An internal memo at GWR this week quoted Mark Hopwood as saying that Off-Peak journeys (on GWR) are back to 99% of pre pandemic numbers but overall revenue is down 30%.
What this might be masking is the routes being taken.
I am one of those who moved home during the pandemic, now use GWR trains (fairly infrequently so far) for off peak travel, and have gone from none before, (my previous usage was SWR peak hour trains).
I now live just 2 minutes from a station, and being interested in trains have observed that many of the trains are now standing room only. My most recent journey back from Bristol around 2pm on a Friday afternoon had all seats taken and about 30 standing in each carriage. So probably loading to about 130%
Revenue would probably go up further, if GWR chose to stop discouraging travel by not providing enough carriages. You don’t need to stand very long at Bath station to realise dwell times are suffering due to many trains only being 3car or 4car.
At Bath It is quite common to see more people waiting for a 3car local train than get on a 9car London train. Which suggests to me that capacity is badly out of sync with passenger demand (although rather stuck in stone due to franchise specification few years back).
So in my experience local demand is very high (too high for current Bristol area fleet), but they haven’t sorted the demand on the longer trains with advance tickets to fill the seats. Which suggests advance tickets are the problem suppressing demand, as the trains without advance tickets are getting more people boarding.
And for those comparing to airlines, their advance tickets are available 30-50 weeks ahead, some rail companies won’t sell advances for some days next month which is further evidence that (lack of) advance tickets are suppressing demand.