1,600 passengers stand each day as train overcrowding reaches new high

seven years, with passenger levels 2.2% above capacity, up from 1.3% in 2016.

In the morning peak, 15% of trains into Cardiff were overcrowded, while during the afternoon peak, it was 10%. During the afternoon peak, 1,514 passengers (10%) were left standing on a typical weekday, with a third of trains (32%) departing with standing passengers.

The busiest operators arriving at Cardiff stations in the morning was Arriva Trains Wales, with 15% of passengers forced to stand on a typical autumn weekday, followed by CrossCountry, where 4% of passengers were standing.

In the afternoon, 13% of passengers leaving Cardiff stations on Arriva Trains Wales were standing, as were 8% of passengers on CrossCountry services.

While the number of rail passengers fell during the day, morning peak passengers increased overall for all major cities outside of London.

Crowding in 2017, based on PiXC was highest in London (5.4%), followed by Cambridge (4.8%) and Manchester (4.3%).

A train arriving at Manchester Oxford Road station was the most overcrowded in England and Wales last autumn. Some 403 people squeezed into four carriages containing just 191 seats on the 4.22am service from Glasgow Central to Manchester Airport. This is a load factor of 211% – higher than any other service.

Bethan Jelfs, customer services director at Arriva Trains Wales said: “We know passenger numbers are rising significantly with rail services more popular than ever for getting into Cardiff and the other large towns and cities we serve. We appreciate services can become very busy and as such we are constantly reviewing the busiest services to ensure our finite number of trains are targeted to the right places.

“This includes our timetable change in 2017 which created 600 extra peak-time seats into Cardiff without adding extra carriages thanks to our close partnership work with Network Rail. However, there are only a finite number of trains we can run per hour into the city and without adding more rolling stock this can only go so far.

“Our franchise was awarded on a zero-growth basis in 2003, making it almost impossible to source additional trains. So while the number of carriages we have has remained static, the number of customers has almost doubled from 18 million per year to 33.5 million.

“Off-peak services often do have more space so it’s always worth looking at the time you travel. We are also working on station posters to show which trains are likely to be the busiest, to give customers more choice.”