More lines needed to further grow passenger numbers
rail@bauermedia.co.uk @RAIL
PASSENGERS are coming back.
Latest figures from the Office of Rail and Road show a 20% increase in numbers last autumn, compared with autumn 2022. Revenue has jumped a similar amount.
That’s hugely welcome. It leaves passenger numbers within touching distance of pre-pandemic figures, although it must be said that there’s still a wider gap in revenue.
But today’s recovering railway is different to the one before COVID. There’s a greater emphasis on leisure travel and less on business. I’ve caught a few early morning trains south from York in the past few weeks. They’ve been emptier than I remember, but later trains look much busier.
Commuting seems to be growing, too. Catching an 0802 train from Watford Junction, for an Institution of Mechanical Engineers seminar in mid-March, I found myself standing on a London Northwestern service, even before more passengers piled on at Bushey.
This recovery comes despite strikes and a series of storms that disrupted travel. There’s also the increasing landslip lottery, as Network Rail’s infrastructure struggles to cope with changing weather patterns.
Talking to Great Western Railway Managing Director Mark Hopwood at the recent launch of his fast-charge battery train confirmed the changing nature of rail travel.
Hopwood said that GWR leisure travel numbers were higher than pre-pandemic, with Fridays particularly busy. And commuter levels were almost back to what they were.
His hole is in the business market, where he said people have realised that they don’t need to travel for meetings. So, GWR no longer runs its Bristol ‘super fast’ services because there’s no longer the market for them.
On revenue, Hopwood argues that a gap was opening even before lockdowns forced passengers to stay at home. Split ticketing was beginning to have an effect, with passengers booking journeys using more than one ticket, giving a total fare less than the through journey booked as one.
Not only does this reduce revenue, it also pushes up journey numbers because the railway sees two or more tickets sold, which makes a single journey look like more than one.
This is one reason why the latest passenger figures should be treated with some caution. They’re moving the right way (upwards!), but there’s no opportunity to rest on efforts to attract customers back to rail.
The other twist comes from Crossrail opening as the Elizabeth line. There’s no doubt the new railway is popular and busy with people. But it provides a headache for statisticians because its presence has tended to over-inflate recovery numbers.
The latest figure of 417 million passenger journeys in Quarter 3 (October-December 2023) put rail on a par with the situation i
