It’s time to face the facts.
The rail industry is never going to go back to the way it was before the pandemic.
The changes to travel patterns and working lives which were already happening in the years BC (Before Covid) have accelerated in this new era AD (After Disease).
Which makes the case for flexible tickets, flexible fares and flexible travel arrangements all the more compelling.
Anyone who has been on trains regularly in the last five months will have noticed fewer peak passengers, more off-peak travellers and packed trains on many routes at weekends.
This is going to be the way of life from now on. Despite the “return to the office”, the numbers are never going to return to the Monday to Friday 9-5 way of working.
Which makes the research by Ipsos MORI published by the Department for Transport all the more interesting.
It suggests the change in travel patterns is matched by a shift in people’s expectations of tickets.
The report says: “rail commuters appear to be looking more at pay as you go, off-peak and day
travelcard tickets for their commute … the survey findings support the idea that more flexible ticketing options would be well received in future”.
The introduction of flexi-tickets last year was a good first attempt but it didn’t live up to the hype and some of the savings weren’t as high as people were led to believe. The tickets weren’t quite as billed.
So there is a real opportunity here to make rail tickets into a “flexible friend” and give people “access” (click the link if you don’t get the reference) to the rail network at a time and at a price which suits them rather than the train operators or DfT.
:: There is encouraging news about rail use from the latest Department for Transport statistics.
A new provisional high of 92% of pre-pandemic numbers on National Rail was reached on 22 May. Interestingly, that was on a Sunday and, as I’ve pointed out before, the percentage of people travelling on Fridays and at weekends is now well in excess of weekday numbers.
In fact, the provisional figures for that weekend were: Friday 20 May (91%), Saturday 21 May (91%) and Sunday 22 May (92%). National Rail use then dropped to 88% on the Monday and fell every day for the rest of that week.
The average National Rail use for the whole of the month of May was 82% of pre-pandemic levels. Car use and total vehicle use still rank above 100% most of the time … but the train is catching up.