Extra services enable more journeys on Northern

IN its final months, the Arrivaowned Northern franchise reported a 12.5% increase in the number of passenger journeys made.

Reporting on the statistics for October 2019-December 2019

(Q3 2019-20), the Office of Rail and Road revealed that Northern carried 29.5 million passengers during the quarter.

This compares with a 5.5% decrease in journeys made in Q3 2018-19. ORR attributed this improvement to an increase of services following the May

2018 timetable change, and the suspension of industrial action.

Northern, which was taken over by the Department for Transport’s Operator of Last Resort on March 1 ( RAIL 900), also recorded a 17.5% increase in passenger kilometres (calculated by multiplying the number of passenger journeys on a particular flow by the number of corresponding track kilometres between stations).

And the operator recorded a 19.1% increase in passenger train kilometres (the number of train kilometres, measured in millions, travelled by revenue-earning passenger trains). This was the third highest growth behind

Hull Trains (50.3%) and TfL Rail (18.9%).

The improvement experienced by Northern is seen by the ORR as a key reason why the Regional Sector had the largest growth in Q3 2019-20, reported at 5.0%. London and South East rose 2.0% and Long-Distance rose 1.1%. The Regional growth was the second highest in Q3 since 2011-12.

Nationally, the overall number of rail users increased by 2.6% from 450.1 million to 462 million, although some train operators reported a decline. Most affected was Transport for Wales, which recorded a 7.7% decrease to

8.4 million passengers. This was largely due to several weatherrelated incidents, as well as only one international rugby match taking place in Cardiff last autumn compared with four in the same period a year before.

Next came South Western Railway, which recorded a 3.2% decrease to 52.7 million passenger journeys. This was partly due to industrial action, according to the ORR. The SWR figure is also 13.3% down on the Q3 peak of 60.8 million recorded by its predecessor South West Trains in 2015-16.

The biggest increases were