NEW statistics published today by the Office of Rail Regulation say that the number of passenger journeys on franchised rail services reached 407.7 million between July and September this year, a 4.4 per cent increase on the same quarter last year. The ORR said it was the highest number of journeys recorded in a quarter since the present series of data collection began in 2002-03.

The ORR reports that 284.1 million journeys were recorded in the franchised London and South East sector (up 4.3 per cent since last year), 33.6 million journeys in the franchised long distance sector (up 3,5 per cent) and 90 million journeys in the franchised regional sector (up 5.5 per cent). There were also 540,000 journeys made on open access passenger services, an increase of 16.0 per cent.

Railnews analysis

The equivalent annual total would be at least 1.6 billion journeys, but it is known that these figures are inflated by the way the industry Lennon database records rail travel, logging each leg of a journey rather than whole journeys.

This statistical inflation appears to be around 17 per cent, when Lennon figures are compared with journeys within and between regions in Britain, which are counted only once, no matter how complex they are.

Even so, the total would seem to be approaching 1.35 billion 'originating' journeys, a total which has not been previously recorded in peacetime since the 1920s. The last time passenger figures topped 1.3 billion was in 1945, when the flood of demobbed forces personnel boosted the total to 1.371 billion. This was the highest figure of the war years, and it quickly fell after peace was restored, falling just below one billion by 1948 and only recovering slightly during most of the 1950s. After the Beeching closures of the 1960s the total tended to fall still further until it reached a floor of 630 million in 1982 during a period of prolonged industrial action and national recession.

This proved to be the lowest total in the twentieth century and it has since risen again fairly consistently, both before and since the launch of private sector passenger franchises in 1996.

Some sources, including the government, often claim that privatisation has boosted rail travel, but Financial Times correspondent Jonathan Ely wrote on 22 August this year: "The government likes to claim that privatisation has resulted in record passenger numbers. This seems rather dubious; how can we know how many of the extra passengers are because of general population growth, rising house prices, more expensive petrol or congestion on the roads?"

Whatever, the causes, the continuing growth in demand may be a matter for some celebration but it also poses problems for the industry, which was rationalised severely between the 1960s and 1980s and is now under major pressure on a number of key routes, particularly the West Coast Main Line.

© Railnews 2014