Transparency data

Rail passenger miles

Quarterly data on rail passenger miles.

Documents

Passenger miles: quarterly data

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email webmasterdft@dft.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Measurement template: rail passenger miles

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email webmasterdft@dft.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Details

DfT Business plan other key data

Geographical coverage: Great Britain

Information broken down by: rail sector

Latest data

Passengers travelled 10 billion miles by rail in the second quarter of 2015 to 2016 (July to September 2015), an increase of 2.3% when compared to the same quarter in 2014 to 2015. These figures are for franchised operators only, so exclude travel with non-franchised operators, such as Grand Central, Heathrow Express and Hull Trains.

Rail passenger miles in Great Britain have more than doubled since rail privatisation in the mid-1990s, from 4.6 billion in the first quarter of 1994 to 1995 to 10 billion in the second quarter (2015 to 2016).

Passenger miles travelled with franchised rail operators

Quarter Quarterly total (billions) Quarterly moving annual average (MAA) (billions)
2012 to 2013 Q1 8.8 8.9
2012 to 2013 Q2 9.2 9.0
2012 to 2013 Q3 9.1 9.0
2012 to 2013 Q4 8.8 9.0
2013 to 2014 Q1 9.2 9.1
2013 to 2014 Q2 9.4 9.1
2013 to 2014 Q3 9.4 9.2
2013 to 2014 Q4 9.2 9.3
2014 to 2015 Q1 9.5 9.3
2014 to 2015 Q2 9.8 9.4
2014 to 2015 Q3 10.0 9.6
2014 to 2015 Q4 9.6 9.7
2015 to 2016 Q1 9.7 9.8
2015 to 2016 Q2P 10.0 9.8

P Figures are provisional

R Figures are revised

Source: Office of Rail and Road (ORR)

Background information

Rail passenger kilometres totals are published quarterly by the Office of Rail and Road (ORR). The rail industry’s central ticketing system, LENNON, is the basis for passenger kilometres data. LENNON holds information on the vast majority of national rail tickets purchased in Great Britain and is used to allocate the revenue from ticket sales between train operating companies.

ORR also receives quarterly non-LENNON kilometres data from train operators. Non-LENNON data are information not recorded within the LENNON system such as operator specific tickets and Passenger Transport Executive (PTE) multi-modal tickets.

The statistics are converted from kilometres to miles by DfT for the purposes of this publication.

The data supplied in the table and the charts refer to financial rather than calendar years.

  • publishing schedule: quarterly
  • last updated: 15 December 2015
  • next update: January 2016

Rail passenger kilometres statistics are published on the Office of Rail and Road Data Portal

Annual passenger kilometres data for rail and other modes of public transport are published in Transport Statistics Great Britain (TSGB)

Further information

Updates to this page

Published 1 October 2013
Last updated 8 June 2015 + show all updates
  1. Provisional rail passenger miles data for January to March 2015.

  2. Indicator page updated to the latest data for October to December 2014.

  3. First published.

Sign up for emails or print this page