New DfT rail usage figures, big increase

[Iskra]

Didn’t TP take over the Huddersfield stopper from Northern, so that could explain it?

Very positive to see such strong growth figures. It’s amazing what a bit of investment can achieve.

 

[The exile]

HEx is open-access, so it would likely close due to becoming unprofitable, which will happen at some point if passenger numbers keep dropping.

Although I imagine the airport would prop up a mildly (possibly even more than mildly) loss-making service for reasons of prestige and marketing.

 

[Djgr]

HEx is open-access, so it would likely close due to becoming unprofitable, which will happen at some point if passenger numbers keep dropping.

I'm sure there must be more radical political solutions available, if it is leading to ineffective use of a vital but constrained infrastructure of national importance.

 

[Clarence Yard]

Hex has an unusual (for rail) cost structure so it is a licence to print money for Heathrow Airport Ltd. It will take a lot to make it cease operations and whilst it is still making serious money for its owners, it will remain.

There would have to be a huge drop in patronage for this to happen and even with the reduction in patronage quoted above, it is still hugely profitable.

The owners are also well connected politically, whoever is in power, so any thought of forcing them to do anything is fanciful. They are very powerful players.

 

[John R]

Hex has an unusual (for rail) cost structure so it is a licence to print money for Heathrow Airport Ltd. It will take a lot to make it cease operations and whilst it is still making serious money for its owners, it will remain.

There would have to be a huge drop in patronage for this to happen and even with the reduction in patronage quoted above, it is still hugely profitable.

The owners are also well connected politically, whoever is in power, so any thought of forcing them to do anything is fanciful. They are very powerful players.

That’s helpful, if disappointing, context for those of use watching its fall in usage in the hope that those four paths out of Paddington will eventually find a more useful purpose.

 

[CdBrux]

That’s helpful, if disappointing, context for those of use watching its fall in usage in the hope that those four paths out of Paddington will eventually find a more useful purpose.

my understanding is, due to signalling spacing and maybe other infrastructure reasons, if Hex are not using those paths it would be quite hard certainly for 4 or even any to be used for long distances

 

[Djgr]

my understanding is, due to signalling spacing and maybe other infrastructure reasons, if Hex are not using those paths it would be quite hard certainly for 4 or even any to be used for long distances

Perhaps in the short term but could be adjusted and built into long term infrastructure planning in a post HEx world.

 

[dk1]

Cross Country must be doing something right.

 

[Trainbike46]

Cross Country must be doing something right.

Increased capacity from the extra voyagers must have helped! Now if they get the rest of the voyagers they can continue these numbers...

 

[Krokodil]

CS I have no idea.

Weren't they suffering from issues with their coaches, leading to some routes switching to alternate days only?

my understanding is, due to signalling spacing and maybe other infrastructure reasons, if Hex are not using those paths it would be quite hard certainly for 4 or even any to be used for long distances

The extra white space would be welcome for service recovery though.

Increased capacity from the extra voyagers must have helped! Now if they get the rest of the voyagers they can continue these numbers...

Would also help if they could open up the rear set consistently.

 

[Snow1964]

What I find intriguing is the inconsistency between the tables, passenger numbers, passenger km, how some operators seem to be getting growth with people travelling further, whilst others seem to have journeys getting shorter on average. (Simply divide the distance by passengers to find average journey length)

Then the passenger train km (table 5) has generally grown less than passenger km, so clearly some trains are busier. This suggests operators are not being responsive, only partly increasing capacity.

Table 6 gives the vehicle km. I realise a token number of operators have introduced vehicles with more seats, but the opposite is true in some cases too with reduced seats in some areas. Of course dividing table 6 by table 5 shows average number of vehicles. Clearly some operators are shortening trains, even though passenger numbers are up.

Does show up big mismatches, eg cross country vehicle km increased 8% less than passenger km, so clearly not keeping up (and I don't know if XC are sneaky and include locked out vehicles in their figures, so it's even more crammed)

https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/zzlpyvq4/passenger-rail-usage-jan-mar-2025.pdf

 

[quantinghome]

What I find intriguing is the inconsistency between the tables, passenger numbers, passenger km, how some operators seem to be getting growth with people travelling further, whilst others seem to have journeys getting shorter on average. (Simply divide the distance by passengers to find average journey length)

Then the passenger train km (table 5) has generally grown less than passenger km, so clearly some trains are busier. This suggests operators are not being responsive, only partly increasing capacity.

Table 6 gives the vehicle km. I realise a token number of operators have introduced vehicles with more seats, but the opposite is true in some cases too with reduced seats in some areas. Of course dividing table 6 by table 5 shows average number of vehicles. Clearly some operators are shortening trains, even though passenger numbers are up.

Does show up big mismatches, eg cross country vehicle km increased 8% less than passenger km, so clearly not keeping up (and I don't know if XC are sneaky and include locked out vehicles in their figures, so it's even more crammed)

https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/zzlpyvq4/passenger-rail-usage-jan-mar-2025.pdf

As passengers return to the railway we would expect passenger km to increase more than train km. Especially if growth is happening more outside the peaks. There railway is still requirement a huge subsidy from the government to recover from the COVID slump in demand - if they are able to boost passenger numbers without having to increase operational costs then that's a good thing as it makes railways more viable in the eyes of the government. HOWEVER, I would add it's only good up to a point. At some stage you've got to increase capacity on busy services.

 

[dk1]

As passengers return to the railway we would expect passenger km to increase more than train km. Especially if growth is happening more outside the peaks. There railway is still requirement a huge subsidy from the government to recover from the COVID slump in demand - if they are able to boost passenger numbers without having to increase operational costs then that's a good thing as it makes railways more viable in the eyes of the government. HOWEVER, I would add it's only good up to a point. At some stage you've got to increase capacity on busy services.

At least since the last lot left we no longer have to listen to the repetitive drivel about how they spent £16bn keeping the railways running during the pandemic as if it was somehow the employees fault and that they/we should be grateful and accept no pay increase. Just getting on with things now and considering we have been bordering a recession I find these results extremely positive and encouraging.

 

[Haywain]

As passengers return to the railway we would expect passenger km to increase more than train km. Especially if growth is happening more outside the peaks. There railway is still requirement a huge subsidy from the government to recover from the COVID slump in demand - if they are able to boost passenger numbers without having to increase operational costs then that's a good thing as it makes railways more viable in the eyes of the government. HOWEVER, I would add it's only good up to a point. At some stage you've got to increase capacity on busy services.

The other part of that is that increasing capacity by adding more trains requires a longish timescale in terms of building timetables and having staff numbers available.

 

[43066]

At least since the last lot left we no longer have to listen to the repetitive drivel about how they spent £16bn keeping the railways running during the pandemic as if it was somehow the employees fault and that they/we should be grateful and accept no pay increase. Just getting on with things now and considering we have been bordering a recession I find these results extremely positive and encouraging.

Agreed - and endlessly being told that passengers would never return to the railway!

The wider economic outlook is pretty poor so, as you say, there’s a lot of reason to feel very positive about railway usage levels.

 

[Starmill]

CS carry a trivial number of passengers so I wouldn't worry about that going up or down by a few points having any bearing on anything.

my understanding is, due to signalling spacing and maybe other infrastructure reasons, if Hex are not using those paths it would be quite hard certainly for 4 or even any to be used for long distances

There are some fairly obvious gaps between Airport Jn and Reading on the main lines so I don't think that's true. However the point is that people are paying more to go to Heathrow Airport than they would to Reading.

 

[dk1]

Agreed - and endlessly being told that passengers would never return to the railway!

The wider economic outlook is pretty poor so, as you say, there’s a lot of reason to feel very positive about railway usage levels.

Very much so. I just laugh when I see that former Secretary of State for transport nowadays. Excuse me for not posting his name but he did have several

 

[Djgr]

There are some fairly obvious gaps between Airport Jn and Reading on the main lines so I don't think that's true. However the point is that people are paying more to go to Heathrow Airport than they would to Reading.

In ever-decreasing numbers

 

[bspahh]

What I find intriguing is the inconsistency between the tables, passenger numbers, passenger km, how some operators seem to be getting growth with people travelling further, whilst others seem to have journeys getting shorter on average. (Simply divide the distance by passengers to find average journey length)

Are the shorter journeys from split ticketing? This will happen more on some routes than others, depending on the pricing.

 

[jamiearmley]

Are the shorter journeys from split ticketing? This will happen more on some routes than others, depending on the pricing.

I know that there are mechanisms for determining the level of split ticketing used on each 'route' and internal figures are published - how much use is made of this I'm not sure, however. The effect probably isn't as great as you might imagine.

Another factor is passengers buying to get through barriers - I'm travelling into work now, in full railway uniform, listening to a group trying to work out which of the stations closest to Leeds would be cheapest to buy a single from - from their chatter it seems the guard hasn't been seen in the saloon during the forty odd minutes they have been on board.

Again, only a small effect perhaps - but an effect nonetheless.

 

[The Ham]

Looking at the usage data and comparing with the year 2018/19 (passenger numbers/train km)
Avanti West Coast
88.4%/84.8%
C2C
75.9%/92.3%
Caledonian Sleeper
97.2%/99.9%
Chiltern Railways
78.1%/72.8%
CrossCountry
93.0%/76.2%
East Midlands Railway
117.9%/108.7%
Elizabeth line
473.5%/292.9%
Govia Thameslink Railway
87.3%/93.6%
Great Western Railway
89.0%/108.4%
Greater Anglia
96.3%/98.2%
London North Eastern Railway
119.5%/100.4%
London Overground
95.9%/105.9%
Merseyrail
97.0%/98.3%
Northern
90.6%/105.0%
ScotRail
86.6%/89.0%
South Western Railway
76.7%/89.8%
Southeastern
75.3%/90.4%
TfW Rail
93.6%/107.5%
TransPennine Express
94.1%/95.2%
West Midlands Trains
86.0%/94.8%

Chiltern and XC look like they need to up their game as their passenger numbers vs rail miles implies that their services are busier than they were pre COVID.

Anything where the passenger percentage is 3 percentage points below the pre COVID mileage percentage (for example Greater Anglia) should start to consider what additional services could be run

Anything where that the passenger numbers are at or up to 5 percentage points over the pre COVID mileage percentage should be running more services soon (Avanti).

Anything more than 5% above should really be running services already (XC), as they are busier than they were and for the likes of XC that wasn't like they had lots of long trains before.

 

[bspahh]

Looking at the usage data and comparing with the year 2018/19 (passenger numbers/train km)

I reformatted the table:

TOC	Passenger numbers	Train km
Avanti West Coast	88.40%​	84.80%​
C2C	75.90%​	92.30%​
Caledonian Sleeper	97.20%​	99.90%​
Chiltern Railways	78.10%​	72.80%​
CrossCountry	93.00%​	76.20%​
East Midlands Railway	117.90%​	108.70%​
Elizabeth line	473.50%​	292.90%​
Govia Thameslink Railway	87.30%​	93.60%​
Great Western Railway	89.00%​	108.40%​
Greater Anglia	96.30%​	98.20%​
London North Eastern Railway	119.50%​	100.40%​
London Overground	95.90%​	105.90%​
Merseyrail	97.00%​	98.30%​
Northern	90.60%​	105.00%​
ScotRail	86.60%​	89.00%​
South Western Railway	76.70%​	89.80%​
Southeastern	75.30%​	90.40%​
TfW Rail	93.60%​	107.50%​
TransPennine Express	94.10%​	95.20%​
West Midlands Trains	86.00%​	94.80%​

 

[The Ham]

I reformatted the table:

TOC	Passenger numbers	Train km
Avanti West Coast	88.40%​	84.80%​
C2C	75.90%​	92.30%​
Caledonian Sleeper	97.20%​	99.90%​
Chiltern Railways	78.10%​	72.80%​
CrossCountry	93.00%​	76.20%​
East Midlands Railway	117.90%​	108.70%​
Elizabeth line	473.50%​	292.90%​
Govia Thameslink Railway	87.30%​	93.60%​
Great Western Railway	89.00%​	108.40%​
Greater Anglia	96.30%​	98.20%​
London North Eastern Railway	119.50%​	100.40%​
London Overground	95.90%​	105.90%​
Merseyrail	97.00%​	98.30%​
Northern	90.60%​	105.00%​
ScotRail	86.60%​	89.00%​
South Western Railway	76.70%​	89.80%​
Southeastern	75.30%​	90.40%​
TfW Rail	93.60%​	107.50%​
TransPennine Express	94.10%​	95.20%​
West Midlands Trains	86.00%​	94.80%​

Thanks

 

[Iskra]

At least since the last lot left we no longer have to listen to the repetitive drivel about how they spent £16bn keeping the railways running during the pandemic as if it was somehow the employees fault and that they/we should be grateful and accept no pay increase. Just getting on with things now and considering we have been bordering a recession I find these results extremely positive and encouraging.

Is any other sector still even referencing Covid in it’s results? Seems outdated at this point.

 

[The exile]

Is any other sector still even referencing Covid in it’s results? Seems outdated at this point.

If you're comparing with five years ago it can't really be avoided...

 

[dk1]

Is any other sector still even referencing Covid in it’s results? Seems outdated at this point.

Tell me about it. Some just can't seem to shake off that excuse. Been a lame reason for a couple of years now.

 

[Adrian1980uk]

As passengers return to the railway we would expect passenger km to increase more than train km. Especially if growth is happening more outside the peaks. There railway is still requirement a huge subsidy from the government to recover from the COVID slump in demand - if they are able to boost passenger numbers without having to increase operational costs then that's a good thing as it makes railways more viable in the eyes of the government. HOWEVER, I would add it's only good up to a point. At some stage you've got to increase capacity on busy services.

There is a point if you can increase passengers on less busy services all well and good but to really move the needle the TOCs are going to need to lengthen trains and add services

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Saturday at 21:35 ==

Example of this is the peak Norwich to London services I use, you cannot get substantially more passengers on as all carriages are marked as full so there isn't many more seats and expecting passengers to stand for 40mins isn't going to encourage more passengers

 

[Class 170101]

Tell me about it. Some just can't seem to shake off that excuse. Been a lame reason for a couple of years now.

Though arguably we aren't quite back at pre covid numbers (overall) yet as the graph showed. 1,752m, 2018/19 as against 1,728m for 2024/25.

 

[The Ham]

Is any other sector still even referencing Covid in it’s results? Seems outdated at this point.

Part of the reason is that due to the narrative of those who repeat the statement that rail travel is no longer relevant due to the change in working patterns.

Those TOC's who have passenger numbers above the peak demonstrate that isn't necessary as clear cut as it was a few years ago.

By looking to see if passenger numbers are near to the peak that was achieved, then the case for more rail investment starts to improve (or at least the threat of cutting services reduces).

Another part is that some services appear to have been held back in restoring train km's, and people would like to see their services restored,. especially those who appear to be behind where perhaps the numbers justify.

For example XC, when it is now more overcrowded than it was in 2015/16 as back then (the highest since 2010) for every 1km of train travel there was 117km of passenger travel.

The latest data shows it as 133km of passenger travel per 1km, and it's not like the trains were lightly loaded a decade ago.

 

[evergreenadam]

Three TOCs are very poor performers: SWR, C2C and Southeastern. The heavy commuter base hasn’t returned and Southeastern has probably also been affected by competition from the Elizabeth Line. But I am not sure why these particular TOCs would be disproportionally affected by home working - they have quite different demographic profiles.

So the recovery of Govia Thameslink and Greater Anglia is quite remarkable in that context given that they also have a heavy commuter base. Maybe in these cases reduced demand as a result of home working is balanced out by booming demand for leisure travel to the South Coast, Cambridge and airports?