Passenger journeys per head of population across the UK

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From the Swindon Advertiser

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^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) 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^▸ (Great Western Railway) operated stations.  It's a sample because many official station names do not match up exactly with the town / city name at the Geographist 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 station)   Maidenhead   Great Western Railway
56.33   22092   1244444   TRU   Truro   Great Western Railway
56.01   35919   2011734   CPM^» (Chippenham - next trains)   Chippenham   Great Western Railway
55.11   163967   9035634   OXF^» (Oxford - next trains)   Oxford   Great Western Railway
45.81   26951   1234750   NTA^» (Newton Abbott - next trains)   Newton Abbot   Great Western Railway
45.28   15597   706234   TGM   Teignmouth   Great Western Railway
45.27   41883   1896128   NBY^» (Newbury - next trains)   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 - next trains)   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 - next trains)   Taunton   Great Western Railway
26.10   35438   924758   EXM   Exmouth   Great Western Railway
21.79   43362   944816   TRO^» (Trowbridge - next trains)   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 - next trains)   Warminster   Great Western Railway
20.37   14292   291072   CRN^‡(resolve)   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)   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 - next trains)   Gloucester   Great Western Railway
10.17   241179   2452572   PLY^» (Plymouth - next trains)   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 - next trains)   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 (Station))   Newquay   Great Western Railway
4.01   19681   78830   MKM^» (Melksham (Station code) - next trains)   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^▸ (Brake Composite Corridor (carriage))   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

[REVUpminster]

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.

[grahame]

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  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 ...

[Bmblbzzz]

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^▸ (Great Western Railway) table, that's probably also the case with eg Maidenhead, Oxford, even Chippenham but Truro and Newton Abbot confound the pattern. 

[rogerw]

I suspect that the high figures for Truro and Newton Abbot are down to students and school children respectively

[REVUpminster]

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.

[grahame]

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^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) 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 ...

[CyclingSid]

Population estimates are often rounded to the nearest 100. At this distance from the last census nearest 1000 might be more appropriate.

[Marlburian]

Get Reading's interpretation of the Berkshire statistics