How has the typical railway passenger changed over the years? And how does that change the facilities needed and desired on the trains that are in use today, compared to the trains that were in use 20 years ago? Where has all the growth in passenger numbers come from - is it evenly across journey types, or have some types of journeys grown even more dramatically than the overall growth of passenger journey numbers? Have some journey types actually shrunk, but that fact is dwarfed by other increases?
I drew up a table thinking of my own journeys which fall into two distinct groups; no doubt this sort of thing is researched (and perhaps members can point me to a source of data); undertanding these metrics is surely something which helps plan for the future / long term?
How many journeys a year do you make by train? | 50 | 80 |
What is the average distance travelled on each train journey? | 120 | 40 |
How much luggage do you have with you on an average journey? | 20kgs | 5kgs |
What is your typical party size? | 1 | varies |
How important is the journey being available exactly when you want it? | within 2 hours is fine | within 2 hours is OK - would prefer hourly |
How important is the duration of the journey? | not very | not very |
How often do you take a bicycle and / or a dog or two with you? | rarely | dog(s) sometimes |
I'm going to speculate that very long distance journeys now represent a much lower proportion of passenger traffic, and that medium length journeys have massively increased with extended commutes ...