Should Fridays be made "off peak" all day?

[yorksrob]

Moderator note - split from:

Current (autumn ‘24) passenger numbers

Another article (from the Guardian) suggesting that numbers in London are around 90% of pre pandemic, although it isn’t quite clear where they’re sourcing those figures. My commute sees lower numbers than 2019, anecdotally, albeit some services are busy. The longer haul trains I work are well...

www.railforums.co.uk

Time to embrace all off-peak Fridays nationwide.

There's clearly capacity for the industry to chase the leisure market on that day. This would be far more transformative than gimmicky ticket sales.

 

[JonathanH]

Time to embrace all off-peak Fridays nationwide.

Perhaps it could be coupled with a Saturday morning peak period to balance out the revenue loss...

More seriously, do people actually want to make leisure journeys in substantial numbers early on Friday mornings?

Many of the reasons they travel on Saturdays aren't present on Fridays.

 

[yorksrob]

Perhaps it could be coupled with a Saturday morning peak period to balance out the revenue loss...

Firstly, there's no guarantee that there would be substantial revenue loss - particularly if they manage to increase usage from the weak 45% of pre pandemic traffic (see below).

Secondly, you'd risk ballsing up the Saturday leisure market.

Whilst it varies by route / region, the Monday to Friday commute distribution looks something like this, where Tuesday = 100.
Monday: 73%
Tuesday: 100%
Wednesday: 92%
Thursday: 92%
Friday: 45%

Even Tuesday morning is not back up to pre-Covid commuter levels, especially in the London / south east market.

 

[alistairlees]

Firstly, there's no guarantee that there would be substantial revenue loss - particularly if they manage to increase usage from the weak 45% of pre pandemic traffic (see below).

I didn't say that. I said that now, on Fridays, ticket purchases / travel in the morning peak are about 45% of the Tuesday in the same week.

 

[Stephen42]

Firstly, there's no guarantee that there would be substantial revenue loss - particularly if they manage to increase usage from the weak 45% of pre pandemic traffic (see below).

Secondly, you'd risk ballsing up the Saturday leisure market.

There's no guarantee however it seems incredibly likely. Take the TfL off peak Friday trial which had no evidence for significantly increased ridership and an estimated cost of £2 million per day. Across a year that's nearly £0.1bn of revenue lost a year before even considering the London commuting region beyond the PAYG area.

How much leisure traffic is caught up in peak time restrictions? The busiest times on a Saturday are different to during the week, off peak Friday is probably more about commuters than leisure travel. If wanting to reduce fares need the revenue generated by extra trips needs to cover the lost revenue on already existing trips for a positive business case, that only really works for journeys few are currently doing.

 

[yorksrob]

I didn't say that. I said that now, on Fridays, ticket purchases / travel in the morning peak are about 45% of the Tuesday in the same week.

Apologies for misreading.

However, if they're only getting 45% of what ought to be peak travel, they may as well give up on it and go all out on attracting the leisure market.

There's no guarantee however it seems incredibly likely. Take the TfL off peak Friday trial which had no evidence for significantly increased ridership and an estimated cost of £2 million per day. Across a year that's nearly £0.1bn of revenue lost a year before even considering the London commuting region beyond the PAYG area.

How much leisure traffic is caught up in peak time restrictions? The busiest times on a Saturday are different to during the week, off peak Friday is probably more about commuters than leisure travel. If wanting to reduce fares need the revenue generated by extra trips needs to cover the lost revenue on already existing trips for a positive business case, that only really works for journeys few are currently doing.

The difference with Saturday is that you can get a whole day of leisure without getting caught up in the peak.

People on Friday are probably avoiding longish leisure journeys to avoid paying through the nose.

 

[JonathanH]

The difference with Saturday is that you can get a whole day of leisure without getting caught up in the peak.

People on Friday are probably avoiding longish leisure journeys to avoid paying through the nose.

Is that true though? Most people don't travel that much earlier on Saturdays than is possible at off-peak times on a weekday.

A desire to make leisure journeys before 0900 / 0930 on a Friday is a fairly niche activity, even without any distortion created by train fare pricing.

 

[xotGD]

Making Friday off peak would encourage some people to switch their office day from one of the busier days to a Friday, thereby levelling out passenger numbers, to an extent. Less capacity thereby required Monday to Thursday.

Meanwhile, the same result would come from those making discretionary trips on a Friday rather than at the weekend.

While the first would reduce overall revenue, the second would be cost neutral. If off peak Fridays resulted in additional discretionary journeys, then it may come out revenue positive.

Plus, if some of the peak extras can be got rid of as a result of leveling commuting numbers through the week, then that would be a saving.

 

[yorksrob]

Is that true though? Most people don't travel that much earlier on Saturdays than is possible at off-peak times on a weekday.

A desire to make leisure journeys before 0900 / 0930 on a Friday is a fairly niche activity, even without any distortion created by train fare pricing.

It depends how far you're going. If having a long weekend away, it's perfectly conceivable that people will want yo make an early start to make the most of it

 

[JonathanH]

It depends how far you're going. If having a long weekend away, it's perfectly conceivable that people will want yo make an early start to make the most of it

That is one possible use case, but still a bit of a niche and doesn't really translate to pricing all possible journeys at an off-peak rate on Friday.

Indeed, many passengers travelling over a long distance will be doing so on advance fares.

 

[cle]

And also switch to M-Thu and Fri/Sat/Sun/Hol timetables? Might balance cost somewhat esp re peaks, probably overkill for Friday mornings.

 

[BazingaTribe]

How would it work with season tickets? Would it eat into that revenue?

 

[JonathanH]

How would it work with season tickets? Would it eat into that revenue?

Presumably it wouldn't change them and passengers would just have to decide whether the season ticket 'discount' is worth it or not. Anyway, it seems unlikely to happen.

The original poster didn't really explain why they were advocating fares being set at off-peak levels throughout Friday, other than noting that Friday morning demand is lower than other days of the week.

The use cases appear to be:

* To encourage commuters to travel on Fridays instead of other days of the week. Some people appear to take the view that it isn't worth coming into a workplace on a Friday, even though they attend on other days of the week. The theory of those advocating off-peak fares on a Friday is that some passengers would be encouraged to use the railway to get to work on Friday, instead of another day in the week, spreading out passenger loadings.

Where this one appears to fall down is that it isn't at all clear that cheaper fares on a Friday will change this behaviour. If there was a switch of days, then the railway makes less money, but doesn't have to worry about making more capacity available on another day of the week. If more passengers travel on Friday, the railway has to consider whether the extra travel makes up revenue from the loss of revenue from those who had to travel anyway.

This didn't appear to work in the TfL trial, as TfL reported an overall revenue loss from its off-peak Friday trial earlier this year.

* To recognise that there is spare capacity such that it could be used for leisure travel, potentially switching travel from the Saturday morning "peak". However, as already discussed, the reasons to travel early on a Friday, instead of later in the morning, or on Saturday, are quite niche, and it isn't clear that the revenue gained by helping leisure users save some costs on Friday morning exceed the reduction in revenue from other users of the railway. To some extent, this can be done with advance fares in any case, without needing to change the terms of off-peak tickets, particularly given the apparent direction of ticketing for long-distance travel.

While there may be some people who don't work on Fridays, for whom this would improve their access to leisure travel, it seems fairly unlikely that people working Monday to Friday would take annual leave to use the railway in a big way early on Friday mornings, because the level of leisure activities available on a Friday, rather than Saturday are more limited.

 

[yorksrob]

Presumably it wouldn't change them and passengers would just have to decide whether the season ticket 'discount' is worth it or not. Anyway, it seems unlikely to happen.

The original poster didn't really explain why they were advocating fares being set at off-peak levels throughout Friday, other than noting that Friday morning demand is lower than other days of the week.

The use cases appear to be:

* To encourage commuters to travel on Fridays instead of other days of the week. Some people appear to take the view that it isn't worth coming into a workplace on a Friday, even though they attend on other days of the week. The theory of those advocating off-peak fares on a Friday is that some passengers would be encouraged to use the railway to get to work on Friday, instead of another day in the week, spreading out passenger loadings.

Where this one appears to fall down is that it isn't at all clear that cheaper fares on a Friday will change this behaviour. If there was a switch of days, then the railway makes less money, but doesn't have to worry about making more capacity available on another day of the week. If more passengers travel on Friday, the railway has to consider whether the extra travel makes up revenue from the loss of revenue from those who had to travel anyway.

This didn't appear to work in the TfL trial, as TfL reported an overall revenue loss from its off-peak Friday trial earlier this year.

* To recognise that there is spare capacity such that it could be used for leisure travel, potentially switching travel from the Saturday morning "peak". However, as already discussed, the reasons to travel early on a Friday, instead of later in the morning, or on Saturday, are quite niche, and it isn't clear that the revenue gained by helping leisure users save some costs on Friday morning exceed the reduction in revenue from other users of the railway. To some extent, this can be done with advance fares in any case, without needing to change the terms of off-peak tickets, particularly given the apparent direction of ticketing for long-distance travel.

While there may be some people who don't work on Fridays, for whom this would improve their access to leisure travel, it seems fairly unlikely that people working Monday to Friday would take annual leave to use the railway in a big way early on Friday mornings, because the level of leisure activities available on a Friday, rather than Saturday are more limited.

My prime reason for for all off-peak Fridays is that having a peak fare makes it complicated for leisure travellers to plan/undertake their leisure journey. Now there's an element of that being necessary o manage demand when you have busy peak trains, however the numbers seem to show that this isn't the case in Fridays, and I suspect that at this stage, that's not going to change.

All off-peak Saturdays and Sundays are extremely successful at generating leisure travel. We should try to achieve the same for Fridays.

Don't forget, it's not just the morning peak that leisure travellers have to negotiate - there are also various evening peak restrictions in W Yorkshire and around London that will be making it difficult for people planning their leisure journeys as well.

How would it work with season tickets? Would it eat into that revenue?

I wouldn't change them - at least not for the timebeing.

 

[xotGD]

Don't forget, it's not just the morning peak that leisure travellers have to negotiate - there are also various evening peak restrictions in W Yorkshire and around London that will be making it difficult for people planning their leisure journeys as well.

Absolutely. Rushing back to Leeds station for the wedged 15.56, when the 16.26 is half empty, benefits nobody.

 

[BazingaTribe]

Fair points. Season tickets always used to vary between 5 for the price of 4 and 5 for the price of 3 depending on, I guess, the time of day or whether there was an e in the month or whatever. I only used them on rare occasions given I only worked 12-5 normally but when my colleagues were off I did 9-5 and thus travelled at peak hours. Given I also occasionally used mine at the weekends since my parents don't live far from where I worked, I did get some residual value out of them when stopping short, and in one case, used them to get from Reading West to Reading and back to Basingstoke because I couldn't be bothered to climb over the footbridge and wait on the opposite platform.

With effectively unlimited travel as well during the day I suppose if you use them to their fuller extent it's not just 5 returns you're getting Monday to Friday but another trip or two in the bargain. (Nostalgia hit big time the other day when I found my photocard in my parka pocket. Now I work from home most of my travel is paid for by using the corporate travel site and I also have four hours worth of time and energy back as well.)

One question though -- if you're going to abolish Friday peak hours in the morning, why not abolish any other peak rate times?

Absolutely. Rushing back to Leeds station for the wedged 15.56, when the 16.26 is half empty, benefits nobody.

For years I only used the Cross Country service between Reading and Basingstoke if I had an Anytime ticket or a season ticket. Not sure why -- maybe I thought there were peak restrictions on that service that didn't exist on the slow stopping service. Certainly when I stopped travelling that route every day it was ok to travel on the 16:52 if I missed the 16:33.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

Don't forget, it's not just the morning peak that leisure travellers have to negotiate - there are also various evening peak restrictions in W Yorkshire and around London that will be making it difficult for people planning their leisure journeys as well.

^^ This. It's not the morning peak that stops me making weekday journeys into London, it's the punitive pricing should you try and leave Paddington any time between 1600 and 1900.

 

[30907]

^^ This. It's not the morning peak that stops me making weekday journeys into London, it's the punitive pricing should you try and leave Paddington any time between 1600 and 1900.

I agree. But that applies any weekday, and is more likely to affect the return leg of a short day trip (eg within West Yorks, as with post #15) than a longer-distance trip.

For the longer-distance leisure trip, I suspect Fridays after work are still busy - and if I had Friday off I wouldn't be wanting to start at crack of dawn.

 

[Bald Rick]

Moderator note - split from:

Current (autumn ‘24) passenger numbers

Another article (from the Guardian) suggesting that numbers in London are around 90% of pre pandemic, although it isn’t quite clear where they’re sourcing those figures. My commute sees lower numbers than 2019, anecdotally, albeit some services are busy. The longer haul trains I work are well...

www.railforums.co.uk

Time to embrace all off-peak Fridays nationwide.

There's clearly capacity for the industry to chase the leisure market on that day. This would be far more transformative than gimmicky ticket sales.

Friday mornings, perhaps.

But more people travel after 1200 on Friday than after 1200 on any other day of the week. So perhaps to redistribute that, we should have peak fares Friday afternoon?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Friday mornings, perhaps.

But more people travel after 1200 on Friday than after 1200 on any other day of the week. So perhaps to redistribute that, we should have peak fares Friday afternoon?

That's what the LNER fare increase trial seems to be doing.

 

[BazingaTribe]

That's what the LNER fare increase trial seems to be doing.

There's some truth in that. Any long distance train on a major event weekend (like Ascot) or half term holiday is rammed even in the afternoons. Perhaps they should practice surge pricing like Uber...or maybe not.

 

[yorksrob]

Friday mornings, perhaps.

But more people travel after 1200 on Friday than after 1200 on any other day of the week. So perhaps to redistribute that, we should have peak fares Friday afternoon?

Lot's of places do, don't they ?

Also I would expect that on a Friday afternoon, a lot of people will be travelling counter to the peak (i.e. into the city for their entertainment, rather than home) and so this peak wouldn't be as intense.

With regard to longer distance travel, I take your point that a lot of people will be travelling on a Friday to go to holiday lets etc. In this case, it will be beneficial to abolish the evening peak fare as you could get rid of the mad scramble for the first off-peak train.

 

[Bletchleyite]

There's some truth in that. Any long distance train on a major event weekend (like Ascot) or half term holiday is rammed even in the afternoons. Perhaps they should practice surge pricing like Uber...or maybe not.

Again, that's exactly what the LNER fare increase trial is doing. What it curiously isn't doing is reducing fares at quieter times, it's almost like it's about just increasing them!

 

[HamworthyGoods]

And also switch to M-Thu and Fri/Sat/Sun/Hol timetables? Might balance cost somewhat esp re peaks, probably overkill for Friday mornings.

Your plan would only work if student travel moves to a 4 day week. A lot of the peak variations are to cover off both commuting and student travel, whilst commuting may be less existent on a Friday the student flows are still there.

A simple example of where this is the case is the AM peak Shepperton to Waterloo via Twickenham services.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Your plan would only work if student travel moves to a 4 day week. A lot of the peak variations are to cover off both commuting and student travel, whilst commuting may be less existent on a Friday the student flows are still there.

A simple example of where this is the case is the AM peak Shepperton to Waterloo via Twickenham services.

Outside of London where contactless is probably the most used, students are most likely using season tickets*, so this is a bit moot.

* Or Northern Advances on a 16-25 Railcard, but people doing that instead of seasons was *definitely not* an intended use case of allowing Advances without the minimum fare!

 

[HamworthyGoods]

Outside of London where contactless is probably the most used, students are most likely using season tickets*, so this is a bit moot.

* Or Northern Advances on a 16-25 Railcard, but people doing that instead of seasons was *definitely not* an intended use case of allowing Advances without the minimum fare!

This was referring to the proposal by the poster about cutting peak services on a Friday not the ticketing side!

 

[Bletchleyite]

This was referring to the proposal by the poster about cutting peak services on a Friday not the ticketing side!

Ah, I see. It might still work - schoolkids don't generally seem averse to cramming in a bit rather than getting cross when they can't have a seat. I know on my school trains most tended to cram into one coach with the rest of the train spared our antics

 

[HamworthyGoods]

Ah, I see. It might still work - schoolkids don't generally seem averse to cramming in a bit rather than getting cross when they can't have a seat. I know on my school trains most tended to cram into one coach with the rest of the train spared our antics

No you miss my point, the poster was on about cutting out the peak extra services, these often run over routes that don’t usually have direct services linking places rather than just extra capacity.

They serve two purposes and one of those purposes is still there on a Friday!

 

[miklcct]

Presumably it wouldn't change them and passengers would just have to decide whether the season ticket 'discount' is worth it or not. Anyway, it seems unlikely to happen.

I bought an annual Travelcard last year, and with an off-peak Friday, I will not buy it any more.

Where this one appears to fall down is that it isn't at all clear that cheaper fares on a Friday will change this behaviour. If there was a switch of days, then the railway makes less money, but doesn't have to worry about making more capacity available on another day of the week. If more passengers travel on Friday, the railway has to consider whether the extra travel makes up revenue from the loss of revenue from those who had to travel anyway.

This didn't appear to work in the TfL trial, as TfL reported an overall revenue loss from its off-peak Friday trial earlier this year.

How much fewer in passenger numbers were on the Monday - Thursday during the Friday off-peak trial? Could it translate to less peak-time trains Monday - Thursday to make a cost saving to balance out the revenue loss? Cost cutting should be the most important thing to increase the profitability of the railways, followed by volume generation.

Fair points. Season tickets always used to vary between 5 for the price of 4 and 5 for the price of 3 depending on, I guess, the time of day or whether there was an e in the month or whatever. I only used them on rare occasions given I only worked 12-5 normally but when my colleagues were off I did 9-5 and thus travelled at peak hours. Given I also occasionally used mine at the weekends since my parents don't live far from where I worked, I did get some residual value out of them when stopping short, and in one case, used them to get from Reading West to Reading and back to Basingstoke because I couldn't be bothered to climb over the footbridge and wait on the opposite platform.

All Travelcards within Zones 1-9 are priced to 5 times the day cap, so you will only break even if you are literally capping every single working day, or if you travel well more than 5 days per week (for example, I generally travel 6 days per week, but seldom reaching the fare cap, so a monthly Travelcard is just barely worthwhile).

This pricing strategy is to ensure that part time workers are not penalised in transport cost compared to full time workers.

However, if Friday becomes off-peak, i.e. the off-peak cap applies to Friday all day, even with 6 days of travel, a monthly Travelcard will not be worthwhile.

^^ This. It's not the morning peak that stops me making weekday journeys into London, it's the punitive pricing should you try and leave Paddington any time between 1600 and 1900.

The morning peak is definitely putting me off from moving anywhere else outside the London fare zones, when the off-peak PAYG price is only 1/3 or even 1/4 of the peak price after applying a discount. The punitive pricing from Paddington does not apply on Elizabeth line.

That's what the LNER fare increase trial seems to be doing.

The LNER fare increase trial abolish off-peak fares every single day of the week, not just Fridays.

 

[yorksrob]

No you miss my point, the poster was on about cutting out the peak extra services, these often run over routes that don’t usually have direct services linking places rather than just extra capacity.

They serve two purposes and one of those purposes is still there on a Friday!

That's an interesting point, and I dare say there may be a few extras that need to be retained for that reason. However, I dare say in a lot of areas a Saturday type service pattern might be appropriate.