Drop in rail traffic to East Kilbride, and the reasons for it

[whole diary]

[grahame]

From The Daily Record

Passengers are giving up on the railway as figures show East Kilbride’s train stations saw a huge decrease in the number of people using services.

Damning statistics released by the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT^▸ (Signal Post Telephone)) operations committee show the number of journeys to and from East Kilbride has dropped by 11.4 per cent; it’s a 12.2 per cent fall to and from Hairmyres and a 14 per cent decline to and from Thorntonhall, between 2015-16 and 2016-17.

[snip]

Damning statistics released by the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) operations committee show the number of journeys to and from East Kilbride has dropped by 11.4 per cent; it’s a 12.2 per cent fall to and from Hairmyres and a 14 per cent decline to and from Thorntonhall, between 2015-16 and 2016-17. The committee state within the report that there was a “noticeable decline in and around East Kilbride.” They note this may be down to “the current attractiveness of car travel” and “wider societal trends.”

East Kilbride SNP MSP^▸ (Member of Scottish Parliament) Linda Fabiani has called the figures “disappointing”. “We all know that there are serious issues about the EK^▸ (Economy Klaus (web log))/Glasgow train service,” she said. “In the longer term we need electrification of this line and in the shorter term more carriages and better reliability.”

Conservative MSP for Central Scotland Graham Simpson called SPT’s reasons for the falling figures “meaningless tripe”. He added: “The reason people are giving train travel from East Kilbride a wide berth is because the service is poor and they can’t get parked.”

Central Scotland’s Labour MSP Monica Lennon admitted the figures were a concern and said: “It’s obvious from these figures that the level of service continues to fall short of what passengers expect.”

Personal view - it's hard to maintain passenger use of a service that's unreliable and overcrowded, and where the potential passenger's journeys to and from the stations are made difficult by a lack of enough infrastructure.   There are lessons here for GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) land ...

[froome]

I was going to comment elsewhere but this seems appropriate. I've made quite a few trips during January, and the trains I've used have all been much less well used than I would have expected. I expect that January may well be the month that sees least use of trains, due to few tourist trips, poor weather putting people off travelling, and having little spare cash after Christmas, but usage to me was much less than would be explained by that. Have others found that? My trips have been on local Bath to Bristol commuter services and on Bath to London services.

I do think that the unreliability and overcrowding that many have had to suffer in the last year have put many off from using trains.

[eightf48544]

It was suggested at the  Coffee Shop  meeting in Didcot on the new  GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)  Franchise consultation,   that Relatability should be put before Strict Punctuality. Passengers need to be able to turn up a station and except in exceptional circumstances expect a train within a few minutes of its timetable departure.

My local user group has put this in it's reply.

Suggest other groups might do the same.

Also suggested that any split in the franchise will lower resilience and hit reliability.

[Phil]

I expect that January may well be the month that sees least use of trains, due to few tourist trips, poor weather putting people off travelling, and having little spare cash after Christmas

It's also the month in which the national media (and social media, the two of which feed one another) goes into overdrive with fear-inducing horror stories about annual fare increases.