ROLLING STOCK REVIEW
WHEN the country went into lockdown in March 2020, rail ridership plummeted as a result of the pandemic and the national work from home advice. Train operators reduced the number of services as well as the number of carriages used on those services to cut the gap between costs and revenue. Then in September 2020, franchised operations were ended with all but the open access operators moved to directly awarded management contracts by the Department for Transport; deals which give the DfT a massive say in what an operator can spend money on, how many trains they run, and how many carriages can be used.
The pandemic also meant driver training was suspended because of social distancing rules, affecting several new fleets of trains that were in the process of being introduced and resulting in units being stored in sidings around the country. The impact of that hiatus in training still has not been fully overcome.
In the week commencing December 18, 2023, the Office of Rail and Road published the latest quarterly passenger figures, which confirmed what many regular travellers knew – rail ridership was still climbing and was at 79% of pre-Covid levels overall. The ORR said that in the third quarter of 2023, 397 million journeys were made by rail, which was a 14% increase on the same period in the previous year. Just one operator, West Midlands Trains, saw a decline of 1% in passenger numbers. The biggest increase was on the Elizabeth Line (up 58%) followed by ScotRail (26%) and Avanti West Coast (25%).
The news that rail use has sprung back since the pandemic, albeit with less business travel and more leisure travel, is great but comes with a sting in the tail. While it is clear many workers have returned to their offices and resumed their commute – although on fewer days per week – fare-paying passengers are becoming angrier because many services are still being run with a minimal number of carriages, resulting in chronic overcrowding at times.
Anecdotal evidence on social media suggests that passengers are being left behind because trains are arriving at intermediate stations full and standing, with platform announcements advising passengers
