Rail Passenger Journeys across Great Britain Reach Record Levels According to Official Statistics Just Released

Published 10th May 2012

The UK Rail Network carried record numbers of passengers according to ORR

LONDON - Passenger numbers are continuing to rise inexorably according to the latest statistics compiled by by the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR).

ORR has been compiling records since 1995-6 for rail journeys within Great Britain and the latest data covers 2010-11 and splits travel into the 11 government office regions (GORs).

Train Numbers

The latest set of figures show that a total of an estimated 1.16 billion rail journeys were undertaken in the UK – an increase of 8.9% over the previous 12 months. This reversed the slight drop in numbers between 2009-10 and 2008-09 when a 0.6% decrease was recorded.

In 2010-11769.8 million journeys took place within individual GORs (an increase of 10.3% over the previous year with another 393.3 million journeys between GORs up 6.3%. English rail journeys totalled 1.05 billion an increase of 9.4%.

Scotland and Wales

Scottish rail journeys totalled 85.9 million 4.4% more than in 2009-10. Internal Scottish journeys totalled 78.5 million up by 3.7% with 7.4 million rail journeys made between Scotland and other GORs up by 11.7% from 2009-10.

Welsh rail journeys increased by 4.7% to 27.3 million with 18.7 million of these completed within Wales an increase of 3.8% with 8.6 million journeys between Wales and other GORs up by 6.8%.

London has largest market share

London was unsurprisingly the largest region for rail travel with 60.7% of all UK rail journeys starting or ending there. There were 706.3 million journeys involving London up by 11.7% with 371.7 million journeys made within London, up a staggering 17.3% over the previous 12 months.

334.5 million journeys were undertaken between London and other GORs up by 6.1% increase on the previous year.

Oysters included

From January 2010 Oystercard data was included so 2010-11 was the first full year that the data was included. If passengers switched from traditional tickets to Oyster before January 2010, these journeys were not included so a strict comparison cannot be made with previous years.

Journeys between England, Wales and Scotland

Journeys between England and Wales increased by 6.7% reaching 8.5 million journeys and is the highest number of journeys recorded by ORR.

Journeys between England and Scotland increased by 11.6% between 2010-11 and 2009-10 to 7.4 million journeys, also the highest number of journeys recorded by ORR. The increase was helped by more and quicker trains over the west coast mainline.

A 21.9% increase in journeys between Scotland and Wales was recorded, the highest number for nine years but below the 1995-96 high of 76 million journeys.

Local demand hotspots

The opening of Westfield Shopping Centres in London caused a huge demand and Milton Keynes had the largest percentage increase of all unitary authorities or districts with journeys increasing by 12.8%. compared to 2009-10. In the northeast, Hartlepool and Stockton recorded similar large increases in traffic.

External Links

• Current NRT publications
• PDF 7 Regional usage profiles