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Title: Passenger journeys per head of population across the UK Post by: grahame on December 06, 2020, 11:24:11 From the Swindon Advertiser (https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/18923011.passenger-numbers-drop-swindon-railway-station/)
Quote Passenger numbers were down at Swindon Station last year ? but it has not dented hopes that railway use will revive after the Covid-19 pandemic. Pressure group Railfuture said the impact of current travel restrictions is causing a "temporary blip" in the growth of railway usage. Office of Road and Rail data shows an estimated 3.7 million passengers using Swindon's one station in 2019-20. That's 42,684 fewer than the previous year, a fall of 1.1 per cent. Across the South West, usage of railway stations increased by 343,000 to 78.7 million in 2019-20, while across Britain it fell 1.1 per cent to 3 billion. The ORR has put the national reduction in journeys down to a "dramatic drop" in passengers in March due to Covid-19 restrictions, with lockdown introduced on March 23. But Railfuture, an independent organisation with 20,000 members, is hopeful the railway system will recover. Bruce Williamson, a spokesman for the group, said: "I am very confident that the railways will bounce back when Covid-19 is over. "We can?t ignore the fact the world has changed and people working from home may stay put ? but I still feel for the most part, things will return to normal. "Considering the underlying trend of increased rail usage over the past 30 years, we have to look at Covid-19 as a temporary blip." In Swindon there were 17 passenger journeys for every person living in the area in 2019-20 compared to the national rate of 75. Jay Symonds, ORR senior statistical analyst, said: "The dramatic drop in passenger numbers towards the end of March due to Covid-19 explains much of the drop in usage compared to last year." He added: "With numbers staying at historically low levels during 2020, there is no doubt that next year will look a lot different." The measure of journeys per head of population is a significant one - a measure that we have used in Wiltshire look at rail use penetration in the past, as an indicator for stations with a very low figure that there is a growth opportunity - i.e. "What's wrong with the train service here - perhaps it's not pulling its weight as it could?" Here is an automated sample of figures for GWR operated stations. It's a sample because many official station names do not match up exactly with the town / city name at the Geographist (https://www.thegeographist.com/uk-cities-population-1000/) which lists the 1000 largest places / cities Journeys per person per annum / population / journeys to 28.2.20 / Station operator 71.98 67441 4854134 MAI Maidenhead Great Western Railway 56.33 22092 1244444 TRU Truro Great Western Railway 56.01 35919 2011734 CPM Chippenham Great Western Railway 55.11 163967 9035634 OXF Oxford Great Western Railway 45.81 26951 1234750 NTA Newton Abbot Great Western Railway 45.28 15597 706234 TGM Teignmouth Great Western Railway 45.27 41883 1896128 NBY Newbury Great Western Railway 41.60 12814 533116 DWL Dawlish Great Western Railway 38.89 9453 367638 LSK Liskeard Great Western Railway 36.36 16320 593446 PNZ Penzance Great Western Railway 35.01 164046 5742824 SLO Slough Great Western Railway 32.36 17860 578006 WSB Westbury Great Western Railway 31.92 17293 551982 KYN Keynsham Great Western Railway 29.28 17472 511620 ROM Romsey Great Western Railway 26.27 62479 1641630 TAU Taunton Great Western Railway 26.10 35438 924758 EXM Exmouth Great Western Railway 21.79 43362 944816 TRO Trowbridge Great Western Railway 21.75 26217 570318 THA Thatcham Great Western Railway 21.64 14839 321062 MLW Marlow Great Western Railway 20.47 17816 364698 WMN Warminster Great Western Railway 20.37 14292 291072 CRN Crowthorne Great Western Railway 18.41 25663 472376 SAU St Austell Great Western Railway 16.62 21083 350296 RED Redruth Great Western Railway 13.54 32161 435360 BNP Barnstaple Great Western Railway 12.91 21985 283748 CBN Camborne Great Western Railway 11.50 30626 352296 YAE Yate Great Western Railway 10.91 146667 1600726 GCR Gloucester Great Western Railway 10.17 241179 2452572 PLY Plymouth Great Western Railway 9.71 66878 649670 PGN Paignton Great Western Railway 9.33 50645 472326 TQY Torquay Great Western Railway 9.32 27382 255334 EVE Evesham Great Western Railway 8.42 44095 371478 BWT Bridgwater Great Western Railway 7.84 27372 214648 FRO Frome Great Western Railway 5.40 15919 86042 STS Saltash Great Western Railway 4.79 11727 56188 IVY Ivybridge Great Western Railway 4.58 21889 100306 NQY Newquay Great Western Railway 4.01 19681 78830 MKM Melksham Great Western Railway Always good to compare outside our area too ... here are the top 15 and bottom 15 149.21 17880 2667802 LWS Lewes Govia Thameslink Railway (Southern) 141.11 31402 4431172 SEV Sevenoaks Southeastern 140.69 10613 1493114 RYS Royston Govia Thameslink Railway (Great Northern) 133.57 13384 1787716 HSL Haslemere South Western Railway 127.54 13606 1735336 OXT Oxted Govia Thameslink Railway (Southern) 122.95 37683 4633122 HHE Haywards Heath Govia Thameslink Railway (Southern) 121.35 10595 1285732 WLC Waltham Cross Greater Anglia 120.17 20255 2434110 ELY Ely Greater Anglia 112.01 40968 4588640 TON Tonbridge Southeastern 108.24 31167 3373606 HPD Harpenden Govia Thameslink Railway (Thameslink) 107.64 14650 1576932 BCF Beaconsfield Chiltern Railways 105.98 48530 5143274 WIN Winchester South Western Railway 101.75 37383 3803858 RDH Redhill Govia Thameslink Railway (Southern) 100.93 12545 1266168 GSY Guiseley Northern 98.66 10576 1043436 PLG Polegate Govia Thameslink Railway (Southern) and 3.25 39555 128654 ILN Ilkeston East Midlands Trains 2.94 69473 204526 CAO Cannock West Midlands Trains (West Midlands Railway) 2.91 15202 44230 NES Neston TfW Rail 2.68 34779 93342 BIL Billingham Northern 2.56 175031 447838 SUN Sunderland Northern 2.39 37484 89576 WLY Woodley Northern 2.24 14858 33240 BLO Blaydon Northern 2.16 27855 60190 FNW Farnworth Northern 2.16 20232 43672 BCK Buckley TfW Rail 1.30 68368 88950 BMB Bamber Bridge Northern 1.18 50257 59244 CTO Carlton East Midlands Trains 1.11 51135 56654 BLX Bloxwich West Midlands Trains (West Midlands Railway) 0.60 9316 5600 PTD Pontarddulais TfW Rail 0.01 9931 110 PSW Polesworth West Midlands Trains (London Northwestern Railway) 0.00 36100 102 DTN Denton Northern "Full" data set (we have matched about one station in 5 to a city) at http://www.wellho.net/data/jpppa2019_20.txt Title: Re: Passenger journeys per head of population across the UK Post by: REVUpminster on December 06, 2020, 17:56:11 I would point out the latest population figures for Torquay and Paignton are wrong.
For some reason a chunk of Torquay population is included in Paignton. City population has Torquay at 51,339 and Paignton as 67,179 https://www.citypopulation.de/en/uk/southwestengland/E06000027__torbay/ Torquay is 65,245. Paignton 49,021 in the 2011 census but both have gone up since. Title: Re: Passenger journeys per head of population across the UK Post by: grahame on December 06, 2020, 18:21:44 I would point out the latest population figures for Torquay and Paignton are wrong. ... Oh - the whole business of population of cities / towns / urban areas / station catchments is fraught with difficulty and I probably should have added a caution to that. There are many factors in interpretation of data - City Population (https://www.citypopulation.de/en/uk/southwestengland/wiltshire/E34004479__melksham/) has Melksham at 19618 (interesting that the Geographist website has 19681 - a transposition error?) but the looking at the map of what they've considered to be "Melksham", it would appear that they have counted the whole of Melksham 'Town' but just 2 of the wards of Melksham Without. According to the figures and maps, it looks like I campaigned for an improved train service from 2006 all the time to 2018 and I didn't even live in Melksham!. Better estimate to use would be 25,000 population (and I have seen higher figures) giving a jpppa of 3.0 rather than 4.0 - pushing Melksham Station even in its current better performance way down this list - can't go further down because it's at the bottom anyway. We have a long way to grow. However - changes to populations - adjustments by even thousands - will make few changes to the general results and ranking in the table. With Maidenhead at around 70 journeys per head of population and Melksham at around 3.5, the magnitude of the 20:1 ratio stands. Perhaps at some date in the future, when people have moved back to greener electric trains that are running every few minutes and the town's poplulation is up to 40,000 as we expect, the 75,000 journeys per annum will rise to 2.5 million. We may need a second platform by then ... Title: Re: Passenger journeys per head of population across the UK Post by: Bmblbzzz on December 06, 2020, 18:53:52 Trying to find a pattern (where there might be none) looking at the national figures, the highest performers seem to be commute-to-London towns. Looking just at the GWR table, that's probably also the case with eg Maidenhead, Oxford, even Chippenham but Truro and Newton Abbot confound the pattern. ???
Title: Re: Passenger journeys per head of population across the UK Post by: rogerw on December 06, 2020, 19:00:25 I suspect that the high figures for Truro and Newton Abbot are down to students and school children respectively
Title: Re: Passenger journeys per head of population across the UK Post by: REVUpminster on December 06, 2020, 19:11:26 Anybody in Torbay with a car parks at Newton Abbot (decent size car park) because you can be home in Torbay before a connecting train and maybe bus at Torquay and Paignton.
My thing about the map, in the link of my earlier post, if you click on the individual towns in that map Torquay, Torre, and (Edginswell) stations are included in the Paignton map. Paignton also gets a chunk of areas designated Brixham. Title: Re: Passenger journeys per head of population across the UK Post by: grahame on December 07, 2020, 01:56:34 Anybody in Torbay with a car parks at Newton Abbot (decent size car park) because you can be home in Torbay before a connecting train and maybe bus at Torquay and Paignton. Indeed - there's no tight correlation between urban area residents and passenger numbers. Looking at lastest ORR figures, I note a drop at Trowbridge and a growth at Westbury and suspect it's caused by the new car park at Westbury which was nearly full at day 1 abstracting passengers from Trowbridge. And I suspect that high numbers at Chippenham are partially caused by people from Melksham driving there is they have a car, rather than waiting for the sparse train service ... Title: Re: Passenger journeys per head of population across the UK Post by: CyclingSid on December 07, 2020, 06:51:43 Population estimates are often rounded to the nearest 100. At this distance from the last census nearest 1000 might be more appropriate.
Title: Re: Passenger journeys per head of population across the UK Post by: Marlburian on December 07, 2020, 08:05:18 Get Reading's interpretation of the Berkshire statistics (https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/reading-berkshire-news/railway-stations-busiest-berkshire-reading-19386992)
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