This potential for increased efficiency on the railway will not be realised without action from policymakers and railway managers to capitalise on it and adapt to the new situation.
As the shape of the new daily demand curve emerges in the years following the pandemic, the timetable should be rebuilt around it. As this happens, managers should be on the lookout for efficiencies related to an expected reduction in demand at peak time.
These may take some time to emerge and are likely to be related to asset renewal, such as purchasing a new fleet of trains or designing a piece of infrastructure.
Expected gains in efficiency from the reduced peak should be used to reduce fares, which will help drive demand and fill trains at other times. Passengers would of course directly benefit from a lower cost of travel.
Existing proposals for ticketing reform, offering flexible season tickets for employees who may not commute every day with new temporary home-working, should also be taken forward. This will require coordination between the industry and government, which regulates many fares.
A permanent change in the shape of the daily demand curve does not necessarily mean permanently lower passenger numbers overall.
Passenger numbers have continuously increased sharply since the 1990s despite the concurrent growth of home working, mostly off the back of leisure passengers in the off-peak offsetting lower growth in commuting.
For context, a cut in passenger numbers to, for example, 84% of pre-pandemic levels (from 426 million passenger journeys in a quarter to 385 journeys) would actually only represent a cut to the level of journeys found 2013, according to statistics from the Office for Rail Regulation. While this would present a challenge, it is not the apocalypse.
Rail passenger levels will probably be somewhat lower immediately post-pandemic thanks to reduced peak time commuter travel, but the potential for steady passenger growth at other times of day will still be there and with the above approach, passenger levels can soon exceed pre-pandemic levels.
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