Post Covid Passenger Rebound

[Horizon22]

I sometimes travel via GWR to London. I don’t always travel on the same weekday or at the same time, so it’s difficult to get a unbiased wide view, but from I have seen, it’s the so called peak services that are definitely less full than the off peak services before or after the so called peak. Given the difference in ticket price if you book an off peak in advance (sorry, I don’t know or fully understand the ticket structure, as I myself don’t buy many tickets, for business purposes train tickets are bought for me) that’s not really surprising.

Depends where you're travelling from. 387 services are rather busy at peak times into London between 0800-0900. Some of them were 8-cars past few months and have gone up to 12-cars because the demand has required it.

That being said from further afield, there is definitely more merit in changing fares somehow to improve passenger load factors.

 

[Peterthegreat]

When you re-read what you chose to bolden in my quote, you'll realise the very silly mistake in your reply. Only a small portion of the rail's leisure travellers related to tourism. Sport, retail and the night time economy generate the majority of the leisure travellers. To repeat what I already said using different words, it's an advantage that the nice weather generates the tourist travel when the railway would otherwise not have many of their usual passengers e.g. no football season, commuters on holiday with children etc.



That's because many commuters aren't there then, it's nothing to do with leisure travellers.

The Saturdays in December are the busiest days of the entire year for railways. Many cities now start their Christmas markets at the beginning of November. If you tried travelling on a Northern train on a Saturday in December 10 years ago you'll know exactly why that is. Northern didn't have enough carriages to carry everyone who wanted to travel on a December Saturday, passengers gave up even trying after finding consecutive services were too full for them to be allowed on board.

Absolutely agree. There seems to be some "confusion" between Tourism and Leisure. Of course the classic tourism - holidays, seaside,
etc is mainly during the summer(ish) months. However there is now a lot of other leisure traffic ranging from nights out, sporting events, vfr, shopping and retail that takes place throughout the year - particularly at weekends.

 

[Annetts key]

Depends where you're travelling from. 387 services are rather busy at peak times into London between 0800-0900. Some of them were 8-cars past few months and have gone up to 12-cars because the demand has required it.

That being said from further afield, there is definitely more merit in changing fares somehow to improve passenger load factors.

Bristol T.M. to Paddington and return.

 

[Horizon22]

Bristol T.M. to Paddington and return.

Yeah I'd certainly expect that not to have returned anywhere near as much as outer suburban / Thames Valley commuting.

 

[gazzaa2]

Absolutely agree. There seems to be some "confusion" between Tourism and Leisure. Of course the classic tourism - holidays, seaside,
etc is mainly during the summer(ish) months. However there is now a lot of other leisure traffic ranging from nights out, sporting events, vfr, shopping and retail that takes place throughout the year - particularly at weekends.

It's always been there though. The weekend services were ram packed long before Covid and were the quickest to rebound to previous levels once things opened back up.

 

[TravelDream]

And as with many other forms of transport, the walk up fare is higher than one booked days or weeks in advance, that's life I'm afraid.

This is totally untrue. Flight prices (which I presume you are referring to) regularly go up and down reacting to demand and maximising revenue for the airline. It is actually very rare for flights to be cheapest when first released. They generally get more expensive closer to the flight date, but can go down as the flight gets closer.
Just the other week I booked a 2.5 hour flight on a well-known Irish airline around 5 hours prior to departure for £20. The same flight during the summer holidays is already well into three figures.

I think this is an issue that many traditionalists on this forum don't understand when people say to look at how airlines price their routes.
Revenue management is about maximizing revenue. Rail revenue management is supposedly also trying to do this, but it is very poorly applied.

 

[yorksrob]

They have achieved that by getting rid of many of the loss making sections and branches. These have either been closed or are subsidised by the local government in the area they run through, so it's a more complicated situation

Ah, so they do have subsidy, but it's been moved to a different account. Not so different then

 

[mmh]

The findings of the linked report and my own ( albeit anecdotal experiance) do not tally. There is no way we are back to 80% usage on WCML south. Trains to and from London at peak periods are still very empty.

Leisure travel is buoyant and weekend trains are very busy but they are not busy during the week.

WCML north is a very different story. Glasgow and Edinburgh services are full or more so, any day of the week, at any time. So much so that recorded announcements of "this train is expected to be very busy today, passengers with flexible tickets might wish to travel on a later service" can be expected for any train. A completely useless announcement, of course.

Another north/south divide perhaps?

 

[yorksrob]

WCML north is a very different story. Glasgow and Edinburgh services are full or more so, any day of the week, at any time. So much so that recorded announcements of "this train is expected to be very busy today, passengers with flexible tickets might wish to travel on a later service" can be expected for any train. A completely useless announcement, of course.

Another north/south divide perhaps?

I've observed this on trains between Carlisle and Penrith.

 

[Peterthegreat]

This is totally untrue. Flight prices (which I presume you are referring to) regularly go up and down reacting to demand and maximising revenue for the airline. It is actually very rare for flights to be cheapest when first released. They generally get more expensive closer to the flight date, but can go down as the flight gets closer.
Just the other week I booked a 2.5 hour flight on a well-known Irish airline around 5 hours prior to departure for £20. The same flight during the summer holidays is already well into three figures.

I think this is an issue that many traditionalists on this forum don't understand when people say to look at how airlines price their routes.
Revenue management is about maximizing revenue. Rail revenue management is supposedly also trying to do this, but it is very poorly applied.

Absolutely true. However the main difference is that airlines (usually) only sell tickets from end to end. Rail operators have to contend with many intermediate stops. I am sure LNER (as an example) would find it easier to maximise revenue between London and Edinburgh if they didn't have to sell tickets on the same train to/from Peterborough, Newark, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. A ticket sold (with reservation) between Durham and Newcastle means that seat cannot be sold from London to Edinburgh.

 

[mmh]

Absolutely true. However the main difference is that airlines (usually) only sell tickets from end to end. Rail operators have to contend with many intermediate stops. I am sure LNER (as an example) would find it easier to maximise revenue between London and Edinburgh if they didn't have to sell tickets on the same train to/from Peterborough, Newark, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. A ticket sold (with reservation) between Durham and Newcastle means that seat cannot be sold from London to Edinburgh.

Only of course it can be sold and is, otherwise there would never be any trains with standing room only. That's the primary reason analogies with airlines are rarely useful.

 

[stuu]

This is totally untrue. Flight prices (which I presume you are referring to) regularly go up and down reacting to demand and maximising revenue for the airline. It is actually very rare for flights to be cheapest when first released. They generally get more expensive closer to the flight date, but can go down as the flight gets closer.
Just the other week I booked a 2.5 hour flight on a well-known Irish airline around 5 hours prior to departure for £20. The same flight during the summer holidays is already well into three figures.

I think this is an issue that many traditionalists on this forum don't understand when people say to look at how airlines price their routes.
Revenue management is about maximizing revenue. Rail revenue management is supposedly also trying to do this, but it is very poorly applied.

The thing is rail companies have had decades to buy and develop pricing systems, so one would hope that they have got sophisticated mechanisms in place. I assume there is a different underlying logic to how it works; essentially one empty seat on a plane actually costs money to move, so filling it with a fare of any amount is better than nothing. For rail, an empty seat on a train costs essentially nothing, so selling tickets for the highest prices possible is best, even if it means empty seats. Just a theory

 

[ivorytoast28]

For rail, an empty seat on a train costs essentially nothing, so selling tickets for the highest prices possible is best, even if it means empty seats. Just a theory

My guess would be that it's because with rail there are people who genuinely do plan to turn up last minute and buy a ticket at the ticket office for the last minute price, with airlines this is far far rarer [if even possible in many cases] largely because of the sheer distance/planning it would require. If rail offered cheap last minute tickets they'd lose out on all those who would have been happy to buy last minute. That said some rail operators such as Northern have been offering last minute advances even on relatively short routes such as Sheffield-Doncaster [Pre-covid at least]

 

[Annetts key]

The thing is rail companies have had decades to buy and develop pricing systems, so one would hope that they have got sophisticated mechanisms in place. I assume there is a different underlying logic to how it works; essentially one empty seat on a plane actually costs money to move, so filling it with a fare of any amount is better than nothing. For rail, an empty seat on a train costs essentially nothing, so selling tickets for the highest prices possible is best, even if it means empty seats. Just a theory

No, an empty seat on a train does not cost nothing. Every extra bit of money (assuming it offsets the extra bit of fuel used) either helps reduce the cost of subsidising the service or increases the profit (for a commercial service), even if only by a small fraction.

However, unlike most scheduled flights (*), you can buy a ticket and walk on a train at any station on its route including after it has started it’s journey. And as it is likely that some of the passengers will do this, or some of the passengers are not booking seat reservations, then you can’t sell seat reservations and hence tickets for every seat.

And of course, unless a passenger is buying a ticket for a specific train, most tickets can be used on a number of different trains for the same route(s). So the railway does not know on which train each passenger will actually use…

So it all gets rather complicated rather fast.

(* no doubt someone will have an example where a flight serves multiple airports and hence this is possible)

 

[Robertj21a]

They have achieved that by getting rid of many of the loss making sections and branches. These have either been closed or are subsidised by the local government in the area they run through, so it's a more complicated situation

Probably very worthwhile to look at in greater depth for the UK.

 

[Snow1964]

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.

 

[Bald Rick]

So clever that LNER, which apparently has more freedom to create offers under DOR than TOC's on management contracts from the DfT, is doing better than all of its DfT straightjacketed rivals ?

That‘s a different issue, and I think you know that.

My point is that the TOCs don’t need to try out offers to know whether they will work or not.
Whether they do so is a different matter.

 

[RPI]

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.

I expect the disparity between revenue and passenger numbers is due to more leisure travellers who are travelling on cheaper tickets

 

[modernrail]

Given that you can never have too much pedantry in a rail fares thread I feel compelled to point out that the name 'Anytime' was introduced in 2008, a full 12 years after privatisation. Oh, and it came from Passenger Focus (now Transport Focus).

Haha! It was the restriction on which fares could be used that only allowed I think open to be used that I was referring to and you are right, that wasn’t entirely clear!

I can’t remember exactly what ended up being allowed and what was pulled but just remember thinking, just a minute so the only ticket you can use now is that random one that nobody usually buys because it is crazy expensive?

 

[greyman42]

try the 0700 off York, and compare to Pre Covid. The Yorkshire business market has disappeared, and that paid a lot of the bills.

Sticking with LNER, if you got the 1600 Kings Cross to Aberdeen, you will find it is nothing like pre-Covid.

 

[modernrail]

Indeed. This is where we need to be dis-incentivising rail operators from eating capacity provided at great expense by the taxpayer. Those empty seats aren't being properly accounted for !

Exactly. They should be hitting 100 per cent usage on those peak services. At better prices the demand is obviously there at any time of the day and they are probably the seats most likely to help the economy be more productive and so are precious. They also the seats most likely to reduce road congestion which is still having clear peaks, so even more valuable.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a real treat to chance upon a quiet train, but I do accept that all journeys are effectively subsidised and the taxpayer deserves to see that capacity sold out so the railway properly pulls its weight (literally) in return for that subsidy.

People who really want to use those seats but don’t because of pricing actually using them also frees up more seats for off peak meaning that revenue increases.

So it is not fair to either passenger or tax payer to have half empty peak trains so why on earth would we allow it.

 

[pemma]

However, unlike most scheduled flights (*), you can buy a ticket and walk on a train at any station on its route including after it has started it’s journey. And as it is likely that some of the passengers will do this, or some of the passengers are not booking seat reservations, then you can’t sell seat reservations and hence tickets for every seat.

The railways also allow more passengers on trains than there are seats. They should be planning on the basis that people shouldn't need to stand for more than 15-20 minutes but the train isn't fully booked if all seats are reserved. It's also very likely that at least some of the reserved seats won't be taken due to delayed connecting trains and unlike with airlines those passengers don't need to get rebooked on the next service, they can just walk straight on with their existing ticket.

 

[modernrail]

Absolutely agree. There seems to be some "confusion" between Tourism and Leisure. Of course the classic tourism - holidays, seaside,
etc is mainly during the summer(ish) months. However there is now a lot of other leisure traffic ranging from nights out, sporting events, vfr, shopping and retail that takes place throughout the year - particularly at weekends.

Also a lot of people equating off peak to leisure. That is also wrong. A lot of people travelling for work use off peak trains to get into position early and avoid peak fares (often it is cheaper to travel the day before and get a hotel - nuts!!). Or to travel between work things and other work things on the train. It is one of the huge benefits of using the trains for me. The laptop comes out on every journey, many of which are off peak as I need to visit different project teams.

Probably about 50% of my work journeys are true off peak and 50% are off peak because I am avoiding peak fares. There are plenty of leisure journeys on top of that and yes it does appear that market has come back very strong which is interesting to me as it feels more discretionary and I would have thought more sensitive to the fact there is still a lot of Covid about. Obviously not!

Yeah I'd certainly expect that not to have returned anywhere near as much as outer suburban / Thames Valley commuting.

Based on the pricing or the potential demand? The two are very different. I suspect what has happened on many peak long distance services is that the demand at that price has dropped, not potential demand per se.

 

[SJL2020]

Or to travel between work things and other work things on the train. It is one of the huge benefits of using the trains for me. The laptop comes out on every journey, many of which are off peak as I need to visit different project teams.

Yep, a productive hour working on the train covers the cost of the ticket several times over for me.

I hate it when I have to go somewhere for business where I have to use the car - the opportunity cost of driving time is a major factor for me.

 

[deltic]

Season ticket revenue is not as important to the railways as some seem to think. Pre-pandemic it accounted for about a quarter of total revenues. Full price tickets from business users and people commuting on an ad hoc basis generates more. Providing extra capacity to cope with peak demand is very expensive and if in due course it was possible to move to a railway with no peaks it would operate more efficiently and reliably.

 

[ar10642]

So what ? You make a decision on the best way for you to travel and your circumstances won't be the same as others.

And the fact is there *is* a fare which you've stated is competitive, it's just that you presumably don't like travelling on their trains for some personal reason.

I love travelling on trains, but London at the weekend is not the only destination I need to go and I can't afford to spend 3-4x the price of fuel to take my family public transport as a routine thing. Presumably you're arguing with me because you think prices should be even higher or something? Why?

But should we really be encouraging more leisure travel? Leisure demand is often wildly unpredictable. Moreover it doesn't pay its way. Since capacity is finite, surely the railway should be reserved for essential travel, not moving assorted hedonists and layabouts around the country. Doubtless this market could be better served by buses and coaches instead.

How much "essential travel" is really being done by rail as opposed to cars and commercial vehicles? The empty 12 carriage trains going up and down the Brighton line all day long during the lockdowns are the answer to that I think.

 

[A0wen]

I love travelling on trains, but London at the weekend is not the only destination I need to go and I can't afford to spend 3-4x the price of fuel to take my family public transport as a routine thing. Presumably you're arguing with me because you think prices should be even higher or something? Why?

Because lower fares would almost certainly reduce revenue resulting in the need for higher subsidies which come from the taxpayer, so why should others be subsidising your desire to travel by train? Particularly for non essential travel.

And if it's a family with children get a Friends & Family railcard which takes 1/3rd off the adult fare and 60% off the child fare, which in my experience means the total cost for 1 adult 1 child is less than the non discounted adult fare.

 

[bramling]

Railcards are a loyalty scheme plus a means of applying a "tourist tax". I'm convinced SBB for instance think of a reasonable fare, double it and then offer the Halbtax to discount it back

I've never viewed railcards as a loyalty scheme. They were always essentially a way of attempting to fill empty off-peak seats by attracting people or demographic groups who might not have otherwise used the train. Hence the general lack of discounting for commuter journeys.

A season ticket could be viewed as a loyalty scheme, railcards aren't.

 

[A0wen]

Season ticket revenue is not as important to the railways as some seem to think. Pre-pandemic it accounted for about a quarter of total revenues. Full price tickets from business users and people commuting on an ad hoc basis generates more. Providing extra capacity to cope with peak demand is very expensive and if in due course it was possible to move to a railway with no peaks it would operate more efficiently and reliably.

I suspect that season ticket revenue varied by area - and I'd expect it to be a much higher % of revenue in the South East than the South West for example.

The bigger problem is season ticket revenue was highly dependable and predictable and was a large up front payment, which isn't true of other ticket types.

 

[ar10642]

Sorry - I do mean raise some Advance fares and off peak fares by a modest amount to bring Anytime/peak fares down. The books do need to balance to some extent. How much of that balancing can come from better spreading of load across available capacity is I suspect the difficult to answer question at the moment.

The books are never going to balance on the railway. As long as we have it it will be costing the taxpayer money. The question is do we want it to be well used and seen as more competitive on price with fuel costs and help reduce car journeys or do we want it to continue being seen as the preserve of those who have money to burn?

In our area (East Coast Yorkshire) Lesuire journeys seem to be very busy and commuting/business travel is down:

Some examples, We had a trip to London last Friday, lesiure trip, we wanted first class advance tickets, Plenty of tickets for the Friday, nothing for the Saturday. Saturday trains are packed. Yesterday I was out on a work trip starting from Scarborough, trains were nowhere near as busy as pre covid. Prior to Covid I would be doing a longer trip once/twice a week, now its maybe once a month, I only go in person if I need to interact with the hardware. All the meetings and discussions to get to that point are virtual.

I cannot be alone, and I cannot see it changing. Covid was the catalyst to speed up something which was starting to happen anyway. The difference covid made was that now most people have the hardware they need to make a video call. From a business point of view it makes no sense to send me on a 3 hour journey each way across the country, cost to the business is 6 hours x my hourly rate + fares, where as a video call is just my time on the call

In the same way that previous historical events made changes which were never reversed so covid has made an impact.

The railways will need to adapt to the new situation, more discretionary travel means the market will be more fickle, if a TOC doesn't deliver a reasonable service then people will not use them. For a lot of people pre covid rail was the only way of getting to work, so were a captive market.

This is the problem with the continuing the farce of "Anytime" fares. Off peak fares are often not even competitive with fuel costs in my part of the world which makes Anytime fares absolutely ludicrous. Seasons don't make sense at all anymore for a lot of office workers and the flexi season is a joke. I just don't see a future where as many people are going back to city centre offices 5 days a week as they used to.