I wish someone would tell the DfT this as it’s been particularly rough on both Southern Metro and South Western Railway these past few months. The 377 I took from Victoria to Reigate on return from a forum meal in January was an appalling journey. Very cramped indeed.
Nowhere near, though there are regional variations. The latest available ORR statistics, for July to September 2022, indicate that only a few TOCs operated 95+% of pre-Covid train-km:
Last time i used LNER out of London in the afternoon peak, they were no where near as busy as they were pre-covid but they seem to be carrying more leisure passengers on a weekend. How this equates revenue wise i don't know.
If they're off-lease then they are saving money at least.
Operation Princess in short. Suppressing demand in this way is what XC needs really, at least until the government pulls its finger out of its arse and permits the operator to lease enough rolling stock to match the demand.
This is the key point and it's no coincidence that the lower end of the passenger km table compared to Pre COVID are also operating the biggest reduction in timetable
Returning to a more pre-covid operation wouldn't be a bad idea.
Whilst I'm in agreement that the nationalisation so desired by the unions would not be the panacea they desire, I feel I need to point out that offering the same percentage to all the TOCs Drivers and aligning terms and conditions, is absolutely NOT the same pay deal when some already have the conditions the government want, having sold them in previous pay deals, and the ones that haven't sold them are being asked to change them for free.
thanks for the answer, so I thought. I ´ve seen pictures of crammed trains and stations.
There are semantics here which both sides are playing.
Where is this sorry?
The East Midlands.
Sounds a bit like how Sheffield looked this evening. Full and standing on loads of services.
The fact that DfT is taken by surprise about rail use being increased by new housing going up along a corridor is shocking.
@LowLevel's depot has an extensive route card, including between:
Ticket checks in my experience have been rare in the last few years. Pre Covid, tickets would be checked the majority of the time on services outside the London travelcard area. Now they are rare. So I wonder if there are many more passengers now not buying tickets and taking the chance that they will not be court.
I do commute, though less than before. My morning train of choice is the 07:39 from Sanderstead, arriving at Victoria just after 8 am. 12 carriages. Always loads of seats any day of the working week. And not just at the back, the train rolls into Sanderstead with room all the way down (and in any case the very front carriages are not wholly desirable as, like it was before Covid, a quarter to a third of the train gets off at Clapham Jct where the footbridge and subway are about carriages 6-10). Plus a good few are just going for a cross platform interchange to get to, for example, Wimbledon.
Ferries, airlines?
Bah! Engineering blockade right in the middle of our busiest route this weekend. Little commission for me - though I did intercept a couple of Open Returns being used multiple times so it wasn't entirely unproductive.
Season tickets are usually no use for people travelling in on four (or fewer) days. So given some of the changes we've seen to working patterns, a drop of that magnitude does not seem surprising to me. Revenue has largely (totally at some operators) been made up by increased sales of other types of ticket.
These stations are much more likely to have Oyster or Contactless users, so I am not sure the theory about e-tickets stands up here.
Season ticket sales are through the floor:
