What counts as overcrowding?
We are not talking about a few people standing in the vestibules, but situations where the train is so crowded that some passengers cannot board and are left behind.
The standard for overcrowding is PIXC (Persons in Excess of Capacity). Capacity is defined as all seats plus an allowance for standing (if the time between stops is less than 20 minutes) of up to 3 or 4 people per square metre of floor space available. For commuter services, overcrowding has reduced significantly post-Covid but not disappeared completely.
On a city to city train, with stops more than 20 minutes apart, standing counts as PIXC. It is not acceptable. Coach end vestibules are designed as crumple zones, so passengers standing there are at greater risk.
Examples of overcrowding
Connections between major conurbations
Cross Country services from Reading, Sheffield and Bristol to Birmingham are regularly overcrowded. This is particularly true on Saturday mornings or when services are operated by a single unit causing extended station stops as passengers cannot board. The price mechanism of setting quotas of advance tickets to manage capacity is undermined on Cross Country where flexible split tickets are often cheaper than through advance tickets.
At weekends in summer, Northern’s Hope Valley stopping service regularly leaves passengers behind at intermediate stations, physically unable to board. This is partly due to Sheffield-Manchester passengers switching to Northern to take advantage of cheaper fares, TPE and EMR also have capacity issues on the route, but it’s rare to see passengers unable to board their services. It’s not just in summer – on one winter weekend, the 09xx EMR Sheffield-Manchester 4-car Class 158 was about 30-40% full, despite advance ticket availability the previous day being described as ‘limited’, but the return Northern 10.xx was full and standing as far as Edale. Some other Northern routes have similar problems.
One of the causes is when the operator, for absolutely justifiable commercial reasons, sells cut price tickets on a route. This is when several operators run between A and B, but one operator, such as Northern, sells lower cost tickets on the route, mostly because they operate a stopping train. This artificially fills the train by abstraction from express services, good for the operator’s farebox receipts, and for those on a cheap ticket, but less good for those travelling (especially from intermediate stations). ORCATS raiding has no place between DfTO operators – we already campaign for an end to operator-specific tickets.
Airports and cruise terminals
Southern services to Gatwick Airport are frequently overcrowded while Gatwick Express services are almost empty, because of the premium Gatwick Express fare, as described in [/article1923|Is GatEx right for Gatwick]. This could be fixed easily by removing the premium Gatwick Express fare.
Services to airports and cruise terminals are frequently overcrowded with luggage because there is no storage available close to passengers, where they can keep an eye on it.
Reliability
South Western diesel services on the West of England main line and GWR Portsmouth – Cardiff services are frequently short-formed due to poor reliability, causing overcrowding. DfTO should realise that older stock is less reliable so more stock needs to be assigned to the route to maintain the service level.
Events
Events and holiday traffic have been a problem since the railway scrapped all the old stock that used to sit in sidings for most of the year. Charter operators probably can’t create a business case to run services for events at advance ticket prices, so it will always be ‘best efforts’. GWR has run extra services from London to Cardiff when there have been events in the Millenium Stadium using commuter trains not needed at the weekends, but that is only possible because the route is electrified throughout.
Infrastructure constraints
Infrastructure constraints, eg short platforms, are also a factor. TransPennine services between Leeds and Manchester are often overcrowded, particularly when composed of only one unit. Advance tickets from York to Manchester via Normanton, where short platforms limit the train to 3 cars, are cheaper than the direct route, so the train is crowded when it reaches the Manchester commuter stations west of Huddersfield.
At Leeds, some terminating Northern services are constrained to use short platforms (eg platform 17), limiting train capacity and causing overcrowding. Would it be possible to combine terminating services from opposite directions to use a through platform to minimise platform occupancy?
Possible solutions
More rolling stock
The easy answer is of course to accelerate procurement of new stock and lengthen services, but it may be difficult to create a business case. Services are often overcrowded for only part of their route, or only at specific times of day, which means that for a large part of its life any additional stock will be under-utilised. It is noticeable that many examples of overcrowding identified by branches are diesel-powered but of course there are apparently no spare DMUs (or is it that DfT cost constraints have limited how many can be used), and new trains are currently 4 years away.
Alex Hynes of DfTO has recognised that the railway needs more capacity to achieve growth, but not everywhere. The answer is to identify where battery-electric trains could be used without any additional electrification, start a rapid procurement now, and then cascade the diesel trains that are released to routes where the business case for longer trains can be proven.
The alternative where there is not a business case might be to reconfigure services to better match train length to demand – but forcing passengers to change would encourage some passengers to use other modes.
Yield management
The purpose of advance tickets was to encourage people to travel when there are spare seats. However there are often advance tickets available on the day before for some trains for example from Leeds to Manchester, so you might think there is no excuse for those trains to be overcrowded. Operators may be setting quotas high to encourage more people to use rail. What we don’t know is whether net revenue is increased because more people are travelling or reduced because people who would travel anyway are paying a lower price. However, the risk is that any extra revenue from cheap tickets would not be sufficient to pay the additional cost of a longer new train. Nor should slower journey times automatically correlate with cheaper fares.
We should not price people off the railways, but DfT have to increase net revenue. Growth is needed: the operators must aim to increase both net revenue and passengers. A combined approach to yield management across all operators on each route would maximise revenue and minimize overcrowding.
Longer term solutions
Platform lengthening will be required at some stations, or changes made to routings or platform scheduling.
Appropriate luggage storage should be added in each coach when trains are refurbished.
Another factor is Sunday working, where terms and conditions may need to be changed, at least for new staff.
The immediate way forward
The [https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/about-us/performance/30-by-30| Northern 30 by 30] approach is to redeploy assets (stock and staff) to where they are needed at the particular time, and set fares intelligently to encourage people to travel when/where space is available.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rail-passenger-numbers-and-crowding-on-weekdays-in-major-cities-in-england-and-wales-2024/rail-passenger-numbers-and-crowding-on-weekdays-in-major-cities-in-england-and-wales
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/rai02-capacity-and-overcrowding