Patterns of returning passengers?

[whole diary]

[TonyN]

At Pershore today the car park was full. So it looks like the longer distance trips are back to normal but regular comuting is still well down on Mondays.

[Electric train]

Travelled past Didcot and the car park seemed to be nothing but a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ2oXzrnti4 (Ghost Town)

[grahame]

Travelled past Didcot and the car park seemed to be nothing but a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ2oXzrnti4 (Ghost Town)

Very patchy ... at Keynsham yesterday (during the day) the car park was quite busy, but passing over the bridge by Melksham Station the car park looked empty. To complete the story, I did not observe the parking at Bath Spa, and I don't think that there IS parking at Oldfield Park.

Loss of car parking numbers does not necessarily correlate with loss of passenger numbers.  Personal observation at Melksham, where only between 10% and 20% of passengers pre-covid drove themselves to the station, suggests that the walkers / cyclists have come back close to original levels, whereas people in their cars are, perhaps, driving to other stations with a better train service or driving all the way to their final destination.  Perhaps that's mirrored by the Didcot reports?

[Timmer]

Correct, no car park at Oldfield Park.

Be harder to judge take up of parking at Bath Spa as a great part of the station parking is part of the Southgate Shopping centre car park on level 3

[IndustryInsider]

With regard to Didcot, it was massively expanded just before the pandemic struck.  No doubt it will never get close to being full now - and the money spent increasing capacity largely wasted - but it doesn’t mean that lots more cars weren’t in there.  Especially on the floor that has level access to the over bridge leading to the station.

[Red Squirrel]

It hadn't occurred to me that there was a car park at Bath Spa station... I wonder who on earth would drive there to catch a train?

There doesn't appear to be a shortage of punters on the platforms; this was how it looked on Sunday afternoon...

[rogerw]

The car parks at Chippenham lokked fairly full when I passed last Friday lunchtime

[didcotdean]

The multi storey car park at Didcot was sized taking into account that the two non-railway surface car parks in Station Road would be built on at some time in the short to medium term. Much of the area of one of these is down to be the location of the new HQ^▸ (Headquarters) of South Oxfordshire DC^▸ (Direct Current) (+ Vale of the White Horse).

Usage of the surface car park that I pass by often has been slowly creeping up but is still only about a third full. Not looked into the large bike facility recently.

[Wizard]

I noticed Maidenhead car park looked to be completely full on Tuesday morning, about 08.15.

[Bob_Blakey]

A DIG>EXC>DIG shopping / cinema trip yesterday; the 0942 inbound service was very busy - and picked up 20 pax at DIG - and the 1519 return only slightly less so. Very encouraging.

[stuving]

We've seen how keen Wokinghamites are to not go to work, so the response to the "as you were" order this week (really starting during last week) is no surprise.

Number of cars in the Wokingham Station car parks, capacity 531 (SWR^» (South Western Railway - about)) or 424 (Ringo) but average usage pre-Covid unknown, seen at some time during 10 am-5 pm (most often 14:30-16:30).

W/S	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Notes
5/7	-	-	60	75	49	Sat 71
12/7	50	64	74	62	31	32
19/7	51*	72	79	57	46	*"Freedom day!"
26/7	38	57	60	63	-
2/8	45	52	69	63	50
9/8	56	-	88	87	59
16/8	54	70	86	66	54
23/8	65	84	63	82	92	Sat 34
30/8	34*	47	107	-	72	Sat 85 *Bank holiday Monday
6/9	72	65	92	60	60	Sat 93
13/9	87	116	110	107	-
20/9	76	118	128	130	60	Sat 83
27/9	93	114	135	132	86
4/10	72	121*	139	140	82	Sat 122 *Now some upstairs
11/10	80	102~	139	157	75	Sat few (no trains!).
18/10	84	140	143	135	84
25/10	70		124	129	76	Sat 74.
1/11	77	121	155	143	60
8/11	75	143	152		96	Sat 142.
15/11	107	142	146	148	89	Sat 154.
22/11		130	139	193
29/11	84	109	142		88	Sat 123
6/12	93		109	142	84~
13/12	48*	48	68	52	38	Sat 75, *new WFM orders from today.

~ approx.
updated 18/12/21

You'll see that the trend for Saturday to be as busy as any weekday has continued since November - but then 'tis the season to go shopping, after all, nasty disease or no nasty disease.

[IndustryInsider]

I’m looking forward to seeing the graph! 

[CyclingSid]

The national figures are heading down
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1040892/COVID-19-transport-use-statistics.ods
although I am not sure why Thursday is the day to go cycling.

[stuving]

The national figures are heading down
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1040892/COVID-19-transport-use-statistics.ods
although I am not sure why Thursday is the day to go cycling.

Maybe it rained a lot on March 5th 2020 - the baseline for the cycling figures is the same day in that week.

But a lot of other things could mess up those figures too, because of the way they are derived. There is no built-in counting system as there is for paid public transport, and very few installed bicycle counters. So they measure total travel based on mobile phone data (when and how often phones move between cells) and split it up using more comprehensive pre-covid data so give a pre-covid baseline. Then they subtract their estimated "inactive travel" to give a daily active travel total, and apply the pre-covid split of walking and cycling, plus whatever bike counts they can find, to estimate cycling. As they say of this:

This is a best-efforts estimate of national cycling utilising multiple data sources and is considered fit for purpose for reporting large changes in trends in usage. The methodology will be updated if or when additional information becomes available.

But walking would be worse - it's not covered because:

Walking is therefore a residual of a residual, and as we know that the telecommunications data does not capture short walks, we do not think the walking estimate in isolation is a useful indicator.

[Surrey 455]

Maybe it rained a lot on March 5th 2020 - the baseline for the cycling figures is the same day in that week.

Yes, that was a wet day in London and probably elsewhere.
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/uk/london/historic?month=3&year=2020