Thanks for the tag
@Horizon22.
Public holidays are
not the busiest day of the year, albeit it can (and does) vary by route to route.
There has been a lot of work done on this over the years, including very recently with data from mobile phone networks, which helpfully also tells us how busy the roads are. The busiest days of the year are usually regular working days in October. For long distance travel it is Thursdays / Fridays before a holiday weekend (and not necessarily a bank holiday / public holiday weekend). Maundy Thursday was usually the busiest, and Easter Saturday the quietest (outside Christmas).
As above, a lot of work going on studying this. What it is proving is that leisure patterns haven’t really changed, but it is giving us new insight into flows on certain routes. For example people who travel London - Scotland for leisure typically spend more time away than those travelling London - the North West (for example).
As I and
@The Planner frequently state, NR doesn’t unilaterally decide when the works are, it does it in consultation with train (and freight) operators, and agreed with them. They will prefer times where the effect on their passengers / customers is the least disruptive.
In the past I have been personally responsible both for this possession / work planning activity, and also many, many of the projects causing the engineering work in the first place. I would always have preferred to avoid Easter and especially Christmas - we pay a premium for staff (and plant, and even some materials) at these times, and Christmas in particular brings extra risk of inclement weather and for some activities reduced daylight. But we do it then because it disrupts the fewest people.
Now of course doign any work like this will disrupt someone whenever you do it. And some of the people affected will write on a thread like this saying how it’s all wrong and should be done at a different time when it won’t affect them. But I can’t ever remember a thread that stated “there’s this engineering work going on and it hasn’t affected me at all, as I’m not travelling there and then…” Perhaps I should do that. I use the WCML 4 times a week, and yet I’m not affected at all by the work at Watford this weekend….
It wasn’t that much, but the proportions are about right.
But this isn’t the case. Because, actually, most lines of route are open, and we can see the usage data, which shows it isn’t busy, in general.
It’s the same on the roads, which is a good indicator of travel patterns of the population in general. For example the motorways were much quieter yesterday than a typical Saturday.
Having been a former employee of the health service, I can confirm that it runs at rather less than half normal activity levels over Christmas and Easter, and is very, very quiet on Christmas Day / Boxing Day / Easter Day themselves. No planned operations (including for a couple of days beforehand), no consultant appointments, and stuff like regular outpatient visits for (say) dialysis etc is reduced. Even A&E is quieter, principally because much of industry shuts down and there’s fewer workplace injuries. The only doctors working in hospitals will be those in A&E, the ‘duty’ doctors for the general rounds on the ward, and a skeleton staff in specialisms. Nurses on duty are reduced, as is the whole NHS ‘back office’ operation.
