Passenger numbers on the UK’s railways have returned to 70 per cent of pre-Covid volumes but commuting and business travel is lagging well behind leisure journeys.
Data released this week by the Department for Transport showed rail passenger numbers levelled out at around 70 per cent of 2019 volumes in the first two weeks of March.
Recovery had previously peaked at 72 per cent in November 2021 before dropping to 40 per cent by January due to the spread of the omicron variant of Covid-19.
However, growing passenger numbers are being driven by leisure travellers, with commuting only back to half of pre-pandemic volumes and business trips lagging even further behind at 30 per cent, according to Suzanne Donnelly, programme director of the Great British Railways Transition Team (GBRTT).
Speaking at the UK Rail for Business forum organised by American Express Global Business Travel, Donnelly said: “On long-distance markets frequencies are largely back to what they were and that is what business travellers need.”
“’Monumental’ is not an exaggeration of the change that GBR represents," said Donnelly of the introduction of new public body Great British Railways. "We need the railway to work around the passenger. It’s a cultural shift.”
An outcome of the Williams-Shapps plan for rail, GBR is designed to be a “single guiding mind that ends the fragmentation of the rail industry and drives benefits and improvements across the network”.
Discussing priorities for change, Clive Wratten, CEO of the Business Travel Association, said business travellers were interested in the “four Ps”: product, price, punctuality and partnership.
Wratten identified short-term priorities as the provision of reliable onboard wifi, consistent e-ticketing availability and seamless refunds. In the medium term, he said the station experience needs to be improved in many locations and, in the long-term, improvements in duty-of-care processes.
“There’s a bit of a gap for corporates and TMCs locating travellers at the moment,” he said.
According to ORR (Office of Rail and Road) figures issued on Thursday (17 March), a total of 285 million rail passenger journeys were made in Great Britain in Q4 of 2021, more than double the 139 million made in the same quarter of 2020, but nearly 38 per cent down on Q4 of 2019 (461 million journeys).
Journeys on LNER services totalled 84 per cent of 2019 numbers for the quarter, with East Midlands (77 per cent) and Merseyrail (70 per cent) faring the next best. In contrast, passenger journeys with ScotRail stood at 53 per cent of 2019 levels, with Chiltern Railways and Thameslink (both at 55 per cent) performing little better.
• More than 40 towns and cities across the UK are competing to become the home of the new organisation, GBRTT announced on Friday (18 March).
The organisation had called for expressions of interest from destinations with strong historical links to the railways outside of London.
Those in the running include Birmingham, Coventry, Derby, Edinburgh, Hull, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Southampton and York. A shortlist will be published in May and the new home of GBR revealed in the summer.