I’ll put up with late trains and poor Wi-fi, but overcrowding ruins rail …
Travellers like me plan our lives around train schedules. We don’t just use the railways to commute to work, but also to visit friends and family, for days out and UK holidays.
Rail trips for leisure made up for more than half of the rail industry’s revenue in the last three months of 2022[1]. Even so, as a rail passenger who uses trains for more than commuting, I’m regularly led to lower my expectations. I can plan around strikes and I’ve accepted that train Wi-Fi can be shaky, or non-existent, but paying to stand on a busy train carriage, on a Sunday afternoon, was a new low.
Overcrowding on trains is most pronounced for weekday commuters travelling into and out of London[2]. According to Department for Transport data[3] released on Tuesday, 18 per cent of passengers were standing on trains arriving into, or departing from, the capital in peak travel hours last autumn. On rush hours trains across major cities in England and Wales, 14 per cent of passengers were left standing.
I travel on Greater London commuter trains at peak hours at least three times a week. Strikes aside, those journeys have remained much the same in recent months. Instead it is my experience of trains to other parts of the country that has become noticeably worse.
Like millions of other adults in the UK, I don’t drive. And, like millions more, I live in a household with no car. Both my expectations of easy access to public transport and my lack of impetus to learn to drive are skewed by living in London, and using TfL. But when I visit family or friends who live in other parts of the country, or travel around the country for work or leisure, I rely on the rail network in England and Wales.
When I can reach my destination on a train, when there are enough seats and when the departure is on time, I’d rather go by rail than road. Coast-hugging lines, views over fields and the lack of stomach-lurching bumps and narrow country roads ensure a train trip is superior to a car journey. When I was on holiday in Spain[4] last month, the lower-cost tickets and spacious carriages were a reminder of how well rail travel can work, and where Britain’s railways fall short.
Harriet Marsden, another Londoner, feels similarly. “I adore train travel, but the service [here] is appalling compared with other countries.”
I’m fortunate that my parents both live in rural Cambridgeshire and so the bulk of an outward journey to visit them can be completed with a rail trip of around 50 minutes from London Kings Cross station. I’ve long avoided making this trip on evening rush hour trains, not just because of the almost £9 spike in the cost of a single ticket, but also as I can’t abide the rush for a seat.
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However, I’ve joined a weekend train from London in the last few months on which all the seats were taken and the standing passengers were left crowded near the doors. If this were to become the norm, standing for around an hour, cramped between families and sports teams, I might consider becoming a driver – were the associated costs were not so high.
Of course, overcrowding on trains in cities across England and Wales is more than an inconvenience for some travellers, including Carrie-Ann Lightley, an accessible travel writer[5] and speaker.
She says: “Overcrowded trains are my worst nightmare. If I’m sitting in the wheelchair space, I’ll often get penned in by luggage and standing passengers.
“My worry is that we’ll see more of this with planned changes to staffing the railways, [which could reduce] the availability of someone to help me.”
Passengers’ experience also varies depending on the length of journey, the operator and the time of travel, but using the train to get out of the capital for a weekend is often stressful, regardless of the destination.
When visiting family who are based in north-west England, I’ve become used to a Friday night rush when the platform is announced. At least for those journeys, I can book a seat. Reserved seating is less useful, of course, when an operator declassifies the carriages, as I’ve experienced on other routes.
Meanwhile, last summer, when I was due to catch a train from London to the West Country, I sloped off to a coffee shop to wait for a later departure, rather than join the queues forming out of each carriage door – all the seats appeared to be taken. My ticket type meant I could take the next train, and I accepted that I’d need to wait. Perhaps I, like other rail travellers, have become used to a sub-par service.
Sarah Maxwell, who takes a train from London to her family in East Anglia once a month, is another dissatisfied rail customer. She says: “The trains are dirty and overcrowded. Travelling in Italy by train recently made me realise how great it could be.”
Figures show how many Britons rely on domestic railways. In the year to March 2022, 990 million passenger rail journeys were made in Britain. For travel in England alone, the total number of journeys worked out at 12 trips per person, per year among men and 10 trips per person, per year for women.
Consider that rail trips can make 10 times less carbon emissions per passenger[6] than the equivalent car journey – a fact I will repeat the next time someone tells me to learn how to drive – operators, and the government, might be expected to be doing all they can to attract more rail users.
Instead, faced with too few seats and disrupted schedules, some regular rail users are ready to cut down their journeys.
Among them is Steph Dyson, who travels into the capital about once a month from south west England. The downsides of these trips have included significant delays, which have generally been caused by signal failures or strikes[7]. And while Steph qualifies for a rail card, that will soon change. Then, she says, she may have to cut back om train travel.
“For the distance being covered – just two hours – and the fact that you rarely have strong enough internet to get any work done, [my £60 ticket] is too steep a price to pay.”
Great Northern was contacted for comment.
References
- ^ in the last three months of 2022 (media.gbrtt.co.uk)
- ^ London (inews.co.uk)
- ^ Department for Transport data (www.gov.uk)
- ^ Spain (inews.co.uk)
- ^ an accessible travel writer (www.carrieannlightley.com)
- ^ 10 times less carbon emissions per passenger (media.raildeliverygroup.com)
- ^ strikes (inews.co.uk)