How will railway timetables reflect a decrease in demand from commuters due to companies becoming flexible towards employees working from home?

[Sweetjesus]

I've searched threads and I don't think this has been discussed before.

Companies used to be anti-WFH with an assumption that employees will be less effective working from home. Nowadays more and more companies are realising that it's not always true.

Some companies have already told their employees that they are welcome to work from home permanently with occasional physical office meetings after the pandemic.

So my question is, how will railway timetables reflect this change? I would imagine the number of lesuire travellers remains roughly the same.

Would train services remain as they are, or will their destinations be changed to accommodate leisure travellers more? What about frequency of stops? Speed/timing of some services?

I'm curious as to what people on here think about potential changes this may result in.

 

[Hadders]

Not everyone can work from home.

Many based office workers can but anyone working in:

Retail
Hospitality
Education
Manufacturing
Construction, maintenance etc

And many, many more industries will still need to travel to workplace and services will need to be provided for these employees.

The approach will vary by line. I live on the southern ECML and we have a 15 minute fast service to London throughout the day which is supplemented by additional trains int he peaks. I can see some of the additional peak trains being withdrawn if numbers travelling at peak times is reduced.

 

[philosopher]

So my question is, how will railway timetables reflect this change? I would imagine the number of lesuire travellers remains roughly the same.

Would train services remain as they are, or will their destinations be changed to accommodate leisure travellers more? What about frequency of stops? Speed/timing of some services?

I'm curious as to what people on here think about potential changes this may result in.

I know it is a bit up in the air what happens with franchises, but with existing franchises, I thought the government had specified the minimum service requirements. Therefore if train companies reduce peak time services would they not be breaking their franchise agreements.

 

[Non Multi]

Not everyone can work from home.

Many based office workers can but anyone working in:

Retail
Hospitality
Education
Manufacturing
Construction, maintenance etc

And many, many more industries will still need to travel to workplace and services will need to be provided for these employees.

The approach will vary by line. I live on the southern ECML and we have a 15 minute fast service to London throughout the day which is supplemented by additional trains int he peaks. I can see some of the additional peak trains being withdrawn if numbers travelling at peak times is reduced.

There's also the school kids and college students who travel by rail, mostly between neighbouring stations.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's also being discussed on another wider thread, but to sum up, my view is that we will likely be able to move to all-week Saturday timetables (i.e. the same pattern from start to end of service other than a slight thinning in the late evening) with a very small amount of strengthening (maybe 4-5 trains per route in each direction) in the manner that is done by the likes of Merseyrail (and indeed Merseyrail might see enough of a drop-off that it can move to an all-day 4 car operation with the new stock and save bothering doing the costly signal position changes to allow 8-car formations).

The need for peak extras is likely to reduce or disappear, and that will save an absolute packet and allow stock redeployment so more ex-BR kit can be withdrawn.

 

[Andyh82]

I’m sceptical if there will be long term changes, give it a year after the last restrictions are reduced.

During that nice community feeling bit in April where it was all about rainbows and helping neighbours, it was assumed everyone was going to be nice going forward. By June we had riots, illegal activity, flytipping, general don’t care less attitude back, like nothing had happened.