UK Rail Passenger Numbers Discussion

[HSTEd]

Even if there was a good environmental reason to tax the TOC's for fuel use, it would be fairly pointless as it would be government taking a tax to then pay to support the railways so all it would do is add a load of admin (and therefore cost) for little benefit.

It would likely net reduce admin, because it would reduce the size of the red diesel bureaucracy.

Paying the rail companies more money is not going to require more administration because the number on the cheque has got larger.

In return you no longer have to control fuel shipments to rail depots or maintain enforcement to avoid improper use of said fuel.

 

[railfan99]

I can vouch for how busy the Sheringham line and to extent Felixstowe. Patronage and train capacity are way above what went before.

2022/23 figures are released late this year or early next.

Another station I found, Sheringham (to which I travelled from Australia in September 2022) had patronage (entries and exits combined) of 226,000 in 2018-19 but this rose to an amazing 234,000 in 2021-22 despite some lockdown days.

The next station, West Runton, rose from 27.212 in 2018-19 to 31,834 in 2021-22. Salhouse, just out of Norwich on the same line, increased from 11,778 to 12,692: to have a 10 per cent rise despite the 'abeyance' during lockdowns is very impressive.

I was impressed by the patronage on this line when I used it.

This must give a lot of confidence as to the future of branches like Norwich-Sheringham. In the current recessionary climate, there's no appetite from your government to increase spending/investment on railways, but I wonder is the patronage growth on this line so good that if rollingstock, subsidy/payments to the TOC and crews were available, should it have a half-hourly service on Mondays to Fridays and a much better frequency on Sundays?

Lakenheath on the Norwich-Cambridge line has a small number of trains stopping each week, and the village is some distance away, but it rose from 454 to 476 (comparing 2018-19 to 2021-22).

So not every railway station has 'failed to fully recover'.

 

[Watershed]

In the current recessionary climate, there's no appetite from your government to increase spending/investment on railways, but I wonder is the patronage growth on this line so good that if rollingstock, subsidy/payments to the TOC and crews were available, should it have a half-hourly service on Mondays to Fridays and a much better frequency on Sundays?

Unfortunately the single track nature of the line means that it wouldn't be possible to introduce a clockface half-hourly service. The only passing loop between Hoveton & Wroxham (HXM - the start of the single line) and Cromer (CRM) is at North Walsham, which is 15-17 minutes' journey time from CRM, depending on whether you call at the intermediate stations of Gunton and Roughton Road.

This is obviously too long a journey time to allow a half-hourly service. It would need to be reduced down to 13 minutes or so in order for the timetable to be reasonably resilient. That would require major route upgrades in all likelihood - probably possible, but not cheap. Therefore, I can't ever see there being a half-hourly service if I'm honest.

There is also the minor point of the twice weekly freight service from North Walsham (carrying distillate gas from Bacton Gas Terminal), though I'm sure one round trip could be removed or the freight could be retimed to run outside of the main daytime period if need be.

So not every railway station has 'failed to fully recover'.

True, however the overall picture is sadly one of decline - to a significant extent in the business market and to a lesser degree in the commuter market, with some exceptions for lines that have previously mainly carred leisure or short-distance commuting traffic.

 

[railfan99]

Unfortunately the single track nature of the line means that it wouldn't be possible to introduce a clockface half-hourly service. The only passing loop between Hoveton & Wroxham (HXM - the start of the single line) and Cromer (CRM) is at North Walsham, which is 15-17 minutes' journey time from CRM, depending on whether you call at the intermediate stations of Gunton and Roughton Road.

This is obviously too long a journey time to allow a half-hourly service. It would need to be reduced down to 13 minutes or so in order for the timetable to be reasonably resilient. That would require major route upgrades in all likelihood - probably possible, but not cheap.

Apologies, as a foreigner I wasn't aware. 'Next best' is a 40 minute frequency: not 'clockface' but better than hourly. Of course, a platform would have to be available at Norwich.

Given significant populations in catchment areas of some branch and secondary main lines, hourly frequencies Mon to Sat are surprisingly poor. A 'train every two hours' on Sundays is worse. Does your DfT believe no one travels for leisure or VFR on Sundays? I acknowledge what can be a lack of Sunday morning frequencies has a history, and is an issue in long running negotiations and strikes re pay/conditions.

 

[Killingworth]

Another station I found, Sheringham (to which I travelled from Australia in September 2022) had patronage (entries and exits combined) of 226,000 in 2018-19 but this rose to an amazing 234,000 in 2021-22 despite some lockdown days.

The next station, West Runton, rose from 27.212 in 2018-19 to 31,834 in 2021-22. Salhouse, just out of Norwich on the same line, increased from 11,778 to 12,692: to have a 10 per cent rise despite the 'abeyance' during lockdowns is very impressive.

I was impressed by the patronage on this line when I used it.

This must give a lot of confidence as to the future of branches like Norwich-Sheringham. In the current recessionary climate, there's no appetite from your government to increase spending/investment on railways, but I wonder is the patronage growth on this line so good that if rollingstock, subsidy/payments to the TOC and crews were available, should it have a half-hourly service on Mondays to Fridays and a much better frequency on Sundays?

Lakenheath on the Norwich-Cambridge line has a small number of trains stopping each week, and the village is some distance away, but it rose from 454 to 476 (comparing 2018-19 to 2021-22).

So not every railway station has 'failed to fully recover'.

Having used the services at Cromer and Sheringham last year I can understand how the new rolling stock will have contributed to increased patronage.

Increases of 10% are impressive and if sustained would certainly point to a need for greatee capacity. Even at the off peak times we travelled the trains seemed busy.

This is where the inflexibility of railways hits home.

Single track won't allow a clock face half hourly service even though Greater Anglia probably have rolling stock to meet such a capacity need.

Their 755s can be 3 or 4 car. They may be able to operate up to 3 units in multiple but platform capacity probably rules out running hourly trains up to 12 cars long.

Aa a general rule a service that runs half hourly with 4 cars will attract more custom than one that runs hourly with 8, althougb the shorter trains may experience overcrowding at peak times.

So most of us probably get back in our totally flexible cars that run from where we are, when we're ready to go to wherever we decide we're going. Change of plan en route, little problem.

Only 2% of journeys are made by train. Increase that to 4% and will we see much differnce on roads? Could we cope with doubling of passenger numbers on trains anyway? To get that overall doubling some routes would have to see much higher increases.

At the current rate of infrastruture improvements and rollinh stock procurement the answer is clear. The train can't take that strain.

All the current very expensive active, paused, planned and suggested improvement schemes will not be enough - and no, I havent forgotten freight!

However the trains at Sheringham are well woth a visit, new and old.

 

[dk1]

Having used the services at Cromer and Sheringham last year I can understand how the new rolling stock will have contributed to increased patronage.

Increases of 10% are impressive and if sustained would certainly point to a need for greatee capacity. Even at the off peak times we travelled the trains seemed busy.

This is where the inflexibility of railways hits home.

Single track won't allow a clock face half hourly service even though Greater Anglia probably have rolling stock to meet such a capacity need.

Their 755s can be 3 or 4 car. They may be able to operate up to 3 units in multiple but platform capacity probably rules out running hourly trains up to 12 cars long.

Aa a general rule a service that runs half hourly with 4 cars will attract more custom than one that runs hourly with 8, althougb the shorter trains may experience overcrowding at peak times.

So most of us probably get back in our totally flexible cars that run from where we are, when we're ready to go to wherever we decide we're going. Change of plan en route, little problem.

Only 2% of journeys are made by train. Increase that to 4% and will we see much differnce on roads? Could we cope with doubling of passenger numbers on trains anyway? To get that overall doubling some routes would have to see much higher increases.

At the current rate of infrastruture improvements and rollinh stock procurement the answer is clear. The train can't take that strain.

All the current very expensive active, paused, planned and suggested improvement schemes will not be enough - and no, I havent forgotten freight!

However the trains at Sheringham are well woth a visit, new and old.

There has for many years now been an aspiration to run half-hourly between Norwich and North Walsham. This would fit perfectly into the hourly Sheringham service. If extra stops are added to the schedules now we can easily accommodate them with the superior performance & quick boarding/alighting now possible. There are also (partly to do with signalling) excessive layovers for passing at North Walsham as two trains cannot arrive simultaneously.

The longest trains on the route only stopping at Wroxham, Walsham & Cromer would be 6-cars. These would not be able to operate to Sheringham.

Norfolk County Council have also wanted a station at Broadland Business Park/Dussindale Park near to Sainsbury’s Pound Lane store.

 

[squizzler]

Only 2% of journeys are made by train. Increase that to 4% and will we see much differnce on roads? Could we cope with doubling of passenger numbers on trains anyway? To get that overall doubling some routes would have to see much higher increases.

Yes, before @The Ham comes and explains better than I could do, I'll give it a go The railways carry 10% of all person miles, because they focus on long distance markets. It we start attracting short distance traffic to light rail then a relatively modest operation can carry a large number of trips, as we see with things like the Docklands Light Railway.

Whilst HS2 and NPR will also generate a massive number of trips, the high speed programme will release loads of capacity on the classic network for short hops between adjacent towns. Rather than carrying one trainload of passengers between Birmingham and Euston after HS2 is built, the same train on the WCML might carry one load of passengers between Birmingham and Coventry, another load between Coventry and Milton Keynes, and a third load between Milton Keynes and London. That triples the amount of trips by rail on the classic network, in addition to high speed capacity on the new line. Obviously this is a caricature of what will actually happen, gives an illustration of how the same seat can be occupied by more passengers if the long distance traffic is abstracted onto a new line.

 

[Watershed]

Apologies, as a foreigner I wasn't aware. 'Next best' is a 40 minute frequency: not 'clockface' but better than hourly. Of course, a platform would have to be available at Norwich.

Given significant populations in catchment areas of some branch and secondary main lines, hourly frequencies Mon to Sat are surprisingly poor. A 'train every two hours' on Sundays is worse. Does your DfT believe no one travels for leisure or VFR on Sundays? I acknowledge what can be a lack of Sunday morning frequencies has a history, and is an issue in long running negotiations and strikes re pay/conditions.

No problem. There aren't many, if any, lines left in the UK with a 40 minute frequency. I believe the Watford Junction-St Albans Abbey branch may have been the last one, and that was "enhanced" to an hourly service in the December timetable change - ostensibly to improve connections, but the real motivator will have been to reduce the crewing cost as WMT don't have a driver depot at Watford Junction. It's just not a very popular thing given that almost everything else, other than minor branch lines such as the Heart of Wales or Heart of Wessex lines, runs to a standard hourly pattern.

I wouldn't have said hourly is particularly poor, given that the overall population of the towns and villages served by the line is just over 40,000. There are many much larger towns and cities with only an hourly service - such as Hartlepool - and in the likes of France or Spain you would probably only have a couple of trains a day.

The service is also hourly on Sundays, though the first train is considerably later and the last train also earlier than on other days of the week. This is essentially down to demand being somewhat lower, particularly in the mornings, and Sundays still not fully being in the working week for all GA staff.

 

[SamYeager]

For most of the time DMU's aren't that close to people (unlike quite a lot of cars, often with exhaust pipes within 3m of people walking).

Irrelevant since planes are also not that close to people but they've been targeted to discourage the use of fossil fuels. The rest of your post ignores the point I was making that the additional costs were to discourage the use of fossils fuels. I merely enquired whether rail was subject to such additional charges for fossil fuels and it does seem that effectively that is not the case. Whether or not rail should be charged rather more is another matter altogether.

 

[Magdalia]

There aren't many, if any, lines left in the UK with a 40 minute frequency. I believe the Watford Junction-St Albans Abbey branch may have been the last one, and that was "enhanced" to an hourly service in the December timetable change

The Wickford-Southminster branch still runs every 40 minutes. It connects with a Liverpool Street-Southend Victoria service that runs every 20 minutes.

 

[yorksrob]

Irrelevant since planes are also not that close to people but they've been targeted to discourage the use of fossil fuels. The rest of your post ignores the point I was making that the additional costs were to discourage the use of fossils fuels. I merely enquired whether rail was subject to such additional charges for fossil fuels and it does seem that effectively that is not the case. Whether or not rail should be charged rather more is another matter altogether.

Green house gases are a problem wherever they're produced. All trains and planes produce these, although I understand that planes produce a lot more per passenger.

Particulates that are directly damaging to health are more of a problem in proximity to people. In this case trains and planes are probably less of a problem than road traffic.

 

[railfan99]

...the overall population of the towns and villages served by the line is just over 40,000...

Worldwide, it's generally true that most patronage (in some cases 95 per cent) is from smaller towns/suburbs/localities (in this case Sheringham, Cromer et al) to the major centre, and back again in the afternoon/night but Norwich has an urban population of greater than 200,000.

Simply referring to the population of towns and villages away from the 'drawcard' may not quite give the whole picture re passenger numbers on a line, especially ones that service holiday destinations.

How much of the usage of a line like Sheringham originates from Norwich or other stations not on the branch line, such as March/Ely/Doncaster/Ipswich/London? This is one of the deficiencies of published passenger trips data.

IIRC, there were quite a few students using my outbound morning train. They looked to be 18 or 19 year olds attending what we call 'TAFE' - technical and further education. They alighted at an intermediate station.

Sheringham like other English coastal towns must have been suffering for a long time from Englishmen and women preferring to go to Spain for cheap holidays, but the town retains much accommodation, so there must still be demand for leisure travellers overnighting, especially during summer. Some must use rail.

 

[yorksrob]

Worldwide, it's generally true that most patronage (in some cases 95 per cent) is from smaller towns/suburbs/localities (in this case Sheringham, Cromer et al) to the major centre, and back again in the afternoon/night but Norwich has an urban population of greater than 200,000.

Simply referring to the population of towns and villages away from the 'drawcard' may not quite give the whole picture re passenger numbers on a line, especially ones that service holiday destinations.

How much of the usage of a line like Sheringham originates from Norwich or other stations not on the branch line, such as March/Ely/Doncaster/Ipswich/London? This is one of the deficiencies of published passenger trips data.

IIRC, there were quite a few students using my outbound morning train. They looked to be 18 or 19 year olds attending what we call 'TAFE' - technical and further education. They alighted at an intermediate station.

Sheringham like other English coastal towns must have been suffering for a long time from Englishmen and women preferring to go to Spain for cheap holidays, but the town retains much accommodation, so there must still be demand for leisure travellers overnighting, especially during summer. Some must use rail.

The whole area is still very popular for holidays and some do go by train.

 

[railfan99]

Heighington on the Darlington-Bishop Auckland branch had total entries and exists of 22,756 in the last full 'pre-COVID' financial year, impressively rising to 29,072 in 2021-22.

Is a rise like this perhaps due to new housing being developed, a popular new school being built or inexplicable?

 

[Meerkat]

Heighington on the Darlington-Bishop Auckland branch had total entries and exists of 22,756 in the last full 'pre-COVID' financial year, impressively rising to 29,072 in 2021-22.

Is a rise like this perhaps due to new housing being developed, a popular new school being built or inexplicable?

Revenue crackdown?

 

[railfan99]

Revenue crackdown?

I checked a couple of other stations on the branch, which did not have higher passenger numbers when comparing the two FYs.

Interestingly what someone described as the 'very slow' Newcastle UK to Carlisle via Hexham line had some stations that almost met the criteria, which is good given there were UK lockdowns in 2021-22.

I am 'cherrypicking' as there are many stations that haven't recovered to the same extent elsewhere.

 

[Bald Rick]

Heighington on the Darlington-Bishop Auckland branch had total entries and exists of 22,756 in the last full 'pre-COVID' financial year, impressively rising to 29,072 in 2021-22.

Is a rise like this perhaps due to new housing being developed, a popular new school being built or inexplicable?

To put it in context, the increase is 9 return trips a day.

 

[Class 170101]

Heighington on the Darlington-Bishop Auckland branch had total entries and exists of 22,756 in the last full 'pre-COVID' financial year, impressively rising to 29,072 in 2021-22.

Is a rise like this perhaps due to new housing being developed, a popular new school being built or inexplicable?

Wasn't the service only every two hourly until recently as well? The service increase would generate demand increases.

 

[railfan99]

Wasn't the service only every two hourly until recently as well? The service increase would generate demand increases.

Sometimes unreliable Wiki says that occurred in May 2021.

To put it in context, the increase is 9 return trips a day.

True.

However 'trend is your friend'.

2021-22 had some lockdowns in UK IIRC, so not a completely uninterrupted financial year to 31 March (when most companies in your country end theirs).

North Road in 2021-22 had 56818 entries and exits combined, so c.28409 boardings or an average of 59 each way, per day.

Shildon: 56818 or 77 a day.

Newton Aycliffe: 74760 or 102/day boardings.

The terminus at Bishop Auckland: 146000 entries and exits combined, meaning 200 boardings per day.

So all up, typically 474 boardings a day including the 36 from Heighington, which means 3318 a week.

There are 103 departures from Bishop Auckland weekly, so median loading per train was 32.2.

Given the first train on the up isn't until 0726 on Mons to Sats and 0814 on Sundays - too late for starting at 0700 hours at a hospital in Darlington to use, and returning on the down there are no late night trains normally - it's quite reasonable patronage.

27 to 36 boardings a day isn't a huge raw number, but there may have been some residents in 2021-22 who'd yet to have confidence to use public transport for medical appointments or shopping, so in the circumstances, not bad.

I'd assume trains in the middle of the day at say 1300 hours and the last one or two in the mid evening are more poorly patronised, so perhaps a peak period weekday train has 60 or 70 by the time it gets to Darlington in the morning or when it departs from there at 16XX or 17XX.

So let's be pleased increases are occurring, even if as Watershed correctly says, a drop (so far) is evident at the vast majority of stations.

I've now shown two branch lines (BA and Sheringham) that seem to be doing quite well. Just great.

In Melbourne, Oz, the socialist State Premier refuses to mandate public servants returning to their desks, so while some do 'three days a week', hardly any do so every weekday. Our formerly crowded peak period trains often lack standees and sometimes don't even have all seats occupied on six-car sets. (An extensive suburban rail network with c.15 lines, longest of which is 58km). So a worldwide problem: from The City to the farflung ends of the earth where I reside.

 

[Bald Rick]

True.

However 'the trend is your friend'.

well, yes.

Look at another example: St Albans City, my local station.

2019/20: 7.375m

2021/22: 3.877m

That’s nearly 5,000 return trips a day now missing. Given that almost all of them are peak returns to London, and the very cheapest peak return is £17 (annual season), that’s a minimum of £20m a year missing (It’s actually rather more than that). That’s just one station, remember, albeit a rather lucrative one.

You need an awful lot of Heighingtons at £3.70 return to Darlo to make up that sort of money, and it needs to be with no extra cost to provide the service.

 

[BRX]

Only 2% of journeys are made by train. Increase that to 4% and will we see much differnce on roads? Could we cope with doubling of passenger numbers on trains anyway? To get that overall doubling some routes would have to see much higher increases.

Yes, before @The Ham comes and explains better than I could do, I'll give it a go The railways carry 10% of all person miles, because they focus on long distance markets. It we start attracting short distance traffic to light rail then a relatively modest operation can carry a large number of trips, as we see with things like the Docklands Light Railway.

Presumably you also have to look specifically at what's happening at peak times, because that's what determines the capacity that either the road or rail networks need to provide. And rail is generally better at shifting large numbers of people in a short time.

If you were to remove the option of rail commuting to London for example, there's no way the existing road network could cope.

It would be interesting to look at the numbers in other commuter areas, where there might be some capacity for rail expansion, specifically during peak times. Would it still be around 10% on rail or somewhat higher?

 

[railfan99]

Look at another example: St Albans City, my local station.

2019/20: 7.375m

2021/22: 3.877m

That’s nearly 5,000 return trips a day now missing. Given that almost all of them are peak returns to London, and the very cheapest peak return is £17 (annual season), that’s a minimum of £20m a year missing (It’s actually rather more than that).

I tried to look it up but no site gave a comprehensible quick explanation.

How many lockdown days were there affecting this line's users between 1 March 2019 and the end of February 2020, and same for 2021-22?

 

[Bald Rick]

I tried to look it up but no site gave a comprehensible quick explanation.

How many lockdown days were there affecting this line's users between 1 March 2019 and the end of February 2020, and same for 2021-22?

The year 19/20 is 1/4/19 to 31/3/20. In that period there was just over a week of lockdown, but commuting dropped very sharply from the first week of March. Certainly I was one of only a dozen or so people on a peak train in the second week of March that year; a train that a few weeks earlier would have had 1,500 people on it.

For 2021/22, I don’t remember, but I’m reasonably sure there was ‘stay at home advice’ For a few weeks in the winter.

 

[ar10642]

The year 19/20 is 1/4/19 to 31/3/20. In that period there was just over a week of lockdown, but commuting dropped very sharply from the first week of March. Certainly I was one of only a dozen or so people on a peak train in the second week of March that year; a train that a few weeks earlier would have had 1,500 people on it.

For 2021/22, I don’t remember, but I’m reasonably sure there was ‘stay at home advice’ For a few weeks in the winter.

Yes I was just checking this today. It was the "Plan B" measures in December 2021 - Jan 2022. I was going to the office semi regularly then had to stop again.

 

[RPI]

Has the increased patronage on the Sheringham line got anything to do with more efficient ticket checking? The passenger figures come from ticket sales (as far as I'm aware, but happy to be corrected) and with the method of working on the line the guards have more time for ticket checking, I noticed this when I went to Sheringham last year that the guards were incredibly proactive.

 

[Meerkat]

Has the increased patronage on the Sheringham line got anything to do with more efficient ticket checking? The passenger figures come from ticket sales (as far as I'm aware, but happy to be corrected) and with the method of working on the line the guards have more time for ticket checking, I noticed this when I went to Sheringham last year that the guards were incredibly proactive.

What has changed on the method of working?

 

[Class 170101]

What has changed on the method of working?

Referring to the fact the guards don't do doors / dispatch trains anymore on a regular basis - thats done by the driver.

 

[Meerkat]

Referring to the fact the guards don't do doors / dispatch trains anymore on a regular basis - thats done by the driver.

Thanks - I lost track of what had changed where.
Its an interesting theory but wary of starting THAT debate!

 

[Adrian1980uk]

Thanks - I lost track of what had changed where.
Its an interesting theory but wary of starting THAT debate!

I would say it's more to do with guaranteed capacity on the line, i.e. minimum 3 carriages as that's the minimum size of train in the fleet.

Take that compared to maybe 153 single coach or 156 2 coach. We all know that getting on a packed and standing train is unpleasant.

 

[Trainbike46]

I would say it's more to do with guaranteed capacity on the line, i.e. minimum 3 carriages as that's the minimum size of train in the fleet.

Take that compared to maybe 153 single coach or 156 2 coach. We all know that getting on a packed and standing train is unpleasant.

In addition to the new trains being more comfortable and offering more capacity, the service wasn't exactly reliable at the end of the old fleet, as there were many days were there were simply not enough trains in working order - so the boost in reliability provided by the 755s undoubtedly also contributed to making the service more attractive