Sometime in the past twelve months Modern Railways had an article about c2c. From memory, I think the MD said they had about 38,000 passengers into Fenchurch Street in the morning peak. About 230,000 new homes are planned in the South Essex area that c2c serves, and if only 10% of those new homes produced just one extra passenger each, the company would face some interesting challenges. Perhaps National Express, and then Trenitalia, assumed that they'd get that level of additional revenue to support increased premium payments. But what may now be happening is a reduction in commuter travel as a result of changing work patterns, while the increase in passengers from new housing hasn't yet materialised, or doesn't offset the reduction. It's another example of the uncertainties of population and passenger forecasting combined with the dangers of making very ambitious franchise bids based on them. From the days when there were four bidders for every franchise we know that bidders will take very different views about what's realistic, but there's always someone who wants to win badly enough to make a bid that depends on everything turning out just right.