A new survey conducted by the Rail Delivery Group, has uncovered some startling new statistics about rail travel in Britain.
Primarily, the survey shows that rail passengers in the UK made just over 1.7 billion train journeys during the past year. The South-East alone, and London, accounted for 1.2 billion of this. As a result of this, passenger generated revenue in the UK grew to a staggering level of £9.3 billion from 2015-16.

What has the reaction been to the Rail Delivery Group statistics?

Surprisingly, Union leaders have been extremely critical in the wake of the Rail delivery group survey. It is  time for the train companies to give revenue back. Many Union leaders feel that train companies are taking all of the credit when things go right, but hanging their employees out to dry when it goes wrong; when the reality is that it’s the other way round.

So, what’s the problem?

All in all, however, the general consensus has been that it’s essential for train companies to invest the passenger revenue coming in; and make long term plans to cope with such enormous demand. It’s clear that train travel is becoming more and more popular for British citizens. The Rail Delivery Group survey has shown that long distance routes in particular are shown to be progressing at a rapid pace, with an increase of 3.3% in long distance routes taken by passengers this year. The problem with this is that it all comes at a hair-raising price. Overcrowding forces many passengers to stand, because trains are unreliable. Meanwhile, the rail bosses who rake in the income from the passengers themselves, are simply lining their pockets. They aren’t putting the money back into a faltering service, and this is unacceptable.