers working FDs, 5 turns uncovered, and 2 declined leave, and nobody else volunteering to work extra. That doesn’t bode well for a weekday in January.

 

[paul1609]

Quite possibly, although I'm not sure pulling Anglo-Scottish services out of Inverness would do the Tory party's Unionist credentials any favours.

My suspicion is that it would involve a lot of double sets becoming single sets most likely and resulting overcrowding.

Divert the service from Perth to Dundee. Slashes the cost and serves more customers. Avoids the independence issues.

 

[Horizon22]

No of course it isn’t. It’s just quite high profile and always attracts interest as this forum proves very well.

Tomorrow for example & at my depot alone we have 7 drivers working FDs, 5 turns uncovered, and 2 declined leave, and nobody else volunteering to work extra. That doesn’t bode well for a weekday in January.

I'm sure the general morale issues aren't helping matters.

 

[GoneSouth]

Also, the railway is clearly not the only industry reliant on overtime (or agency) to plug gaps.

No it’s not. Now what’s that other big one run by the government… ah yes, the NHS

 

[Rail_Midlands]

But even without that (and on the basis of "reduce, reuse, recycle" being the right order for that I'm not sure less travel is a bad thing) the utter rubbishness of the railway is preventing people using it.

Avanti for instance STILL have not released any tickets for Sunday, just three days ahead, leaving the sites falsely saying "sold out" when in fact those trains have simply never been on sale. Near enough everyone who was planning a weekend by train has already decided to fly, go by coach, drive or not bother. It'll be lovely and quiet for my journey no doubt (which I'm going to do on a walk-up purchased from a non-planner TVM), but as a taxpayer I utterly resent it.

By these actions of Railway industry, the public started thinking:
Earlier it was necessary evil, now its unnecessary evil.

 

[Bikeman78]

Absolutely, especially as while those in government could hardly hide their glee telling us every night that public transport was dangerous and we must not use it, there has not been any similarly enthusiastic campaign to actually positively state that public transport is now safe to use. This has clearly impacted on the more risk averse in Society, eg the elderly and clinically vulnerable. I know two elderly people who now refuse to use public transport and drive everywhere instead simply because no one in authority has told them it's now safe.

I couldn't get over how happily the TOCs signed up to the do not travel agenda. I guess they effectively had their hands forced by government. I was out and about throughout, apart from the actual lockdown periods. Never did me any harm. I do see a lot of older people on trains again which is good.

 

[al78]

I've been in London on Tube strike days. It's a nightmare. It took 90 minutes to go five miles by bus. I'd have walked if it wasn't raining.

This is why I will always use a bicycle in preference to a bus where practical. Rain can be dealt with by suitable clothing. Both my commutes to Farringdon this week have coincided with the worst weather of the week across SE England and the 2.4 mile cycle to my local station was fine with jacket and waterproof overtrousers. Admittedly it is less good in the warmer seasons where the choice can be to get wet from the rain or get wet from perspiration.

 

[The Ham]

The graph attached shows in red the (compared to pre Covid) the 3 week rolling average for rail use for June to December.

Whilst it drops away just before Christmas, it does indicate the otherwise upwards tend even between Q2 and Q3.

In that if you look at the second high point very little of the second half of the chart falls below this point, whilst aboit as much of the first half is above this point.

 

[Bikeman78]

This is why I will always use a bicycle in preference to a bus where practical. Rain can be dealt with by suitable clothing. Both my commutes to Farringdon this week have coincided with the worst weather of the week across SE England and the 2.4 mile cycle to my local station was fine with jacket and waterproof overtrousers. Admittedly it is less good in the warmer seasons where the choice can be to get wet from the rain or get wet from perspiration.

I'm not averse to cycling in rain and I do have decent waterproofs. However, I did not have waterproofs with me in London on the day in question. To be honest, I wouldn't have wanted to cycle anyway. The roads were clogged with lots of angry people. I'm sure there are side roads that are better but my knowledge of London roads isn't that good.

 

[E27007]

I'm not averse to cycling in rain and I do have decent waterproofs. However, I did not have waterproofs with me in London on the day in question. To be honest, I wouldn't have wanted to cycle anyway. The roads were clogged with lots of angry people. I'm sure there are side roads that are better but my knowledge of London roads isn't that good.

I cycled into London EC3 and EC2, my places of work, for several years, I rarely got wet, ironically it was the Tube strikes which triggered the change, a single ride into work and I was converted, the speed, 2 miles in 15 minutes, near-zero travel costs and predictability off the journey ( very rarely late for work) were the key points.
Do explore the side roads which run in parallel to the main roads, you may be surprised, you will find pleasant routes, pocket parks, quiet travel away from noisy vehicles, interesting old buildings to admire as you ride along, A facet of London you may learn to enjoy