April to June 2023 Passenger numbers released

[Adrian1980uk]

Are they slated to return in four weeks' time?

Don't think they are, Norwich in 90 is unlikely to return anytime soon.

 

[Class 170101]

Stansted Express goes back to a full all day 7 days a week 15min frequency from December. DfT sees this as a win win with the airport up & over 2019 levels along with extremely busy trains for much of the day. There has also been complaints from Manchester Airport Group that it has not kept pace with Gatwick & Heathrow for connectivity.

Not a GA problem from December. Cross Country are still missing some services to Stansted Airport.

 

[dk1]

Are they slated to return in four weeks' time?

No they are not. Has been speculation that some of the Ni90s will return at some point but that’s for another timetable.

Not a GA problem from December. Cross Country are still missing some services to Stansted Airport.

Cross Country stated when getting the franchise extension that a full service will be resumed between Birmingham & Stansted so possibly June next year.

 

[Horizon22]

There is interesting article on London Reconnections discussing the numbers, especially how the Elizabeth line fits in with some discussion on methodology.

The State of Rail: Breaking Down The Numbers - London Reconnections

The leading source for independent news and analysis about transport in London and beyond. Award-winning coverage of transport infrastructure and politics alongside stories about the history of the Capital's transport networks.

www.londonreconnections.com

With discussion of ticket office closures and rail passenger numbers a political hot potato, it’s easy to forget that firm data on the state of rail in Great Britain does exist. We take a look at the ORR’s latest figures (April – June 2023) and TfL’s recent Crossrail Usage report.

 

[railfan99]

Yet we subsidise our railway less than many other comparable countries, so I’d question the suggestion that subsidy has “grown out of proportion to the societal benefit.”

100 per cent true in the case of New South Wales and Victoria, the two most populous states in distant Australia. I lack the latest figures but our subsidies per passenger have become higher not just due to inflation but because of lower passenger numbers compared to 2019, and also government decisions such as in Victoria lowering the maximum fare for a single (i.e. one way trip) anywhere in Victoria to A$5 for an adult, or generally half that for concession travellers. A$5 is about GBP2.50: for that one could travel by V/Line coach from Orbost to Bairnsdale, train to Melbourne then another train to Swan Hill and V/Line road coach to Mildura, a distance of c.981 kilometres when all the rail lines were open, and all were broad gauge.

 

[miklcct]

The railway used to depend heavily on long distance business travel and medium distance commuter flows in the South East. Both of these are more lucrative than the markets which have recovered, such as leisure flows and short distance commuting.

If you run a train from Brighton to London, you make more money from that train being full all the way from Haywards Heath to London, than if it just conveys the same number of passengers from East Croydon to London. Both contribute to the number of journeys, the contribution to revenue is very different.

The above two markets pre-COVID are not sustainable in the long term. No one wants to commute for long distance, and long distance business travel is costly to the economy.

If my job in Central London requires me to get in 5 days per week, I will get a flat in Zone 2, and buy an annual.

If for 2 days per week, I may consider places further out such as Croydon, and again buy an annual depending on the lines I will use for days when I am not getting into the office.

Shifting the focus to short-distance commuting is actually a good thing, and this is where lines transferred to TfL do well. Unfortunately the likes of GTR are still treating these lines as a second-class citizen putting people off commuting by train (instead of bus then tube), for example, the poor performance of Sutton loop services and the rubbish headway of some Southeastern Metro lines.

Leisure travel is what actually stimulate the economy as well.

If you run more stopping trains within Greater London, you may well induce a modal shift from buses and trains.

Fortunately, the days of train companies squeezing commuters' and businesses' pockets with overpriced rail fares are over, and I am happy to see the number of journeys recovering much faster than the revenue.

 

[Snow1964]

Slightly off topic, but also passenger numbers

DfT have updated their spreadsheet with usage since COVID, compared to 2019

Column G (rail usage) for last few weeks has been 97% - 113% for October. Sundays consistently between 109-113% are highest percentage day of week

Column H (excludes Elizabeth line) is lower, 79-85% for October

Daily domestic transport use by mode

Daily usage of selected domestic transport by mode for Great Britain

www.gov.uk

 

[Krokodil]

@Snow1964 where are you seeing the "including Elizabeth Line" figures? Column G has been redacted on the sheet I'm looking at.

 

[railfan99]

There's an old saying in relation to stockmarkets that 'the trend is your friend'.

Overall, despite definitional or counting difficulties (as with the Elizabeth Line), there's room for optimism.

That National Rail use is doing quite well overall despite a median four to six days' strikes each quarter, and changes in working patterns affecting sales of and revenue from lucrative season tickets suggests as that 'Reconnections' article above opines that demand for rail travel has not diminished.

The next quarter's results may show another small continuing uplift despite strike days. This would be pleasing.

Having travelled for three weeks in September throughout the length and breadth of England, it was apparent many lines including branches were quite to very well used. I wrongly thought my Cumbrian Coast trip on a Saturday would see hardly anyone else travelling. Far from the truth!

 

[Adrian1980uk]

There's an old saying in relation to stockmarkets that 'the trend is your friend'.

Overall, despite definitional or counting difficulties (as with the Elizabeth Line), there's room for optimism.

That National Rail use is doing quite well overall despite a median four to six days' strikes each quarter, and changes in working patterns affecting sales of and revenue from lucrative season tickets suggests as that 'Reconnections' article above opines that demand for rail travel has not diminished.

The next quarter's results may show another small continuing uplift despite strike days. This would be pleasing.

Having travelled for three weeks in September throughout the length and breadth of England, it was apparent many lines including branches were quite to very well used. I wrongly thought my Cumbrian Coast trip on a Saturday would see hardly anyone else travelling. Far from the truth!

Here's the thing, we're not pre pandemic numbers and cannot be as services are not at 100% either. We've now gone from 2 day in the office to 3 day expectation and I'm seeing that across a number of clients at the moment so I'll expect a steady increase is passenger numbers over the next quarter again.

If the railway can stabilise over the next few months I see no reason next year passenger numbers will get nearer 90% of pre-pandemic levels and that's a platform to build on.

 

[Annetts key]

If the government/DaFT/the railways were being serious instead of being idiots (although with this government, it appears being idiots comes naturally, as they are a bunch of clowns), to get more people to use the railways, you have to understand your market.

More people will use trains if:

• the trains are extremely reliable (that means not winding up the unions and the employees, not reducing maintenance {reduced maintenance ultimately results in less reliability},
• having seats that are so comfortable that people don’t want to get out of them and having trains that have good suspension and which are very pleasant to travel in {that includes working heating, air conditioning, good quality lighting, Power Sockets, WiFi, and other on-board facilities}
• running trains when people want to travel,
• trying to run as many direct trains to destinations that the passengers want as possible, obviously within practicalities.
• where possible, having trains that have enough seats for everyone, that is, when needed, have trains that are longer,
• remove the mess that is the current organisation and structure, we need all parts of the railways to be working together, not having all these separate companies that won’t always cooperate unless it’s written in a contract,
• improve the ticketing system, it’s far to complex.
• as there are less of the expensive season tickets and expensive long distance tickets being sold, if trains are running with low numbers of passengers, maybe look at the pricing. If a reduction in price means more people travel, does this give an overall increase in the fares revenue? Especially if you can increase revenue by running longer trains without needing extra train crew or platform staff.

Requiring subsidy is not in of itself a problem.
The problem is when the subsidy grows out of proportion to the social benefit.

The size of the subsidy clearly matters, or we wouldn't bother charging people to use trains!
A huge hole has been ripped in the projections made before coronavirus and it does not look likely to be closing any time soon.

The railway industry might prefer if the taxpayer simply provided a pile more money with no strings attached and no questions asked, but that is not really a reasonable expectation.

The projections were just that, projections. You can’t have a hole, let alone a huge hole in projections. A projection is only valid if the information it is based on is valid, and the projection is only valid while this information is accurate. That normally means a projection is only valid for a very short time period.

We use projections to help forecast the weather. And we all know how well that sometimes goes…

There are many, many variables in deciding subsidy and in deciding what the social benefits are. The amount of subsidy is partly determined by the organisation of the railways. And currently we have a right mess that is the worst out of all the arrangements that we have seen in the past.

Absolutely no one is asking for the taxpayer to provide a pile more money with no strings attached and no questions asked.

Another problem is that, even if there is 10% less travel, 10% fewer services and 10% less revenue, the losses will be greater due to fixed costs such as maintaining the tracks and stations.

Yes. Reducing the number and/or length of trains, may actually cost more money if the result is less passengers using the services.

The vast majority of infrastructure costs are fixed. It does not matter if the service is four trains a day, or thirty trains a day. You still have more or less the same maintenance costs. Especially if it’s a mixed traffic line. It’s likely that if the four trains are spaced out equally, you will need the same number of signallers (and where needed, crossing keepers).

The only significant difference is the rolling stock (which is also irrelevant if it would cost the same or more to cancel the leasing agreement), and train and station staff.

The government is already running a very large deficit and cannot raise taxes on the productive economy to plug holes in the rail budget without making the economy even worse. Raising rail fares only adds to inflation and because it is not a captive market, this would not actually do very much for the overall shortfall.

Since WWII, this country has been running a very large deficit. Governments nearly always spend more than they receive from taxes. Part of this, is due to wanting lower taxes, which eventually backfires as higher inflation and/or higher interest rates then cause problems in the economy. And the U.K. was not in a very good situation before COVID19 came along. And the situation may well have been made worse by how the government acted during the pandemic.

Both government borrowing and how much subsidy the railways need are both affected by how badly the economy is doing.

Deciding that the solution is to cut funding (in real terms) for the railways is likely to result in a future government having to spend significantly more money on the railways at a later date. Possibly far more than the current savings from the cuts.

 

[yorksrob]

For all the faux concern about the railway industry’s costs, it’s ironic that the government has itself chosen to increase fares by less than the rate of inflation, so adding to the “problem” by suppressing revenue even further than necessary!

Passengers will be feeling the cost of living pressure so increasing fares substantially would be counter-productive.

Also, don't forget the years of inflation+ fare rises we've had to put up with in the past.

I've said previously that controlling fares would be an excellent way of reducing overall inflationary pressure - particularly as the railway service is already "there" so such a move would be unlikely to increase inflationary pressure on the supply side. However, I suspect a cut to inheritance tax will be seen by the powers that be as far more economically vital.

 

[Snow1964]

GBRTT (Great British railways transition team) has released figures splitting revenue for same April-June period

Business £197m (7.7% of fare income)
Commuting £929m (36.3% of fare income)
Leisure £1431m (56.0% of fare income)

Business up 8%
Commuting up 6%
Leisure up 19% compared to previous quarter

New GBRTT figures show leisure travel strongly boosts rail revenues - Rail UK

New GBRTT figures show leisure travel strongly boosts rail revenues - Travel

railuk.com

 

[railfan99]

GBRTT (Great British railways transition team) has released figures splitting revenue for same April-June period

Business £197m (7.7% of fare income)
Commuting £929m (36.3% of fare income)
Leisure £1431m (56.0% of fare income)

Business up 8%
Commuting up 6%
Leisure up 19% compared to previous quarter

Cue comments about 'better to compare with 2019, despite today's train frequencies not what they were', 'poor business traffic figures' and (legitimately) 'comparing consecutive quarters ignores seasonality in travel patterns'.

Notwithstanding, very encouraging. But as we all know "nobody uses rail".

In my country, a huge distance from yours, leisure travel has also been doing well. Given COVID-19's most adverse period(s) finished a while back (rapidly receding further), but interest rates and the general cost-of-living have markedly risen, it points to individuals prioritising leisure travel over other household expenditure items.

I know two Australians who've recently used UK rail, one to a walking tour commencing at Moreton-on-Marsh, and the other to a holiday stay in Truro. Non-resident and non-student foreigners are not a large percentage of those using UK railways but to and from some stations we may be noteworthy, such as to the two Windsor stations.

 

[30907]

Cue comments about 'better to compare with 2019, despite today's train frequencies not what they were', 'poor business traffic figures' and (legitimately) 'comparing consecutive quarters ignores seasonality in travel patterns'.

Year-on-year would be more interesting, but these are good.

Do we know if these figures are based on passenger surveys or on revenue by ticket type? I assume the former.

 

[railfan99]

Do we know if these figures are based on passenger surveys or on revenue by ticket type? I assume the former.

This gives an explanation. Being a foreigner, I don't know what the 'Wavelength' survey is/was:

Leisure travel helps boost quarterly rail revenue by £295 million

Analysis of the latest rail statistics shows revenue from leisure travel grew by a fifth (19%) quarter-on-quarter Commuting (+6%) and business travel (+8%) also saw an uplift in the second quarter of this year (1 April to 30 June 2023), as more people are going into the office on more days...

media.gbrtt.co.uk

 

[30907]

This gives an explanation. Being a foreigner, I don't know what the 'Wavelength' survey is/was:

Leisure travel helps boost quarterly rail revenue by £295 million

Analysis of the latest rail statistics shows revenue from leisure travel grew by a fifth (19%) quarter-on-quarter Commuting (+6%) and business travel (+8%) also saw an uplift in the second quarter of this year (1 April to 30 June 2023), as more people are going into the office on more days...

media.gbrtt.co.uk

Thanks. I don't know either, but it's clearly a survey

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Being a foreigner, I don't know what the 'Wavelength' survey is/was:

Some ongoing customer satisfaction survey collated by the Rail Delivery Group and/or associated partners? If so, has anyone on here actually participated in one?

 

[Annetts key]

Some ongoing customer satisfaction survey collated by the Rail Delivery Group and/or associated partners? If so, has anyone on here actually participated in one?

Nope, and I use trains fairly often. I have in the past been on trains where Transport Focus (I think, but may be mistaken) has carried out a survey. But the last time that I remember was before COVID19 became a thing.

 

[jayah]

Since WWII, this country has been running a very large deficit. Governments nearly always spend more than they receive from taxes. Part of this, is due to wanting lower taxes, which eventually backfires as higher inflation and/or higher interest rates then cause problems in the economy. And the U.K. was not in a very good situation before COVID19 came along. And the situation may well have been made worse by how the government acted during the pandemic.

Both government borrowing and how much subsidy the railways need are both affected by how badly the economy is doing.

Deciding that the solution is to cut funding (in real terms) for the railways is likely to result in a future government having to spend significantly more money on the railways at a later date. Possibly far more than the current savings from the cuts.

Neither debt or deficit have consistently been this large since WW2 or anything close.

Thanks to the events of 2009 and the pandemic, the current government must contend with both and record low short term interest rates didn't last.

It is perfectly sensible to embark on real terms budget cuts. The productive economy, or the people paying for rail travel have decided that it is worth 20% or so lesa in real terms, than back in 2019.

That 20% isn't coming back and the idea the government must spend more later is also incorrect. Most capital spending on rail since 2005 has been adding capacity to saturate the infrastructure with short passenger trains, and even more capacity is not the order of the day.

In terms of operational spending, some sensible pruning of the timetable is required.

 

[jayah]

Irrespective of the deficit (which was largely down to the government’s own poor choices over the Covid response) the government is currently in receipt of more tax revenue than expected. That could be used to improve public services, including the railway, but instead it is being used to fund tax cuts and increases in spending targeted only at its voter base - the triple lock for example.

A good deal of it dates back to 2009 and the decision to socialise the losses of banks that made bad decisions and should have failed.

There have been no tax cuts.

Spending has been rising across the board including benefits for those in work, out of work, done with work, childcare subsidies and many more schemes. There is scarcely a person alive who isn't being treated with welfare.

This doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny as experience over many years has shown that demand for rail fares is price inelastic, especially in London and the south east which account for by far the majority of the revenue. It would have been easy to justify a fare rise in the usual way, and that would have been a quick-and-dirty way to improve the cash position of the industry. It is inconsistent for the government to choose to actively suppress fares in real terms while also complaining that the industry costs too much - they can’t have it both ways.

The idea that rail fares are inelastic and you can raise them by another 5% and get back 4%, let alone 5% is a myth.

They also fuel inflation and are a significant drag on the productive economy. People won't take jobs and contracts, change jobs or move house because of high rail fares. It's doubly difficult because of the related impacts of very high house prices in London & SE.

I quite agree. A real business would be free to set prices and make spending decisions free from government micromanagement, would have resolved the industrial dispute,

As per 1996 to 2019

would have made some sensible reforms to fares, and would now be squarely focussed on growing the rail leisure market. Eurostar and open access show the way in this respect.

Open access are just exposing how overpriced and bloated the rest of the long distance operators have become.

Meanwhile, as the numbers show, in the case of the DfT TOCs trains are overcrowded, service cuts are having to be reversed to deal with this, yet we have chronic staff shortages and rolling stock shortages and there is no slack in the system. That is most certainly suppressing revenue growth.

Chronic staff shortages and excessive operating deficits would be solved by taking the pruning shears to the timetable, which has grown and grown and grown througj until 2019.

There are very many services that are not at full length and very many more that are not overcrowded. There aren't many places outside London & SE where services need to be added purely for capacity.

Note that for every 4 carriages in use, there seem to be 2 more that have been removed from traffic serviceable and scrapped / stored in a siding or complex somewhere.

DB cargo might be in a different position because
of the downturn in the intermodal freight market.

Same could apply to any FOC. They are real businesses. Nobody gets to self destruct the business, stitch up their customers and walk away unscathed.

 

[yorksrob]

I've seen surveys asking reason for travel a couple of times in the past few months.

 

[Snow1964]

Any idea when we are going to get 2022-23 station usage statistics?

ORR publications schedule now suggests few days before Christmas

14th December for station usage
19th December for July-Sept Quarter of data in this thread (which is only about 6 weeks after previous (13 week) quarter

Not clear to me how this schedule is so uneven

Publication dates for statistics | ORR Data Portal

Our publication timetable provides details when we will publish official statistics, the statistical releases and other statistics that we publish.

dataportal.orr.gov.uk

 

[The Ham]

I heard someone (high up in a TOC) say that they reckon they could have easily generated an extra profit (I think it was £3 million) if they could have spent some money (I think it was about £2 million, with an income of £5 million) but they weren't allowed to by government.

Whilst they one example is hardly going to make a difference, if that's widespread within the industry then it could be that 100 such examples could start to close the gap (especially in subsequent years where the costs may not be as high and/or you've been able to grow the market).

By all means look at where it's viable to keep service levels low where that's actually cost effective, but we also need to look at areas where it's possible to generate additional income where that's higher than the costs of doing so.

Whilst rail use is still down by 11%, it has typically seen 10% growth over the last 12 months, if the strikes were to be dealt with it's entirely possible that the same again over the next 12 months could be achieved. However 9% growth would put the passenger numbers at 97% of pre pandemic numbers (7% would be 95%).

Whilst 3% of rail use due to strikes doesn't sound much, it does depend on who that is impacting. Commuters who are working part time in the office, probably not that much, however it may well be that it's disproportionately impacting business travel. If that's the case it could well be that fixing the strikes could see revenue growth which is much higher than 3%.

 

[12LDA28C]

I heard someone (high up in a TOC) say that they reckon they could have easily generated an extra profit (I think it was £3 million) if they could have spent some money (I think it was about £2 million, with an income of £5 million) but they weren't allowed to by government.

Whilst they one example is hardly going to make a difference, if that's widespread within the industry then it could be that 100 such examples could start to close the gap (especially in subsequent years where the costs may not be as high and/or you've been able to grow the market).

By all means look at where it's viable to keep service levels low where that's actually cost effective, but we also need to look at areas where it's possible to generate additional income where that's higher than the costs of doing so.

Whilst rail use is still down by 11%, it has typically seen 10% growth over the last 12 months, if the strikes were to be dealt with it's entirely possible that the same again over the next 12 months could be achieved. However 9% growth would put the passenger numbers at 97% of pre pandemic numbers (7% would be 95%).

Whilst 3% of rail use due to strikes doesn't sound much, it does depend on who that is impacting. Commuters who are working part time in the office, probably not that much, however it may well be that it's disproportionately impacting business travel. If that's the case it could well be that fixing the strikes could see revenue growth which is much higher than 3%.

It's patently obvious that greater growth in passenger numbers and revenue could have been achieved with some investment but the DfT's focus on cost-cutting has suppressed demand and it's actually very encouraging to see the increase in rail ridership against that backdrop of penny-pinching. The current Government approach seems to be that if a TOC can spend one pound to get two back in additional revenue, then the DfT will not spend that pound. Let's hope that attitude changes in the very near future.

 

[Dr Day]

It's patently obvious that greater growth in passenger numbers and revenue could have been achieved with some investment

Can you give some examples please?

 

[12LDA28C]

Can you give some examples please?

Examples of what? How allowing TOCs to recruit sufficient staff would lead to better service provision and less cancellations? How allowing TOCs to spend money on fleet and increase services back to pre-Covid levels would increase passenger numbers and revenue? How giving a reasonable no-strings pay rise to rail staff could have solved the industrial dispute a year ago? This is basic stuff which surely doesn't need spelling out.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Examples of what? How allowing TOCs to recruit sufficient staff would lead to better service provision and less cancellations? How allowing TOCs to spend money on fleet and increase services back to pre-Covid levels would increase passenger numbers and revenue? How giving a reasonable no-strings pay rise to rail staff could have solved the industrial dispute a year ago? This is basic stuff which surely doesn't need spelling out.

Most, if not all, of these would be seen as day-to-day costs, especially a ‘no strings’ pay increase that lasts ‘for ever’, rather than as “investment”.

 

[12LDA28C]

Most, if not all, of these would be seen as day-to-day costs, especially a ‘no strings’ pay increase that lasts ‘for ever’, rather than as “investment”.

Several operators were/are subject to a recruitment freeze by the DfT in order to save money. Operators had/have to get sign off from the DfT for pretty much any expense these days, no matter how seemingly trivial. They certainly would if they planned to increase service level frequency in order to increase capacity or a particular route.

 

[Dr Day]

Most, if not all, of these would be seen as day-to-day costs, especially a ‘no strings’ pay increase that lasts ‘for ever’, rather than as “investment”.

Indeed - I was thinking of capital cost examples such as 'if we bought a new wheel lathe at depot X, we could have had fewer units out of service with wheel flats and cancelled fewer services'.

Examples of what? How allowing TOCs to recruit sufficient staff would lead to better service provision and less cancellations? How allowing TOCs to spend money on fleet and increase services back to pre-Covid levels would increase passenger numbers and revenue? How giving a reasonable no-strings pay rise to rail staff could have solved the industrial dispute a year ago? This is basic stuff which surely doesn't need spelling out.

Even in terms of day to day operating costs then, I'm still interested in understanding examples of where the increase in revenue would more than off-set the increase in expenditure over the current baseline, as I'm afraid it isn't obvious to me living in a part of the country where most railway operations are subsidised. I don't dispute they exist, just interested where on the network they are and if there are any specific proposed 'no brainer' service enhancements that have been turned down.