I'd agree that XC is a massive problem, but it's been a massive problem since Branson's entirely predictable stupid errors of the early 2000s, it's not a new thing. Amazes me just how long it takes the railway to solve obvious problems.
Indeed, XC needed more capacity in the mid 2000's and it would have likely reduced the level of support that they needed, as they could have increased train lengths without increasing staff costs proportionally. In turn that could have allowed them to offer cheaper tickets prices whilst still covering their costs.
I did also mention WFH which you have not commented on.
This is entirely a new thing and looks to be the future way of working, out of town offices will be hired on a daily basis as required to bring the staff together along with easier parking and cheaper rent makes it an attractive proposition, city centre offices will be obsolete.
WFH 4 or more days a week actually makes public transport a more cost effective option than car ownership.
Let's say you've got a car that costs £750 for insurance, VED and MOT and servicing. If you are going to the office 250 days a year that's a cost of £3/trip. If you are going 50 days a year that's £15/trip and those costs aren't likely to alter by much.
Whilst you may need a car for other purposes when you're at that sort of level of use those fix costs soon add up.
Obviously that's before you look at other costs, such as fuel or purchasing the car in the first place.
This, surely, is the crux of it. While we have our government actively running down our public transport, things are just not going to change. The Tories' utopia is like California's in the 1960/70s - cars for every person and roads/car parks to accommodate them. Those who are car-less are seen as the dregs of society and to be ignored. It's their utopia but it's really a dystopia, and it's almost here.
Indeed, whilst cars have a big party to play, they also can't be the (nearly) only way that we get about without it causing significant issues.
The strikes are not ending, there won't be 5% growth happening 4 times a year compounded, and passenger numbers are not the same as revenue.
The strikes could end though if the government wanted them to end. The fact that they aren't engaging in fixing them means that there's a risk that more support is needed than if the strikes were resolved.
Whilst 5% growth per quarter may be difficult to sustain after a few quarters (bearing in mind that we've had 8.87% between the last two quarters there's data for at least a few more averaging 5% isn't impossible), the point wasn't that it was what would happen, rather to highlight that actually a small amount of growth could deliver pre Covid levels of use within a fairly short timeframe.
Just not having 2 strike days in a month (and often there's more) where there's 60% use results in a 2.27% reduction in rail use. That's before you consider the wider impact from the strikes making people less likely to use rail.
Likewise Avanti, TPE and XC running 60-65% of their pre Covid km of services isn't helping rail be a viable option (even if your connecting TOC is at 95% the fact you can't do the long distance section is going to stop you from using that TOC).
I'm not staying that there can't be any cuts, some will be needed (for instance to allow a more reliable service to be run, as Covid taught us and to make some savings - although these should be justified in the same way that reopenings are, as they could actually cost the government more), rather that it's likely that if we want to see a reduction in the support paid to railways, only making cuts isn't likely to work.
Currently it's hard to tell what the Q3 for 2022/23 will result in, however from the DfT data it's looking fairly promising that there could be more growth over the Q2 data.
In that the average for Q2 from the DfT data was 81.2% of pre Covid use, whilst up to the end of November the average was 83.4%, that alone would be a 3% increase. Whilst that's below 5% that's with ongoing strikes and is using incomplete and approximate data. However is useful to highlight that growth is still the likely outcome, even if it's not as high as it would need to be too get to 2019 levels in the next data year.
Whilst passenger numbers does not equal the same revenue, generally higher passenger numbers does equal higher revenue. As such the closer we get to pre Covid use the closer we get to pre Covid revenue (even if the latter lags behind the former).
Bottom line, with 2009 levels of rail use it would be political suicide to fully close the railways (if we were at 1995 levels it might be possible to push it through, but even then it wasn't viable) as such it comes down to how much support is needed.
Ultimately that comes down to how much income can be generated, if you limit yourself by maintaining the strikes (and if you didn't have NHS strikes as well as a raft of others, it could be that there would be more support for crushing the RMT, but I suspect until several are resolved that's not an option) then your always going to be up against it in creating income. Bottom line, RMT would probably call the strikes off for 1% to 2% more than it's currently on the table.
As I've highlighted, an extra 2% of income is likely recovered by removing 2 strike days in a month. If that covers the 1% to 2% of extra pay to resolve the strikes, then why aren't we resolving the strikes?
Some may say it's political, in which case the party doing so aren't likely to come out of this very well (unless they make a promise about more maths for 17 and 18 year olds - then everyone will love them).
