Rail usage

[John R]

A heads-up to those who see HEx as best thing since sliced bread

Though it does appear to have stopped the decline in numbers that was very clear to see in the last couple of years. Still down 30% on pre-COVID numbers though.

 

[Djgr]

Though it does appear to have stopped the decline in numbers that was very clear to see in the last couple of years. Still down 30% on pre-COVID numbers though.

View attachment 191495

Eagerly looking forward to Q2 data!

 

[John R]

Eagerly looking forward to Q2 data!

FWIW the Q4 numbers also showed an increase over the same period last year, so there does appear to have been a reversal of the trend.

 

[Snow1964]

West Midlands Trains have issued a Press Release highlighting their growth, they also mention a Manchester Airport service hopefully from December 2026

However there is a mathematical potential problem with the numbers, they are saying numbers have risen 12% and expected to increase from 67.7m to 80m (another 18%), but then they say new trains only have 20% more capacity. Wonder if they meant to say expecting 30% more passengers but only increasing capacity by 20%

Rail operators West Midlands Railway (WMR) and London Northwestern Railway (LNR) have reported a huge jump in passenger numbers following the publication of official industry figures.

A recent report from the Office of Rail Road showed a massive 12% year-on-year increase in the number of people using the sister operators’ services in the first quarter of 2025/26, equating to more than two million extra journeys.

In total WMR and LNR carried a combined 67.7 million passengers in 2024/25 and this figure is forecast to rise to more than 80 million journeys in 2025/26.

The increase follows the introduction of more LNR services in December 2024, the rollout of two brand new train fleets and increased demand for leisure travel across the network, particularly at weekends. The introduction of contactless payment to more stations in south-east has contributed to an increased number of journeys on London commuter routes.

The figures put WMR and LNR, operated by Transport UK, in the top five rail operators nationally for passenger growth.

Ian McConnell, WMR and LNR managing director, said: “Demand for travel on our services has sky-rocketed over the past year, particularly on our longer-distance routes to and from London Euston where we are attracting new customers to rail.

“Following the pandemic we saw a slow but steady return to rail but in the last 12 months we have seen record increases on some routes as even more customers take advantage of our excellent value fares and additional services. A thriving railway is good for passengers and taxpayers alike.

“With our recently-introduced new electric train fleet now providing 20% more capacity to and from London Euston, we look forward to continuing this trend and welcoming even more passengers on board in 2026.”

Next year passenger growth is expected to continue with five brand new stations due to open on the West Midlands Railway network and the continued introduction of London Northwestern Railway’s popular new Class 730 electric fleet on more services.

London Northwestern Railway also hopes to begin running services to Manchester Airport for the first time from December 2026, providing a direct link to the international airport from major cities including Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Stoke-on-Trent.

One in ten journeys between Manchester and London Euston is already made in part using LNR services, despite the operator not currently serving Manchester directly

Millions more passengers using West Midlands Railway and London Northwestern Railway services – official report

Rail operators West Midlands Railway (WMR) and London Northwestern Railway (LNR) have reported a huge jump in passenger numbers following the publication of official industry figures.A recent report from the Office of Rail Road showed a massive 12% year-on-year increase in the number of people...

www.westmidlandsrailway.co.uk

 

[absolutelymilk]

However there is a mathematical potential problem with the numbers, they are saying numbers have risen 12% and expected to increase from 67.7m to 80m (another 18%), but then they say new trains only have 20% more capacity. Wonder if they meant to say expecting 30% more passengers but only increasing capacity by 20%

Isn't it just that the trains aren't always full, so you can increase passenger numbers without necessarily increasing capacity by the same percentage

 

[Stephen42]

West Midlands Trains have issued a Press Release highlighting their growth, they also mention a Manchester Airport service hopefully from December 2026

However there is a mathematical potential problem with the numbers, they are saying numbers have risen 12% and expected to increase from 67.7m to 80m (another 18%), but then they say new trains only have 20% more capacity. Wonder if they meant to say expecting 30% more passengers but only increasing capacity by 20%

You've misread the press release, "showed a massive 12% year-on-year increase in the number of people using the sister operators’ services in the first quarter of 2025/26" and "combined 67.7 million passengers in 2024/25 and this figure is forecast to rise to more than 80 million journeys in 2025/26" both relate to 2025/26. They've seen a jump of 12% of the first quarter of that year where the numbers are already out and are expecting the overall figure to be 18% across the year, meaning 20% on average for the last three quarters. It's not a 30% increase.

As always, the overall numbers do not reflect the level of crowding and careful yield management on leisure trips can increase the number of trips without making the busiest trains any more full.

 

[dk1]

Isn't it just that the trains aren't always full, so you can increase passenger numbers without necessarily increasing capacity by the same percentage

Exactly how I understand it.

 

[absolutelymilk]

The Q2 numbers were due to be published in December but looks like that's been pushed back to January now. At least we'll have the station usage figures on Thursday to entertain us over Christmas...

 

[John R]

That’s the second quarter in a row that they’ve been delayed by around a month from the usual reporting cycle. I wonder what is causing that.

 

[Snow1964]

TfL has released a new Finance report ahead of next weeks Finance Committee Board meeting

covers year to date to Period 7 (April - Mid October)

Rail journeys 161m (last year 160m) vs budget 158m
Elizabeth line 130m (last year 123m) vs budget 129m

So Elizabeth line is still getting busier, but Overground is fairly stagnant

https://board.tfl.gov.uk/documents/s25561/Appendix%201%20Finance%20Report%20Presentation%20Period%207%20202526.pdf

 

[absolutelymilk]

FYI there is a specific thread for the station usage figures here:
ORR estimates of station usage 2024/25

 

[Snow1964]

BBC have run a story on SouthEastern growth and stations getting busier due to the return to the office

Rail operator Southeastern says it has seen "record growth" across its network, including at new stations, as well as established stations welcoming passengers back.
Data released by the Office for Rail and Road shows Thanet Parkway, which opened in July 2023, has quickly become Kent's fastest-growing station with entries and exits rising by 116% to over 123,000 customer journeys for the 2025/25 period.
The operator says passengers are using trains when travelling to the office and for leisure travel.
Southeastern's managing director, Steve White, said the company sold 146,220 tickets in the latest Rail Sale campaign, which saw prices reduced by up to 50%.
Other stations which saw significant growth according to the year-on-year data were Folkestone West, Dumpton Park and Maidstone East.
In the latest timetable change in December 2025, Southeastern introduced more services on a Saturday and in peak hours on the route between Maidstone East and London Charing Cross.
The opeator, which provides services in south-east London, Kent and East Sussex, added it was investing in infrastruvture at several stations, including Sevenoaks and West St Leonards, as well as upgrades to trains in its fleet.

However the final part of the article referring to investment in new trains sounds wrong, I cannot think of a single new train for SouthEastern for at least 20 years. Some secondhand ones, yes, but what are the new ones?

Southeastern's commercial director, Alicia Andrews, said: "The strong growth we're seeing across the network is hugely encouraging.
"Thanet Parkway's extraordinary performance and the continued recovery at smaller stations illustrate the positive impact of our investment in new trains, updated stations and better services.

Southeastern says Kent stations see 'record' growth

Southeastern says passengers are using trains when travelling to the office and for leisure travel.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Magdalia]

The BBC article includes this which is not correct.

Data released by the Office for Rail and Road shows Thanet Parkway, which opened in July 2023, has quickly become Kent's fastest-growing station with entries and exits rising by 116% to over 123,000 customer journeys for the 2025/25 period.

Thanet Parkway opened on 31 July 2023, so, in the 2023/24 year, it was open for 8 months out of 12. In that period it had 57200 entries and exits, about 7150 per month.

In 2024/25 Thanet Parkway was open all through the year, and had 123700 entries and exits. That's about 10310 per month.

Comparing the monthly figures Thanet Parkway entries and exits grew by 44 per cent between 2023/24 and 2024/25. The 116 per cent figure only comes from comparing a 12 month period with an 8 month period.

 

[styles]

Railwaydata.co.uk does it in a good way.
See: https://www.railwaydata.co.uk/flows/gbr/
They have all sorts on there so if you want any regional system data it might be there.

Hmm

https://www.railwaydata.co.uk/stations/overview/?TLC=ABC

In 2024/2025, Altnabreac had 0 entries and exits, making it the 2,587th most used, out of 2,586 stations in Great Britain.

Something not right there

 

[absolutelymilk]

Passenger journeys up 8% and revenue & passenger-km both up 6%, ticking along nicely!
Passenger rail usage

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Passenger journeys up 8% and revenue & passenger-km both up 6%, ticking along nicely!
Passenger rail usage

LNER head the growth table on passenger journeys up an impressive 15%. Indicates that perhaps the ticketing changes aren't having any real impact on demand. Not far behind at 11% are GTR along with Northern & Scotrail. In terms of GTR my local operator Ive certainly observed quite a stepup in dail commuting with only Friday now as the only day the station car park isn't full.

 

[Horizon22]

The ORR have stated the following on LinkedIn, which are some pretty decent figures and the first time that passengers numbers have exceeding the highest pre-Covid figure.

Revenue is also the highest and doing healithly, but still £0.3bn less than the equivalent pre-Covid figure. 50% of this is from "London and South East".

• There were 467 million passenger journeys (July to September 2025) – the highest quarterly figure since records began in 1994, and up 8% compared to 433 million the same quarter last year
• Passenger revenue was £3.2 billion– the highest quarterly figure since October to December 2019 (£3.5 billion)
• However, passenger kilometres increased by 6%, so the average journey lengths fell across all sectors (long distance, London and South East and Regional)
• LNER’s passenger journeys were up 15% (largest rise of any operator) - but average journey length was down 5%, the biggest fall

What I take from this is a larger increase in short trips being made, possibly within urban areas. Heathrow Express has had a reported big rise, and has a high revenue/km so may be part of the explanation.

 

[TUC]

Not at all statistically robust I know, but it is noticeable that services such as the 0700 Leeds-Kings Cross which, pre-Covid, regularly had just about every seat filled, now is generally around 75% full. Similarly, in station car parking areas in West Yorkshire, such as Sowerby Bridge, where it used to be a challenge finding a space the closer one got to 0900, now usually have some spaces free. In both cases though, these are fuller than 2-3 years ago ago. This suggests that, whilst usage has recovered to some extent post-Covid, there is a long-term change in travel patterns.

 

[hwl]

Not at all statistically robust I know, but it is noticeable that services such as the 0700 Leeds-Kings Cross which, pre-Covid, regularly had just about every seat filled, now is generally around 75% full. Similarly, in station car parking areas in West Yorkshire, such as Sowerby Bridge, where it used to be a challenge finding a space the closer one got to 0900, now usually have some spaces free. In both cases though, these are fuller than 2-3 years ago ago. This suggests that, whilst usage has recovered to some extent post-Covid, there is a long-term change in travel patterns.

The biggest hit (with lack of recovery) has been "business travel" on expenses* (as opposed to commuting). Business travel also used to drive a reasonable bit of non-ticketing spend e.g. car park and station coffee shop (many station shop rents have come down to cope with new reality).
In rail year 2024-25 about half the gap in all DFT TOC finances was from lower ticketing revenue the other half from lower car park, station retail rents and advertising hoardings (the latter being non covid related).

*your 0700 example is an ideal case study

In general fare models haven't been adapted to cope with the reduction in business travel, the long distance operators still seem to live in hope here (or may be they just can't sell any sensible concept to DfT, or just don't care to much pre hand back to DfTO).
Ditto levels of 1st class provision on trains.

 

[TUC]

The biggest hit (with lack of recovery) has been "business travel" on expenses* (as opposed to commuting). Business travel also used to drive a reasonable bit of non-ticketing spend e.g. car park and station coffee shop (many station shop rents have come down to cope with new reality).
In rail year 2024-25 about half the gap in all DFT TOC finances was from lower ticketing revenue the other half from lower car park, station retail rents and advertising hoardings (the latter being non covid related).

*your 0700 example is an ideal case study

In general fare models haven't been adapted to cope with the reduction in business travel, the long distance operators still seem to live in hope here (or may be they just can't sell any sensible concept to DfT, or just don't care to much pre hand back to DfTO).
Ditto levels of 1st class provision on trains.

I agree . I'm not sure whether data makes sufficient distinction between commuting and business travel on expenses. They are different groups.

 

[InTheEastMids]

In general fare models haven't been adapted to cope with the reduction in business travel, the long distance operators still seem to live in hope here (or may be they just can't sell any sensible concept to DfT, or just don't care to much pre hand back to DfTO).

Agree with this and have two types of anecdote that support it.
1. Because of MS Teams, the volume of business travel is down, I am down from once per week to once per month. I can't see any sign of it coming back, to the point that our clients specify remote delivery with MS Teams in the contract documents - they do not see the value in asking their suppliers to price in significant amounts of business travel
2. The other business travel "taboo" that's been broken in my experience is that it is pretty common for a later start-time of meetings to be suggested to avoid peak-time tickets - i.e. something that might have been embarrassing penny-pinching by an organisation 10 or 20 years ago is increasingly acceptable business practice.

It's very hard to simultaneously price a peak ticket against two profoundly different alternatives i.e. (1) an off-peak ticket plus hotel and (2) not traveling at all.

 

[Horizon22]

I agree . I'm not sure whether data makes sufficient distinction between commuting and business travel on expenses. They are different groups.

They are different groups, but it would be hard to differentiate as there's quite a bit of overlap between their patterns for travel purposes.

This long-distance business demand is probably never coming back - not to the same degree at least - for the reasons that @InTheEastMids mentions. Also a key element is the embedding of working from home, even if reduced from peaks in the last few years, which will be here to stay. Genie is out of the bottle on this one and probably is a factor in not getting those last remaining % of revenue back.

 

[TUC]

They are different groups, but it would be hard to differentiate as there's quite a bit of overlap between their patterns for travel purposes.

i agree that they do overlap but, for the ECML for example, it might be fair to assume that anyone travelling to Kings Cross from north of Grantham are more like to be on business travel rather than commuting. It won't be an exact science, but would give a comparison point.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Jan 2026 ==

Agree with this and have two types of anecdote that support it.
1. Because of MS Teams, the volume of business travel is down, I am down from once per week to once per month. I can't see any sign of it coming back, to the point that our clients specify remote delivery with MS Teams in the contract documents - they do not see the value in asking their suppliers to price in significant amounts of business travel
2. The other business travel "taboo" that's been broken in my experience is that it is pretty common for a later start-time of meetings to be suggested to avoid peak-time tickets - i.e. something that might have been embarrassing penny-pinching by an organisation 10 or 20 years ago is increasingly acceptable business practice.

It's very hard to simultaneously price a peak ticket against two profoundly different alternatives i.e. (1) an off-peak ticket plus hotel and (2) not traveling at all.

Similarly with myself.

With regards to point 2, it might also reflect a greater awareness by employers of not having London-based meetings before 10 a.m. which result in staff from the North having to leave their homes ridiculously early.

The comparison between off-peak ticket the night before a meeting, with a hotel stay, vs an early morning peak ticket is an interesting one. Rail used to do more in offering integrated train/hotel packages, primarily to the leisure market. I do wonder if there is an opportunity for something like that to be offered to the business market?

 

[dk1]

I still believe that the business travel not recovering as quickly is of course going to be the case when the country is bordering on recession and the economy in a lull. Wait for things to hopefully get more upbeat and businesses will be far more encouraged to spend on things like 1st call travel and other expenses for their staff. This has usually been the case in such times.

All in all a fantastic set of figures there released by ORR.

 

[TUC]

I still believe that the business travel not recovering as quickly is of course going to be the case when the country is bordering on recession and the economy in a lull. Wait for things to hopefully get more upbeat and businesses will be far more encouraged to spend on things like 1st call travel and other expenses for their staff. This has usually been the case in such times.

All in all a fantastic set of figures there released by ORR.

If that was going to happen, it would surely have done so over the past 2-3 years. Why would there be an increase in the future when, as said above, so many meetings have moved online?

 

[dk1]

If that was going to happen, it would surely have done so over the past 2-3 years. Why would there be an increase in the future when, as said above, so many meetings have moved online?

We have been bordering recession through 2023/24/25 only just keeping its head above water with very low/slow growth. Been a long time since we had any boom years. I am just convinced that throughout things have held up reasonably well and nothing like the recessions we knew in the 80s & 90s when first class travel and things like restaurant car receipts took a real battering. BR would also reduce timetables which only really happened to any amount because of the pandemic.

 

[Horizon22]

I still believe that the business travel not recovering as quickly is of course going to be the case when the country is bordering on recession and the economy in a lull. Wait for things to hopefully get more upbeat and businesses will be far more encouraged to spend on things like 1st call travel and other expenses for their staff. This has usually been the case in such times.

I'm not so sure. Virtual meetings are fully integrated now, and any sensible business won't be regularly spending £100+ on anytime fares for people to travel half-way across the country for something that could be done online. Yes in-person meetings will still occur, and those expenses will still be occured but I think it's fantasy to think it will return to anything like the regularity it did pre-2020, whatever the state of the economy.

 

[dk1]

I'm not so sure. Virtual meetings are fully integrated now, and any sensible business won't be regularly spending £100+ on anytime fares for people to travel half-way across the country for something that could be done online. Yes in-person meetings will still occur, and those expenses will still be occured but I think it's fantasy to think it will return to anything like the regularity it did pre-2020, whatever the state of the economy.

I still think there is a good appetite for face to face & talking of appetite, if it’s a decent one with good expenses lunch too then even better but such jolly’s are not so forthcoming from businesses in uncertain times. We will have to see how things go if we ever climb out of these doldrums.

 

[norbitonflyer]

However the final part of the article referring to investment in new trains sounds wrong, I cannot think of a single new train for SouthEastern for at least 20 years. Some secondhand ones, yes, but what are the new ones?

The last new trains delivered to SEastern were the Javelins, which are now 16 years old. Some 377s and all 707s are younger but, as you say, were secondhand to Southeastern.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

The last new trains delivered to SEastern were the Javelins, which are now 16 years old. Some 377s and all 707s are younger but, as you say, were secondhand to Southeastern.

To be fair the 707's were barely used and SE got funding to give them new seat covers and livery making them look like new.