Most likely causes of rail growth unveiled

[whole diary]

[grahame]

For the last 20 years or so, passenger numbers on UK^▸ (United Kingdom) trains have grown - after a relatively unchanging 20 years before that, which in turn followed a 20 year period of decline.

From Wikipedia Commons:

Advocates of privatisation (which happened around the time the curve turned back up) suggest that the change can be attributed to privatisation.  Other suggest that the changes just happened to be at the same time, or even that the increase has happened in spite of privatisation.

From Rail News today

A NEW analysis has concluded that the growth in demand for rail travel has been caused by changes in working and living patterns since the 1990s, and that some of this growth is ‘beyond the rail industry's control’.

The conclusions from a think tank, the Independent Transport Commission, have been welcomed by Network Rail chairman Sir Peter Hendy, who is also patron of the ITC.

Demand for rail has soared since the mid-1990s, and politicians in favour of privatisation have routinely claimed that breaking up British Ral and bringing in the private sector was the main reason.

The ITC, though, says that a greater percentage of the population is now travelling by train because of ‘major economic and spatial changes’, which have prompted a 58 per cent rise in the number of passengers travelling by train to work, or for other business purposes.

The places where people are living have changed, and there have also been ‘significant structural changes to the UK economy’ over the past 25 years.

The report – ‘Wider factors affecting the long-term growth in rail travel’ – was researched by statistics specialists Ian Williams and Kaveh Jahanshahi, who found that major shifts in housing locations and the jobs market have increased the tendency for people to use rail.

Increases since the 1990s have been accompanied by a rise in the general population of 15 per cent, but the number of rail journeys doubled over the same period, amounting to an increase of 100 per cent.

Changes in the job market have played a part. Many more people work in offices now and fewer in manufacturing, and it is office-based workers who are more likely to commute by train. However, it adds that ‘recent circumstances have been considerably less favourable to encouraging rail growth than the circumstances typical of the earlier years following rail privatisation’.

The sharpest increases in job growth since the 1990s have been in south east England, and these have been accompanied by the biggest rises in demand for rail travel. One figure demonstrates the pattern: if the population in a rural area increases by 100, it includes six extra rail commuters. In London, however, a similar population increase typically includes 49 extra rail users.

etc

I think it's telling me a lot of what I think I had concluded anyway ...

Total report - 136 pages - ((here))

[grahame]

Very interesting analysis by Sim Harris on the end of that article.

Analysis
Sim Harris

Politicians in favour of the private sector have been routinely claiming for many years that it was privatisation which boosted demand for rail travel, although the evidence was strictly circumstantial. True, demand began to grow at the same time as the industry was being privatised, from 761 million individual trains used in 1995 to 957 million in 2000.

These figures are sometimes miscalled ‘journeys’ although they actually count each train used in the course of a journey, but the growth is undeniable, amounting to almost 26 per cent between 1995 and 2000. What politicians never could explain is why mere changes of management and control could cause such a huge boost, particularly when the improvements required of the new franchise-holders mostly took at least five years to become reality. Virgin, for example, launched the Intercity West Coast franchise in 1997, but the first tilting Pendolinos did not carry passengers until 2002.

New fleets for other franchises, such as LTS/c2c, took almost as long to arrive, while a number of first-generation franchise contracts were fairly unambitious, with no major rolling stock changes envisaged for East Coast or Great Western, nor for the regional franchises in the north of England.

On the other hand, substantial changes were planned for the three third-rail franchises south of London, but once again new trains to replace the old slam-door stock were not appearing until the turn of the century (the last slam-door train did not leave London Waterloo until May 2005).

This report is probably the best analysis so far of what has really been going on, but don’t expect the politicians to admit that they were wrong.

The last three years have seen falls in season ticket travel in particular, although these may be at least partly related to the disruption caused by industrial action and, more recently, unworkable timetables.

Modest growth has restarted recently, but fewer people are using season tickets, and the authors suggest changing circumstances may have reduced the likelihood of growth continuing on such a scale as we were seeing 20 years ago. We can only guess the implications of that for longer-term planning.

[Red Squirrel]

Interesting graph - the curve post-2010 is steeper than ever before!

[Clan Line]

So, according to the Mick Cash/Jeremy Corbin theory if the railways had been/were to be re-nationalised our grossly overcrowded trains would be even more grossly overcrowded ??

[Bmblbzzz]

These figures are sometimes miscalled ‘journeys’ although they actually count each train used in the course of a journey,

So if I were to go from Stroud to London changing at Swindon, it counts as two 'journeys', but if I go direct it's only one? Curious.

But the overall message seems to be that most/much of the growth in rail journeys is due a general growth in transport. (A simplification I'm sure but that seems to be the basic idea.) Who'dathunkit?

[grahame]

These figures are sometimes miscalled ‘journeys’ although they actually count each train used in the course of a journey,

So if I were to go from Stroud to London changing at Swindon, it counts as two 'journeys', but if I go direct it's only one? Curious.

Interchanges are shown on the annual stats, so you could calculate them out.  I suspect that Stroud to London change at Swindon, split ticket at Didcot may count as yet another though, and there's no easy way to factor that out.

There's a whole lot of wardardy in the figures (a document is published each year explaining); the really significant thing is one year relative to the previous when you're looking at whether a line / station is headed in the right direction

[eightf48544]

wardardy?