Rail usage

[coppercapped]

Our household doesn't own a car, and haven't since 1999. Outside of London this revelation is treated with real shock and disbelief, often with a side order of have you been disqualified from driving. I manage a lot of UK travel by train, a bit of plane and a lot of taxis and Uber. It works for me but a lot of people would far prefer to be in their car, not least as they are big markers of status and social class.

As there are some 42 million cars registered for use on the roads in the UK and the total population is around 69 million then the ownership or use of a car is a remarkably poor marker of status and social class.

 

[The Ham]

Not sure how you've calculated this - passenger income is only a bit over £10bn so 1% of this would be £0.1bn

Sorry typo should be 10%

 

[GuyGibsonVC]

And/or the cost of running the railways could be reduced. But no one wants that fight with staff, especially a Labour government.

Do you mean staff efficiencies in terms of job losses? The railway in both train operation and infrastructure is quite lean.

 

[sh24]

As there are some 42 million cars registered for use on the roads in the UK and the total population is around 69 million then the ownership or use of a car is a remarkably poor marker of status and social class.

For clarity, I meant the type of car. People who drive a BMW are IME exceptionally proud of the fact and what it signals about them.

 

[Sonic1234]

Do you mean staff efficiencies in terms of job losses?

Ticket office closures, self dispatch, DOO, more stations being unstaffed, reducing the numbers milling around in high viz on platforms etc. would reduce the cost of the railway. Obviously there is a debate around how much this would actually save, and if it is desirable and to what extent if it is.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jun 2026 ==

As there are some 42 million cars registered for use on the roads in the UK and the total population is around 69 million then the ownership or use of a car is a remarkably poor marker of status and social class.

Learning to drive and passing your driving test is a "coming of age ceremony" in our culture. The younger generation are cooling on this apparently, due to a mix of environmentalism, urbanism and everything being online.

Public transport is seen by many as something to be endured.

 

[ATS3]

The younger generation are cooling on this apparently, due to a mix of environmentalism, urbanism and everything being online.

Public transport is seen by many as something to be endured.

Not in London. I don't know about the rest of the country, but I would personally put BS on this.

 

[Bald Rick]

passenger income is only a bit over £10bn

£13bn, give or tske, but your point still stands.

People who drive a BMW are IME exceptionally proud of the fact and what it signals about them.

Not round here!

 

[JamesT]

Not in London. I don't know about the rest of the country, but I would personally put BS on this.

London is very much an outlier in transport compared to the rest of the country. The oft-quoted statistic that 70% of rail journeys involve London, so 30% for all the rest.
https://www.gov.uk/government/stati...statistics-great-britain-2024-domestic-travel has some pertinent statistics on modes of travel. The car absolutely dominates.

 

[crablab]

The point was that even a tiny shift in behaviour could reduce the cost of subsidy of running the railways

The behavioural shift required is not tiny for a relatively small revenue shift. As I said:

You could turn every season ticket into a Bahncard 100 equivalent and it still wouldn't move the needle on overall journeys, because convenience and connectivity are really important considerations

The point being your original suggestion is looking at it the wrong way round. People are travelling during the peak and paying those prices because it's a distress purchase in a captive market.
The commuters in your example are going to drive their car on evenings and weekends. You could turn their £6k season ticket into a Bahncard 100 and they'd still drive their cars.
Maybe if it was a BC100 you could start to achieve some genuine increase in usage and modal shift, but commuters are not going going to pay extra above their £6k to do additional journeys by rail they don't have to. The additional revenue there is really limited.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Jun 2026 ==

The car absolutely dominates.

Yes.

 

[Adrian1980uk]

Indeed, however over 1 in 5 don't and that's not an insignificant number.



Indeed, although around 4 in 5 people live in an urban location.

Also, it's worth being aware of the UK definition of Urban, which is a settlement with a population of over 10,000. As such (and bearing in mind that for every small town of 9,000 people you need 3 villages of 3,000 or 18 hamlets of 500) a significant percentage of those who are rural are likely to live somewhere where public transport is viable.




Indeed, and that is something which government policy is trying to deliver.



Indeed, however 55% of people live within a 30 minute walk of a train station.

Also, a 0.5bph bus frequency is fairly rare, and (bearing in mind the other things I've said) is likely to be something which only a fairly small number of people would encounter.



Overall it may not move the needle by a significant amount, that wasn't the point of the suggestion.

The point was that even a tiny shift in behaviour could reduce the cost of subsidy of running the railways.

Even a 10% uplift in ticket spending nationally would be an extra £1bn (which if that was also a 1% shift in miles would mean nationally rail accouted for an extra 0.1% - as you say not shifting the needle).

Although that's a reduction on subsidy from £12bn to £11bn (circa 9% less).

Even if DfT only got to retain 10% of that, it could support an uplift in bus subsidy of around 5% and creating better multi modal options for more people.

Or put it another way, if we could reduce the rail subsidy to £0, that would be enough to increase defence spending without having to make any other cuts.

The tiny shift in behaviour isn't as simple as made out to be as it could actually increase the demand for subsidy if too large as new infrastructure would be needed to cope with extra demand. The logic that there is spare capacity is sound but the idea that extra passengers would mostly travel in the hours that the spare capacity is available or on the routes that have spare capacity is unreasonable. Most likely is the increase demand will be for services that are already crowded as well as less busy services.

 

[The Ham]

The point being your original suggestion is looking at it the wrong way round. People are travelling during the peak and paying those prices because it's a distress purchase in a captive market.
The commuters in your example are going to drive their car on evenings and weekends. You could turn their £6k season ticket into a Bahncard 100 and they'd still drive their cars.
Maybe if it was a BC100 you could start to achieve some genuine increase in usage and modal shift, but commuters are not going going to pay extra above their £6k to do additional journeys by rail they don't have to. The additional revenue there is really limited.

Obviously it depends, but for someone going a few stops further/off their main route, the extra cost for extending that distance by buying a return ticket could well be cheaper than just the petrol and in some cases just the parking costs.

For some travel it could even be faster than driving.

As such, you increase the likelihood of people using rail.

That can, longer term, have two impacts.

The first is that a household finds it harder to justify the cost of a second car (as an example, if a parent needs the car for swimming lessons and the cost is £8 once a week for a taxi, that's a maximum of £420 - a lot of people would pay that in insurance costs or insurance costs plus VED).

The second is even more long term, such is that more people don't automatically leave the house and get in the car, they are more likely to consider the best choice for that trip.

Ticket office closures, self dispatch, DOO, more stations being unstaffed, reducing the numbers milling around in high viz on platforms etc. would reduce the cost of the railway. Obviously there is a debate around how much this would actually save, and if it is desirable and to what extent if it is.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Jun 2026 ==


Learning to drive and passing your driving test is a "coming of age ceremony" in our culture. The younger generation are cooling on this apparently, due to a mix of environmentalism, urbanism and everything being online.

Public transport is seen by many as something to be endured.

Not in London. I don't know about the rest of the country, but I would personally put BS on this.

The data on driving licences is fairly clear for those current aged 40-49 then 85% of them have a license.

Now the complex part trying to show that this is higher than the current young cohort without being told "yes but that's because more people pass their tests as they get older".

To do that we need to track this cohort through time, which is what this table does:

Current Age Group	Today (Mid-2020s)	10 Years Ago (Mid-2010s)	20 Years Ago (Mid-2000s)	30 Years Ago (Mid-1990s)	40 Years Ago (Mid-1980s)
17–20	28.7%	30.0%	27.0%	30.0%	26.0%
21–29	59.5%	—	—	—	—
30–39	75.2%	67.0% (Aged 21–29)	—	—	—
40–49	83.3%	78.0% (Aged 30–39)	72.0% (Aged 21–29)	—	—
50–59	86.2%	84.0% (Aged 40–49)	80.0% (Aged 30–39)	75.0% (Aged 21–29)	—
60–69	82.6%	83.0% (Aged 50–59)	82.0% (Aged 40–49)	78.0% (Aged 30–39)	73.0% (Aged 21–29)

Interestingly around 25-30% of 17-21's have a license regardless of if we look now, 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

So when theose currently 40-49 were 21-29 (20 years ago) it was 72% had a license, today that's 60%.

Likewise, when they were 30-39 (10 years ago) it was 78%, now it's 75% (although the current 30-39's had a rate of 67% 10 years so were also trailing the 72% of the current 40-49 year olds).

However compared with those older than them (current 50-59 and current 60-69) the license rates are broadly comparable and so it does appear that it's probable that those currently under 40 are likely to continue to have lower license rates.

Whist having a license isn't always a reliable thing for car ownership (it's possible for people to not own a car, own one car, own more than one car) it does ensure that there's a greater percentage who can't own a car (unless they have a provisional and are accompanied by someone with a licence - although that's not something which is sustainable long term).

As an example, we are a couple with one car and children, we know another couple with the same number of children with 2 cars and a third couple (again same number of children) with three cars (none of the children drive in any of the families).

Unsurprisingly I walk to get around a lot, whilst those with the 3 cars almost always leave the house and get in their car, so much so they once drove less than 100m from one part of a car park to another part between voting and picking a child up from an after school club (and it wouldn't have made it noticeably quicker as there's speed humps and they were closer to the exit where they were parked to vote).

The tiny shift in behaviour isn't as simple as made out to be as it could actually increase the demand for subsidy if too large as new infrastructure would be needed to cope with extra demand. The logic that there is spare capacity is sound but the idea that extra passengers would mostly travel in the hours that the spare capacity is available or on the routes that have spare capacity is unreasonable. Most likely is the increase demand will be for services that are already crowded as well as less busy services.

Indeed, however the ticket option suggested was aimed at those who travel to work by train anyway, with their extra travel most likely to be off peak travel.

Whist yes, they may then also need to travel on some other peak services, unless their (say) two days in the office are Monday and Friday, they are already using services which are at peak usage.

Also, given peak demand is currently lower than pre covid, there's likely to be relatively few cases where increasing capacity would require additional infrastructure.

As such, the uplift is more likely to at times of off peak demand or within current infrastructure capacity.

Obviously XC is the elephant in the room. However, if there was a new fleet of 5 and 9 coach sets (especially if they broadly mirrored the 80x's in terms of capacity) that could be delivered whilst decreasing the total number of coaches on lease whilst providing a 25% or more increase in seating capacity for the in use fleet (in use fleet is assumed to be 85% of the total fleet).

I've spoken about this elsewhere, so won't repeat the case, but it's here:

I think that pretty much the only way to get XC to have a new fleet is if it delivers on these points:
- a smaller fleet (in terms of both number of units but also in the number of coaches),
- whilst also increasing capacity across the board
- whist maintaining a 15% of fleet for spares/maintenance
- reduced staffing requirements due to fewer pairs of units in service
- reduces the risk of a rammed unit with an empty unit due to lack of staff
I expect that the initial response would be that it is impossible, however the following might be able to do it all.
So let's start with the factor which might mean that this option might find it harder to be as good as the above, as its not something which is in the public domain. The number of diagrams run by XC by their 22x fleet.

Looking through the timetables, it appears that there's 44, if this is wrong then the capacity increase would be lower.

First up fleet size:
Current 22x fleet is 70 units (312 coaches) formed of:
34 class 220
4 class 221 (4 coaches)
32 class 221 (5 coaches)

Proposed fleet (80x or matching) would be formed of:
12 sets with 9 coaches
40 sets with 5 coaches
That's 52 sets needing 304 coaches

That's 18 fewer sets and 8 fewer coaches, so that meets the smaller fleet size (by units and coaches) claim
85% of 52 is 44.2, (44 of 52 is 84.6%) so that meets that requirement to run 44 diagrams with equal to or less than 85% fleet utilisation.

Seating capacity is going to be the big one. Basically anything which is broadly +18% would be the same sort of capacity uplift which the 80x's delivered vs the HST's. Ideally, better than that would be good.

Current seating (220/221)
34 class 220 - 176 standard class 26 1st class
4 class 221 (4 coaches) - 176 standard class 26 1st class
32 class 221 (5 coaches) - 220 standard class 26 1st class

That's 13,024 standard class seats and 1,820 first class seats, giving a total of 14,844, less 10% for spares and that's 13,360 seats in active use.

Using GWR's 800 fleet seating numbers
12 sets with 9 coaches - 580 standard 70 1st class
40 sets with 5 coaches - 290 standard 36 1st class

That's 18,560 standard class seats and 2,280 first class seats, giving a total of 20,840 less 15% for spares and that's 17,630 seats in active us.
When you compare the two, even allowing for a lower fleet utilisation in the new fleet that's an increase of 31.96%, as such that meets the number of seats in service requirement, and by a little more than the 18% target.

However, even if all the spares were the 9 coach sets (leaving only 4 of the 9 coach sets in service) the in service seat number would be 15,640 seats which is a 17% increase over the current fleet, so even on that basis there's still an increase in seats.

Whilst it might be that a 5+5 train may substitute for a 9 coach unit, the fleet mix is such that this should be fairly rare. As such, there's should be low single digits percentages of services with a member of staff in each unit, compared to the current situation where there's a significant percentages of services being run in pairs.

Given this reduction in staffing, it should be possible to have a member of staff on standby for each spare unit avaliable and still be able to have fewer staff.

Whist the ideal would be to have a unit which could beat the capacity of various of the pairings of the 22x fleet having about 1 in 5 services smashing that in the form of those 9 coach sets is going to help.

The current pairing capacities:
220+220 train 348 standard and 52 1st
220+221 train 394 standard and 52 1st
221+221 train 440 standard and 52 1st

That compares with:
5 coach GWR 290 standard and 36 1st

Although that also needs to be considered against the fact that quite a lot of XC services will be being run providing:
220 standard and 26 1st
Or, worse still:
174 standard and 26 1st

To give XC the best chance of coping if they see significant growth due to the new fleet, I would suggest an option for up to 200 coaches, as that would be enough to lengthen 25 of the 5 coach sets to 9 coaches, provide 15 additional 5 coach sets (so all current diagrams would be 9 or 5+5) and 7 addition 5 coach sets to give scope to strengthen service frequency further out (for example allowing more services to be extended beyond York or Plymouth).

Obviously that would be far more than growth might need, however, if that option could be used for (say) a new order placed up to 3 years after the final unit of the original order enters service, that's going to add a lot of flexibility for GBR.

One thing they could do (I'm mindful that the above only has to match the class 80x's in as many ways as possible, so the follow on order might not be able do directly this, but could still be useful in a sightly less efficient way) is use a follow on order to provide additional capacity for GWR/LNER.

One interesting option could be to create a 9 coach battery enhanced unit for GWR. Such a unit (class 800's, it probably wouldn't work for the 802's) would have 3 diesel coaches and 2 battery coaches (I.e. swapping out two of the diesel engines for a battery pack - or more likely when lengthening the 5 coach sets keeping the engines and adding in 2 battery coaches).

For a lot of the services which branch off from the Paddington Cardiff corridor such a setup could be very useful (electric only mode would likely get to Banbury and back, but able to run as a hybrid for to Swansea or through the Cotswolds).

The reason I mention it here is that by lengthening some GWR sets to 9 coaches it could be that some 5 coach sets could be transferred elsewhere (such as XC) whilst still delivering the same capacity at GWR, just with a sightly lower coach count.

Most ofthe comments in response wasn't on the numbers of coaches or the uplift in capacity but rather "why not all 7 coaches" (why not is you'd need a higher number of coaches) or comments around "the 9 coach sets might be mostly empty" (which isn't really an issue, as we're not increasing the number of coaches on lease) or around "but we may need more capacity still due to suppressed demand" (which could be an option for additional units within a reasonable timeframe).

 

[canary fan]

As there are some 42 million cars registered for use on the roads in the UK and the total population is around 69 million then the ownership or use of a car is a remarkably poor marker of status and social class.

Surprisingly, none of the children included in your figures, drive cars.

 

[Snow1964]

Surprisingly, none of the children included in your figures, drive cars.

Actually 16 year olds whose parents get PIP (personal independence payments) can hold provisional licence and drive accompanied to/from school.

But most people have to be 17 to drive.

But this being a rail forum, guess it is assumed adulthood starts at 16th birthday when child fares cease to apply.

 

[The Ham]

Surprisingly, none of the children included in your figures, drive cars.

Indeed, although it's worth noting that there's more cars than there are people who pay income tax (39.1 million).

Likewise if you compare to the working age population (43.5 million) that's fairly close to the number of cars.

 

[absolutelymilk]

Probably more helpful is to look at it by household:

Around a third (34%) of households had two or more cars in 2024, 44% one car and 22% no cars.

NTS 2024: Household car availability and trends in car trips

 

[The exile]

Not in London. I don't know about the rest of the country, but I would personally put BS on this.

As In the younger generation in London aren’t cooling on the idea of car ownership; or public transport isn’t seen by Londoners as something to be endured?

 

[talldave]

It works for me but a lot of people would far prefer to be in their car, not least as they are big markers of status and social class.

That's ridiculous, I own 2 cars (one big, one miniscule) but I bet some people spend more on Sky or cigarettes than I do on cars per year. Running and maintaining cars is a hobby too. Brand snobbery comes from ignorance of depreciation! When my big car expires I'm half tempted to replace it with a Bentley, costing a lot less than the Unheard-of-Chinese brand EVs and immensely more enjoyable to drive.

As a Londoner, my public transport mileage far exceeds car mileage, but trains are unreliable, full of selfish idiots playing inane crap out loud and filthy, which my cars are not. Covid proved that TOCs can clean trains if they want to, they just decide not to when we're not in the midst of a government brainwashing programme.

 

[The exile]

Covid proved that TOCs can clean trains if they want to, they just decide not to when we're not in the midst of a government brainwashing programme.

To use your own words, that’s ridiculous. All COVID proved is that it’s easier to clean trains when virtually nobody’s using them - in exactly the same way as it proved that journey times by road are eminently shorter and more predictable when hardly anyone ejj ko se is using them.

 

[dk1]

To use your own words, that’s ridiculous. All COVID proved is that it’s easier to clean trains when virtually nobody’s using them - in exactly the same way as it proved that journey times by road are eminently shorter and more predictable when hardly anyone ejj ko se is using them.

Here at Greater Anglia we are blessed with very clean trains/toilets but during the pandemic all catering staff also did light cleaning (headrests, door buttons, grab handles etc) thus keeping them employed rather than going on to furlough. We were also one of the first operators to restart catering.

 

[talldave]

To use your own words, that’s ridiculous. All COVID proved is that it’s easier to clean trains when virtually nobody’s using them - in exactly the same way as it proved that journey times by road are eminently shorter and more predictable when hardly anyone ejj ko se is using them.

Deep cleaning of trains takes the same amount of time regardless of who uses them. We're talking about steam cleaning the seats and thoroughly cleaning the whole carriage. It never happened before Covid and hasn't happened since. Sadly the justification for suddenly doing it at the time was pointless but it would be nice if someone simply thought it worth cleaning trains because they're disgustingly dirty.

 

[The exile]

Deep cleaning of trains takes the same amount of time regardless of who uses them. We're talking about steam cleaning the seats and thoroughly cleaning the whole carriage. It never happened before Covid and hasn't happened since. Sadly the justification for suddenly doing it at the time was pointless but it would be nice if someone simply thought it worth cleaning trains because they're disgustingly dirty.

Wasn’t aware that it had happened during COVID either.

 

[Snow1964]

ORR have just published latest quarterly figures Jan-Mar 2026

Lots of detail, but this is quick summary

per table 1 : annual is 1829 million journeys,
highest in series since 1946
higher than pre-Covid 7 years ago

Passenger km 67.7 billion, up 5% on previous year
but only 4% increase in train km

Table 2 passenger journeys :
biggest growth Lumo up 23% on previous year
4 operators were negative, so less (Hull, LNER, Grand Cental, Caledonian sleeper)

Table 3 has passenger km by operator
mixed results,
Lumo saw biggest increase of 16% more passenger km, but Caledonian sleeper saw 6% reduction.
Also includes change in average journey. XC seeing 5% longer journeys, down to Lumo where journeys were 5% shorter

Table 4 is revenue, gives lot of split by ticket types

Table 5 Passenger train Km
Lumo and LNER both increased 17% on last year,
lowest was GWR who shrank 0.9%

Table 6 Passenger vehicle km
Lumo was biggest annual increase 17%
GWR at other end shrank 3%

Its possible to divide tables 5 and 6 to get average train length by operator

https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/j1mdc31j/passenger-rail-usage-jan-mar-2026.pdf

If I get a chance, will compare to pre-covid (Jan-Mar 2019), ORR have removed report for that year, so it is case of crunching tables 1223, 1233, 1243, 1253 spreadsheets

 

[The Ham]

Comparing the TOC's excluding Elizabeth Line and OAO it shows the following:

5.8% growth when looking at rolling 12 months when comparing Jan-Mar for 2025 and 2026, this is down from 6.8% growth in 2025 and 12.1% in 2024. Although this is still higher than any of the pre Covid growth data points (max 5.7% in Jan-Mar 2014 with only one other, 5.05% in Oct-Dec 2014, which was over 5%) and noticeably so compared to Jan-Mar 2019 which was 2.4%.

90.5% when compared to pre Covid* this compares to 85.6% in Jan-Mar 2025 and 80.0% in 2024.

* although the pre Covid included a lot of TOC travel which has switched to EL travel and so it's difficult to factor for with just this data - however it's likely to be higher but it's useful when comparing how things are when comparing previous data points.

 

[John R]

The real concern is that revenue growth has almost stalled. Up until recently it was growing at around 6% on the same quarter in the previous year, but the last two quarters have shown growth of 1.9% and most recently 1.1%.

Added to which, these figures are adjusted for inflation. The next quarter will be the first where regulated fares are frozen. That means that in real terms, fare income from regulated fares will, all other things being equal (ie similar ridership), fall in the analysis. Which makes it very possible that we will see, for the first time since COVID, a quarterly fall in revenue in real terms.

 

[SCDR_WMR]

The real concern is that revenue growth has almost stalled.

It's always going to. TOCs are still pushing out ridiculous levels of Advanced tickets at silly prices - look at LNWR Advanced tickets sales, loads for under £10-15 that aren't necessary as they would sell at off-peak pricing anyway.

 

[YorkshireBear]

Is LNERs loss of passenger journeys a symptom of them massively reducing some of the local/regional flows? Assume their revenue hasn't also shrunk with the new timetable.

 

[John R]

Is LNERs loss of passenger journeys a symptom of them massively reducing some of the local/regional flows? Assume their revenue hasn't also shrunk with the new timetable.

That’s certainly a possibility, but note that the OA operators are struggling too in terms of journeys. So one theory is that the long distance operators have a higher discretionary spend element, which is starting to be affected by the financial situation.

 

[Horizon22]

Indeed, however over 1 in 5 don't and that's not an insignificant number.

True, but it’s probably highly skewed by London which also has a higher population than several regions combined.

 

[The Ham]

True, but it’s probably highly skewed by London which also has a higher population than several regions combined.

Not as much as I thought, the numbers on the right are percentage without a car, but the national average is a fraction higher than 20% which helps and even excluding London isn't far off 20% at 18%:

2024 North East 24
2024 North West 20
2024 Yorkshire and the Humber 21
2024 East Midlands 19
2024 West Midlands 20
2024 East of England 17
2024 London 41
2024 South East 16
2024 South West 13
2024 England excluding London 18
2024 England 22

Link to the spreadsheet:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68a42b19246cc964c53d2988/nts9902.ods

 

[Bald Rick]

Is LNERs loss of passenger journeys a symptom of them massively reducing some of the local/regional flows? Assume their revenue hasn't also shrunk with the new timetable.

Nope. It is a result of the large engineering work programme that wasn‘t as severe the previous year.