Decline in Passenger Numbers

[Bernard Lamb]

http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/25719/passenger-rail-usage-2017-18-q1.pdf

There was a report in The Times today that quoted some potentially alarming figures.It seems to have been based on the above.

The report concluded, rather tongue in cheek  as I read it,that Corbyn's renationalisation plans would actually come about by default if the trend continued.

Any insiders able to comment?

Bernard

[coachmann]

http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/25719/passenger-rail-usage-2017-18-q1.pdf

There was a report in The Times today that quoted some potentially alarming figures.It seems to have been based on the above.

The report concluded, rather tongue in cheek  as I read it,that Corbyn's renationalisation plans would actually come about by default if the trend continued.

Any insiders able to comment?

Bernard

They'll be even lower when strikes begin................ Is that the lame duck of Europe I see on the horizon again....

[RANGERS]

The reduction in season ticket holders is interesting and tallies with fewer regular journeys on Southern and South Eastern, as a result of the London Bridge and industrial issues, but South West's big loss is a bit of a surprise. Wimbledon might have had an impact, but does that really account for over 10% of all the journeys in a three month period?

[96701]

As the economy slows, it shouldn't come as a surprise that fewer people are travelling.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/08/10/uk-exports-fell-june-despite-hopes-boost-sterlings-weakness/

[Richard E]

And as the travelling public age also. Next year there will be one less season ticket journey to York when I retire at Christmas. And I won't be the only one. There used to be quite a few NR employees doing the journey I do, I'm pretty much the only one travelling regularly now. There used to be 6 or 7 of us doing the same journey.

 

And if I were still working I'd be travelling less as work are now implementing a policy of allowing everyone to use laptops and work from home if they wish, that is a sea change for my employer.

Edited October 7, 2017 by Richard E

[HillsideDepot]

I don't think that I am surprised at the decline in Season Ticket numbers. Maybe surprised at the size of the decline, but not of its existence. I know its not rail related as no one in the team travels to work by train, but my employer (Wiltshire Council) has a policy of considerably fewer desks than people. I forget the ratio, and I think it if frequently reviewed and changed, but in our "service" we have 16 desks for 28 people. I work from home four days out of five, on average, and others have set days either out of the office working in their area, or working from home. If we're out and about we can "touch down" at other council buildings (libraries, leisure centres etc) and log on to the council servers. And we're quite likely to be sitting alongside a Police Officer as they share the same IT network and many of our ways of working. 

 

If it's financially worthwhile providing us with the IT kit to work at home rather than provide office space in Wiltshire, how much more is it worth firms encouraging similar working practises in London? SWT is an odd one, but if businesses with staff affected by Southern's strikes (and London Bridge works etc) have found home working successful, of necessity, there is no reason why colleagues who use SWT/SWR won't want to choose to do the same. Again, that doesn't account for all of the decline, but I suspect there is something in it. 

 

Interesting times, but maybe just the next step in the evolution of travel patterns.

[Corbs]

We try to use the train for work, but a lot of the time it just is not competitive.

 

Two weeks ago we needed to go to a meeting in Richmond, which started at 9am. Our office is in Bristol and there were three of us travelling.

 

A comfortable medium sized estate hire car cost £65 plus £40 fuel, whereas the price for three of us (just to get from Bristol to London) would have been £612.

[Titan]

I can relate to that. I hired a Range Rover Sport to take my girlfriend to an event in London in luxury. Felt a bit extravagant until someone pointed out that even with the fuel it was still cheaper than going by train...

[Mark Saunders]

I can relate to that. I hired a Range Rover Sport to take my girlfriend to an event in London in luxury. Felt a bit extravagant until someone pointed out that even with the fuel it was still cheaper than going by train...

 

It is a paradox as it has never been so expensive to walk up and pay but book far enough in advance and it has never been cheaper!

[brianusa]

The blame falls on the railway itself, or rather its accountants.  Before cost cutting, computers and inept governments, if you wanted to go from A to B, you walked up to the ticket office and bought either a first or third ticket.  If you were lucky, a cheap return may have been available.  Not many more options as it is today; the unwary traveller would be unwise to walk up and buy before studying the many confusing combinations before him now.  Probably not many suit his train time so its a bit of an exercise in futility.  But this is not confined to train travel as airlines make you jump through the same hoops but there was a time when this too was much easier.

 

Brian.

[Nearholmer]

My gut feel is that two things are at play:

 

- although the number of people working has increased, that increase has a very significant component of part-time work, mainly women part-timers; and,

 

- the way people work is fast-changing, with organisations encouraging 'not coming to the office' as a way of cutting office costs.

 

Put those things on top of a weak-kneed economy, as the implications of Brexit either become clear, or remain annoyingly unclear, depending on how you look at it, and on top of prices (for everything, not just rail travel) climbing faster than wages, and it looks like a recipe for staying at home more, both in working hours and liesure hours.

 

This is quite interesting https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/551245/nts2015-infographic.pdf

 

The graphs seem to suggest that there is a trend to travel less, but that blipped to more in about 2014. Maybe a downward trend has resumed.

 

Kevin

 

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[Vanders]

Perhaps people are finally coming to their senses and working elsewhere rather than commuting in an out of London by their millions every day?

[srihaggis]

Surpsied numbers haven't sank sooner - I stopped using trains in 2010. This is when I started learning to drive & i'm glad I did - had I not have done this, I would have gone bust as the fare for the journey I would have taken, for the whole week is now more than what I earn in that week!

[david.hill64]

If you look at the numbers the decline is driven entirely by a reduction in the number of season ticket holders, mostly south London commuters. Not surprising given the disruptions to Thameslink and Southern, but have South West really been hit hard? It could well be the result of changing work patterns.

[jonhall]

lies, damn lies and statistics....

 

I had to go into Waterloo on SWT a couple of weeks ago in the rush our and had to stand from Thames Ditton (the train only started 2 minutes earlier at Hampton Court) and we were completely wedged to the point people were left on the platform at the likes of Earlsfield.

 

All the London franchises are going to be seeing the Oyster effect as people start to realise how convenient it is, and when they start to realise that if they are not using a season every single day, they value for money drops off considerably.

 

More and more people are discovering that working from home a day a week is possible and often advantageous, and so the season looks less appealing, thats only going to continue as work practices change

 

I realise that Oyster has been around for a long tome now, but judging from the number of people that tapped in or out vs walked straight past, I suspect a lot of hardened commuters didn't really make the change at first - my brother on the other hand realised when zonal fares came in that the oyster fare had dropped so far, that the weekly season was costing MORE that 5 separate fares!

 

Then there are the distortions that come when people want the Gold Card benefits, so you have large numbers of Ryde St Johns to Esplanade seasons (although I understand Newhaven Harbour-Town might now be the cheapest season out there) who's owners never actually make the journey their ticket is valid for.

 

Jon

[roythebus]

It's not only rail commuting numbers that have dropped. In the north Kent area, Chalkwell coaches have withdrawn their network of commuter coach routes they set up about 10 years ago. Probably the only commuter coach networks in the area are now Kings Ferry and Reliance of Gravesend. Chalkwell cited traffic problems getting in and out of London and parking in London as major factors. Not so many years ago the commuter coaches were used on GLC school games contracts to fill the middle of the day and alleviate the parking problems, but with the loss of school games and swimming trips, this has helped cause problems.

[RfDforever]

May I make two points - it's always worth thinking about what a statistic really means.

The statistics are "Passenger journeys by ticket type". For season tickets, the reduction is, therefore, of journeys and not necessarily number of tickets bought. The reduction in "journeys" might be commuters travelling on a smaller number of days, but it might also be the result of making the journey without change of train where previously a change en route had to be made. Key performance indicators sometimes react perversely when the situation self evidently improves - in this example by introducing through trains..

In the last few years there has been publicity about saving money by booking point-to-point for a journey - there was a report in a national newspaper that, allegedly, a football supporter saved money by buying 24 (?) individual tickets. Because I doubt that there as an algorithm to capture this the result would be 24 passenger journeys. One would expect that there would be an underlying rise in the passenger journeys statistic as a result of this behaviour (obviously more likely to be a much smaller number of legs), as it does seem to be on the increase.

I'm also not sure how the number of journeys by season ticket holders can be captured. Automatic gates might go some way but there are not universal and those that do exist are often open. The annual PTS, where people count passengers, does not distinguish between ticket holder types - it's hard enough to count accurately 800 boarding a train without obtaining that detail.

[D854_Tiger]

Passenger numbers have been increasing, year on year, for around two decades now, even holding up during the financial crash.

 

They couldn't keep on increasing forever surely.

[Talltim]

I have a season, but on a barrierless journey, there's no way of knowing how much I actually use it. The only extrapolation the railway could make is that I make enough journeys to

make it worthwhile over buying returns.

People working even one day a week from home will completely change the season to other ticket types ratio

[Nearholmer]

Everybody, travelling by train, all the time ......

 

The increase has been largely driven by liesure use, and transfer from company cars, as they have been taxed to oblivion, for non-regular business trips. The recent drop appears to be around season tickets holders, commuters.

 

And, there are significant differences in useage patterns in different parts of the country, between genders, and between age groups. Young blokes from urban ares, for instance, seem to love rail travel, because it doesn't involve 'capital investment', which a car does, and because one can use 'tech' on the train.

 

It might point to a graduall move away from very peaky demand, which would be a seriously good thing, because serving the peaks drives up the costs hugely. The peaks have been gradually spreading, towards forming a plateau, on the underground, and where the underground goes, suburbs, then shorter intercity follow.

[robertcwp]

My regular commute for many years has been Worcester Park to Waterloo (or Vauxhall) then Underground, bus or walk depending on where I was working at the time. I ceased to work full time around 6 years ago, since when I have had a day off every other week in addition to annual leave. Nowadays, I rarely go into the office more than three or four days per week and typically work from home at least one day per week, which is very easy. I still have an annual Zones 1-4 Travelcard, which comes with a Gold Card even if you buy it, as I do, from TfL, as SWR (formerly SWT) does not do seasons on Oyster. I did work out that PAYG would probably be cheaper now but I like the convenience of a season and do use the Gold Card - plus I only pay from boundary Zone 4, which makes Stevenage, for example, a very cheap journey. My season runs for the calendar year too so effectively I have a year's travel on it at last year's price whereas PAYG means paying the current fares. This tipped the scales in favour of keeping the season when I did the calculations a few years ago.

 

I cannot say that I have noticed a significant drop in usage of the suburban services to Waterloo. The peak-hour trains are still rammed to the point of being almost unusable and the shoulder peak trains seem much busier than they used to be, even as late as the 1901 Waterloo-Epsom. In the morning, lots of people are typically unable to board at Earlsfield or Clapham Junction and in the evening, getting on at Vauxhall or Clapham Junction can be a struggle. However, on my line the trains are noticeably less busy (but still very busy) in the peaks on Fridays, which is probably the day most people who work flexibly either don't work or work at home. At present, SWR is so far away from being able to cope with the peak hour traffic on the suburban services that they still need to go up to 10-car, as they will do over the next few years.

 

Part of the decline shown may in fact be due to more accurate counting. If you read the explanatory notes that come with the annual figures, it's clear that you cannot compare one year to another and that a lot of the figures are educated guesswork. For example, season ticket holders will probably have been assumed to make a certain number of journeys per year. As season ticket sales decline with the increase in flexible working and use of Oyster PAYG in London, the true number of journeys becomes clearer. Add to that some decline due to flexible working. 

 

I have occasionally got off at Motspur Park in the morning and waited for a train from Chessington, with more chance of a seat. Even these trains seem busier than they used to be. From overhearing conversations, it seems that people are driving to the Chessington area, where on-street parking is largely unrestricted, and taking the train into London. Many regular commuters from the Chessington area catch the 71 bus to Surbiton instead, which gives a vastly better service and is also cheaper than either Chessington North or Chessington South, as both those stations are Zone 6 whereas Surbiton is Zone 5.

 

Outside London, I would not be surprised if the fares are now at such a level that they really are putting people off, both from commuting when they could either work at home or work elsewhere, and from leisure journeys. Even in London, there are now no off-peak fares unless you use PAYG or one-day Travelcards (which themselves are less good value than they were) so occasional travellers may be put off using the trains.

 

I would expect to see a significant fall for SWR in the July-September quarter of this year due to the Waterloo works and the ongoing disruption since. Add to that forthcoming strikes, which seem inevitable, and the traffic will go down even more. 

[robertcwp]

 

It might point to a graduall move away from very peaky demand, which would be a seriously good thing, because serving the peaks drives up the costs hugely. The peaks have been gradually spreading, towards forming a plateau, on the underground, and where the underground goes, suburbs, then shorter intercity follow.

Some parts of the Underground now have an almost continuous peak, especially the Victoria Line, where the off-peak services are now more frequent than the peaks used to be and the trains are often still packed.

[RfDforever]

With reference to deciding whether buying daily tickets saves money by comparison with buying a season ticket; the discount offered by an S.T. may be more than is widely realised, particularly for long distances. There's also no restriction on travel times for a S.T. but this may limit the choice of discount daily tickets, and, of course, advance tickets are train time specific which may not be convenient if you have a job where you can't just pack up  and go at a specific time.

To take an extreme example; a weekly season ticket from Northampton to Preston (routed via MK so thereby valid on VWC) is £202, and an anytime return (to allow travel before 9.30) is £127. Although I appreciate that this is not a creditable commute (though that begs the question why is it available)  it means that, in this case, more than one journey per week is the cut-off for a ST being the better value.

I'm not sure whether the discount reduces for shorter journeys.

[Bernard Lamb]

Passenger numbers have been increasing, year on year, for around two decades now, even holding up during the financial crash.

 

They couldn't keep on increasing forever surely.

A major part of the franchise  idea seems to rely on an ever expanding market. A similar business model to Ryan Air.

Two economic downturns have led to two players pulling out of the ECML. At the same time, as you point out, commuter traffic has kept on increasing.

Crossrail seems to be built with a massive increase in passenger numbers in mind.

The funny thing is that in another report published last week several major employment sectors in London sais they are struggling to find enough people.

 

An interesting point by jon regarding the increase in the use of Oyster. I have seen this in particular at Euston. In very busy periods they open the exit barriers to avoid a crush but with so many people now using Oyster and still having to touch out the crowd still builds up and to me seems at times to reach a dangerous level. The first off peak morning arrival can be particularly bad with an assortment of folding bikes, scooters and skateboards.

Bernard

[caradoc]

Fortunately I don't travel in the London peak hours very often, but recent journeys in what I would class as off-peak did not show any evidence of declining passenger numbers; For example, last month on the Hammersmith & City Line city-bound from Paddington, trains still ram-packed at 0900, and in August, passengers unable to board outbound Shenfield services at Stratford due to severe overcrowding - at 1930 !