Passenger growth picks up on Southeastern

Hot on the heels of figures out last week showing just how many people are using every Southeastern lines and railway station, comes more recent numbers on growth across the UK rail network.

This data isn’t broken down by station or line and is only a general overview. It shows passenger growth on Southeastern up 2.8% in Quarter 2 2018 (July-September) from the year before. Passenger kilometres saw a rise of 3.6%, meaning passengers are travelling further.

TfL Rail saw a 20% rise as they took over other routes in West London. Thameslink’s growth was in part due to fewer strikes and taking over some services from franchises like Southeastern – as seen on the Woolwich line.

Less people are buying season tickets, which continues a trend, and more are using contactless pay as you go and anytime tickets.

Last week I covered passenger journeys in 2017/18 with the release of station usage figures. This covered some of the worst closures as London Bridge rebuild work headed to completion and Crossrail construction shut the Abbey Wood line on almost every weekend.

It was a mixed bag with stations like Plumstead (down 15%) and Eltham (down 7%) seeing falls whilst Abbey Wood was up 5% despite continual closures and Woolwich up 5.5%.

Tube figures also are now back into growth after a patchy couple of years. Last Friday saw the busiest day in its history and numbers up across the financial year so far.

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