Unprecedented levels of growth on Britain’s railways seen over the last 10 years has continued over the past 12 months. – there has been a growth in passenger kilometres travelled on Britain’s railways of over 40% in the past ten years to 41.6 billion, an increase of 3.2% over the 40.3 billion of 2003. At 41.6 billion this represents the best performance since 1946 when there were far fewer cars on the roads and domestic air travel was virtually non-existent. Growth was greatest in London and the south east commuter area (50.7%) with increases in regional and long distance services of 35.0% and 28.8% respectively.

There are now an average of 2.82 million passenger journeys travelled on Britain’s rail network every day, the highest since 1959. Only Germany, with a network significantly larger than Britain’s, carries more people. Britain’s railways carried about 90 million more people than did the SNCF in France, with virtually the same population. Over 19,400 scheduled passenger services are being operated each weekday during the 2004/5 timetable, an increase of 11.4% since 1995. (Source ATOC Ten-year European Rail Growth Trends).

With such a growth to cater for Network Rail is now looking to the Government for an extra £7.9 billion in order to cope with the increase.