It is not really possible to adjust these figures to account for the huge effect of Crossrail.
Reported footfall at almost station you care to name from Gloucester to Penzance that was open in 2019, is still down on pre-pandemic. The number of services in much of Bristol, Devon and Cornwall has greatly increased.
The number of DMUs isn't similar either, the Class 165/166 have provided a huge uplift in unit numbers and capacity, as well as the IETs and before them the short form HSTs.
If there is a crowding issue, despite there being more seats, more units, more services and fewer passengers, then supply and demand are out of whack. The question could be asked for example, does Exeter - Newton Abbot really need 5-6tph in each direction?
Let's take Newton Abbot station 2018/19 it had 1,235,000 passengers, in 2022/23 it had 1,155,000 so a fall of 6.5%.
However, the most up to date data for passenger use for the network (i.e. not station usage) is from Q3 of 2023/24 which is 20% higher, the data publication says:
A total of 417 million rail passenger journeys were recorded in Great Britain (GB) in the latest quarter (October to December 2023). This is a 20% increase on the 348 million journeys in the same quarter in the previous year (October to December 2022). There were 1,570 million journeys in the year to 31 December 2023. This is a 20% increase on the 1,300 million journeys made in the previous 12 months (1 January 2022 to 31 December 2022).
Now whilst a lot of that increase could be down to Crossrail/Elizabeth Line as the by TOC data shows that as having a 40% growth rate, there's going to be growth on other TOC's too.
Taking GWR as an example it's seen 10% growth, if Newton Abbot has seen the same growth (which we won't know just yet) it'll currently be adding more people to the network than it did in 2018/19 (1.270 million vs 1.235 million).
To prove that's not a fluke, shall I try Exeter St David's?
Probably not a great example as in 2018/19 it was 2.620 million vs 2.617 in 2022/23, so we'd need hardly any other growth for that too be higher.
What other stations did you say?
Gloucester 2018/19 -1.521 million vs 2022/23 - 1.453 million (add 5% and it just creeps over the 2018/19 number)
Penzance 2018/19 - 0.570 million vs 2022/23 0.565 million (that's less than 1% growth required).
How about Plymouth, that's quite a busy station, 2018/19 - 2.416 million vs 2.313 in 2022/23, again add 5% and it'll reach the 2018/19 numbers.
Bristol TM that's even busier 2018/19 - 11.368 million, that's fallen to 9.292 million, that's nearly 2 million fewer and so that would need to see growth of 22% to out perform the 2018/19 numbers, so of 6 stations we've found one which is likely to still be less busy than before with the current passenger usage.
Although, even that's not a certainty. The thing with averages across a wide range of places is that it's entirely possible for one place to do much better than the others, basically an outlier. That's not to say that Bristol will have seen much higher growth than the average (the thing we can say for certain is that it's not recovered as well as the others so far).
Currently the data isn't publicly available to know for sure, however from the above there's a fairly strong likelihood that at least a significant number of stations in the GWR area are currently at or above their 2018/19 usage numbers, maybe even the whole of the GWR area, (which may still have stations which are lower) when allowing for Crossrail/Elizabeth Line usage, may be higher.
If I were to place a bet I'd be more confident in winning that bet based on the GWR usage being higher currently than in 2018/19 than it still being lower. If we're are to look at stations in the South West, I'd be more confident still (I've looked at the numbers for some within the network Railcard zone and they could well struggle to get back to the 2018/19 levels, however none of them are likely to impact the business case for the 175's moving to GWR).
The point being the currently available data doesn't allow us to be sure either way, but the station data is 9 months or of date, with the next set due in a matter of a couple of weeks will give us data which then puts the station usage data a full year out of date.
