As we all know, the number of people travelling by train has dropped massively during the pandemic, with the guidance to work from home where possible and even at the beginning warnings to travel by public transport at all. However over the last few weeks, things have started to open up again, Northern’s official message at the moment remains: “Travel with confidence” and “travel safe”.
We took the opportunity on June 16th 2021 to head to Leeds station, find a few discreet spots to the side of the arrival platforms, where we could keep over 2m away from other people and we counted passengers leaving the trains arriving from Bradford Forster Square, Ilkley and Skipton & beyond.
Here are our results.
Our conclusions would be:-
- Peak usage is around 25 to 30% of pre-Covid levels.
- The 07.16 from Skipton wasn’t disproportionately full – as I feared it might be.
- The heavier loadings were on arrivals before 08.30 – there was a falling off in numbers arriving later – currently there are a number of ‘peak extras’ which arrive after 08.30 which were relatively less well used.
- The most heavily used trains were the arrivals from Skipton.
(Picture credit – Network Rail)