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Latest rail figures show passenger numbers still only at three-quarters level before Covid pandemic October 21, 2022

Quarterly train use figures published by the Government's Office of Rail and Road show services have far from recovered from the massive drop experienced at the height of the Covid pandemic.

Grand Central has made the best recovery since the Covid pandemic Figures published in October for the period from April to June 2022 show 332 million passenger journeys, a figure only three-quarters the level of the same period three years earlier. The quarter's figures this year included three days of strike action by the RMT union.

In the year to June 2022, however, the figures had recoved to more than double the very low level of train use in the year to June 2021.

The official figures show great variance in the recovery of passenger numbers from company to company with some doing much better than others.

Of the seven rail companies stopping at stations in Yorkshire, two of them actually saw an increase in passenger numbers in the quarter of 2022 compared with the equivalent quarter of 2019. Deutsche Bahn/Arriva-owned Grand Central saw passengers journeys up by 12.7%, the best figure nationally, while UK Government-owned LNER, saw a 6.4% increase in passengers.

Nederlandse Spoorwegen/Abellio-owned East Midlands Railway came close to a full recovery at 98.4% of 2019 levels and First Group-owned Hull Trains also came close at 97.8%.

Services cut by Northern during and since the pandemic may have contributed to their reduced total of passenger journeys Government-owned Northern, who would normally have more passenger journeys than all of those four London-bound operators combined, only recovered to 76.7% of 2019 levels, but that was marginally above the 75.5% national average.

Two companies had recovered only about two-thirds of their pre-Pandemic passenger levels, First Group-owned TransPennine Express at 67.7% and Deutsche Bahn/Arriva-owned Cross Country at 66.6%.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

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