The Office for Rail and Road (ORR) published its Estimates of Station Usage for 2019/20 on 1st December 2020. Although the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and first national lockdown was largely felt in the last few weeks of the year, there was a material impact on station usage and a fall of 1.1% in station usage compared to the previous year.
This year's publication includes an ‘alternative dataset’, which provides users of the statistics with a version of the station usage dataset largely unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic that can be used to understand the impact of COVID-19 on station usage. This highlights Steer’s role in helping our clients understand the impacts of COVID-19 on the rail market in Great Britain.
The Estimates of Station Usage, published annually, measures the usage of all railway stations across Great Britain. These are the most detailed publicly-available statistics pertaining to rail demand, informing stakeholders on usage trends (the statistics have been published by the ORR since 1997/98, effectively the point of rail privatisation) and supporting the development of investment cases.
Steer has been responsible for producing these statistics, on behalf of the ORR, for the last ten years. Using data primarily sourced from the industry sales database (LENNON), we go through a process of methodological development to ensure continuous improvement in the statistics we produce. In recent years we have accounted for known issues in the LENNON source data to more accurately represent station usage, including improved distribution of season ticket usage, and this year we have amended the data to reflect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on refunded tickets.
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