Transport demand in a post-pandemic age: challenges and opportunities for rail

Abstract

In the decades before the emergence of Covid-19, Britain’s railways experienced steady growth in passenger traffic and in some sectors of the freight market, and, despite the gradual emergence of changing patterns of work-related travel, faced capacity challenges and the need for expensive network expansion. Rail was also increasingly seen as a solution to the environmental problems caused by competing mechanised travel modes, while being vulnerable itself to the effects of climate change. These apparent certainties were dealt a severe blow by the onset in 2020 of Covid-19, with the associated collapse in passenger traffic causing a severe shortfall in industry revenue and uncertainty about its future prospects. While freight traffic has since recovered, passenger traffic volumes have fluctuated in response to the changing Covid situation, and commuter and business traffic remain well below pre-pandemic levels. Reductions in services to match demand (as well as Covid-related staff availability) provide some limited cost savings, but also result in a less attractive service and the risk of a ‘spiral of decline’ in the event of demand being reduced further as a result. This is not, though, an inevitable future, and the railway industry could alternatively take the opportunity to amend the fares and ticketing system, to improve the quality of the services it offers, and to stimulate demand and encourage modal shift, thus improving its finances and also realising more fully its potential role as the backbone of a user- and environment-friendly national public transport system.

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Identifiers

ORCID for John Armstrong: orcid.org/0000-0002-2648-6307

ORCID for Simon Blainey: orcid.org/0000-0003-4249-8110

ORCID for John Preston: orcid.org/0000-0002-6866-049X

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