What is the overall load factor of the UK railway network?

[mrmartin]

Anyone know this (perhaps by TOC?)

I expect load factor to be well over 100% during the peaks but much much lower than that off peak - maybe 10-20%? Giving an overall load factor of around 30%.

Anyone have any better stats?

 

[route:oxford]

Anyone know this (perhaps by TOC?)

I expect load factor to be well over 100% during the peaks but much much lower than that off peak - maybe 10-20%? Giving an overall load factor of around 30%.

Anyone have any better stats?

Depends when during the "off-peak".

If you are reviewing the load factor of services in the peak-off-peak times then then the load factor is bound to be close to peak-peak.

 

[Muzer]

I suspect it'll be quite low if you're talking across the whole network, counting every train ever. Most places have peak flows and the majority of services run outside of these peak flows but would normally use the same trains, especially in places with fixed formation sets. I wouldn't even be surprised if the average figure is in the single digits, though I would perhaps feel it's more likely to be in the 20s or 30s. Those are just very wild guesses though.

 

[northernchris]

There's still some very busy off peak services though, like TPE which will skew the figures

 

[Muzer]

True, but for every TPE service, there's probably at least two Stourbridge Town services

 

[tbtc]

I think that a 35% loading was mentioned on Virgin Trains (at the time of the rebid, with First suggesting that it would be easy to meet the strenuous targets and increased numbers as only around a third of seats were currently occupied).

That sounded low, but a significant percentage of UK trains are on commuter routes where the cast majority of demand is *to* the "big city" in the morning and away in the afternoon - i.e. for every service into central Cardiff/ Glasgow/ Birmingham in the morning rush hour, there's one pretty much empty approaching Rhymney/ East Kilbride/ Lichfield.

And those services from Rhymney/ East Kilbride/ Lichfield. into the big city don't necessarily become "full" until a few stops before the end.

So, maybe 35% isn't such a low figure after all?

 

[centraltrains]

True, but for every TPE service, there's probably at least two Stourbridge Town services

I've certainly seen many off-peak standing room only shuttle runs...

 

[WatcherZero]

My gut would be 30-40% on average off peak and maybe 80% peak (with a significant number of peak services in excess of 100%).

Rural lines quite often have quite reasonable loadings throughout the day but very low early in the morning and during what would be considered peak on a suburban line as well as finishing much earlier at night (as early as 7pm in some places and almost certainly earlier than the 10/11pm min in urban areas).

 

[Abpj17]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...ges-transport-london-manchester-a7160196.html includes the ten worst. Some what unsurprising, GTR take the prizes here....

https://www.gov.uk/government/stati...ays-in-major-cities-in-england-and-wales-2015 includes a load of data, mostly focussed around the peaks tho

 

[theironroad]

I imagine that rural services in Scotland,wales, Cornwall and suffolk in the mid winter will depress overall stats.

 

[me123]

^Not so much the rural routes in Scotland, but think more about the high frequency routes. The rural routes can be quite busy throughout the year, providing often the only feasible public transport to these towns and villages. Even if they're not well used, it's often only a small number of trains that won't hugely affect the overall load factor.

However, in Greater Glasgow some of the trains throughout the day run with a very low load factor. Between 10am-2pm some routes continue to run at high frequency, and occasionally with long trains (where they can't split the train for whatever reason) but might have load factors in the single figures at times. Same in the evenings. With a high number of these services running not only in Glasgow but throughout the country, I suspect that it is these trains that will bring the overall load factor down.

 

[WatcherZero]

London is the most peaky, twice as many travel in the 3 hour peak as throughout the whole rest of the day. However in the North its more even with narrowly more travelling through the off peak than during peak.

Tocs like Northern and TPE have received plaudits for their ability to grow leisure and shoppers using rail, London hasn't managed to grow that 'day out' market significantly yet.

 

[CyrusWuff]

Were you to average it out across the network as a whole, you could probably manage to come up with a load factor of zero by using similar logic to Douglas Adams when it came to calculating the population of the Universe as zero.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

The McNulty report of 2011 (chapter 17) goes into this in some detail, with comparisons across Europe.
P254 et seq in this: http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/1709/rail-vfm-detailed-report-may11.pdf

The stand-out figures are the utilisation of SNCF TGV services - a figure of 78% is mentioned (2007).
Other comments are on the high utilisation of trains in the Netherlands and Switzerland, compared to the UK.
For the UK TOCs, ICEC and ICWC lead the way, mainly because they have all-day each-way travel and not just one way in the peaks.
FGW (ie GWR) is probably lower because of the way Thames Valley commuting dominates longer distance services (the Reading/Didcot effect).
ATW and Northern were at the bottom of the heap.

 

[WatcherZero]

That's passenger km per train km. So naturally places which have shorter trains would do far worse than places which have longer trains as a 2car train travelling a km and a 12 car train travelling a km are rated the same.

 

[Taunton]

All depends how you measure it. I would guess the overall system figure is under 10%.

Even the crush-loaded Brighton to Bedford Thameslinks passing Farringdon at 0840 in the morning only prevent everyone getting in at East Croydon. Not even half full from Brighton, and are 12 cars of mostly fresh air from Kings Cross to Bedford.

A lot of this is down to railway convenience. The morning East Midland HSTs from Leeds to St Pancras where the last service of the day from Leeds leaves before most people get up in the morning, and is only well filled after Leicester, is an example.

Waiting at Haymarket, a 6-car electric Class 334 on the Bathgate line can pass with seemingly more carriages than passengers, then the mainstream Glasgow Queen St service comes in, only 3 cars and with standing already.