So observations from my experience. My boss says he ain’t going to spend two hours travelling on the train to central London to then sit in an open plan office to zoom/teams others. If everyone is in he is going in. If not then he will save the four hours travelling a day thank you very much! That seems to me the critical factor. The work patterns based on the assumption that everyone “goes in” to work have now been shattered.
some people will want to go in everyday, use the printer, go to the pub with mates after 6pm. But for many they will reluctantly plod in.
My employer last summer reconfigured the office. From a 300 everyone with their own space to 140 desk everyone hot desks. even assuming for all reasons, (holidays, sickness, other reasons away from workplace) absence at 25% that still means 85 staff who will have to work elsewhere every day.
my director says that he is fed up sitting in front of a screen all day and is desperate to get back to the office. Strange that. As the overwhelming majority of his directorate used to sit in front of a screen all day in the office. For many of us the option to sit in front of a screen at home has plenty of advantages over repeating that experience after travelling to the office on the train. It’s not so much the cost, at my age, it’s the time and weariness of travelling that I don’t relish.
Commuting to work of course generates other work related journeys. Travelling to other organisations workplaces, etc. So fewer people travelling to work will further suppress work related train journeys.
one quick way finance directors react to savings is to cut business travel. Many businesses will be under pressure once government support across the economy winds down.
my brother has been given the option of 100% in the office, a blend or 100% work from home. All three options are to result in new contracts of employment. One consequence is on the use (and value) of company cars and travel allowances. And for two of the options, reductions and removal of territorial allowances (London weighting).
These factors may also impact the number and routines of travel for work.
I can’t see how these reactions to the pandemic and changes to work. That will have seen us spend at least 15 months working remotely by the time the office reopens. Won’t also be reflected in the office based jobs of rail industry businesses.
on leisure travel, that could boom in the summer and plummet like a stone if we have a resurgence of the disease on the run up to Christmas. Winter outbreaks could be the norm for several years to come.
and then of course Covid is only one of the disrupters to the uk economy. We have several years ahead of adjusting to the new world outside of the EU; the emergence of economies in the east disrupting North American and European commerce Those may hit the city of London and the 500,000 workers who used to work their hard over the next few years.
overall I can see all uk city centres declining economically in the short term and suburbs maybe growing. That will
put many rail flows under pressure. Fewer work related trips, fewer trips to retail and leisure in city centres.
People are not going to use trains for their summer holiday journeys if they have a car. its stressful enough taking kids and luggage on a package holiday. Two cars to Skegness or a Cornwall branch. One car up to the Peak District ain’t going to cut it.
overseas tourists flocking to the uk? Not this year. Trips to Bicester Village or the tour of ancestral highlands put off to the future.
none of this looks to me like a return to a pre March 2020 passenger railway. Maybe a summer boom as the spring of lockdown is released, but will the key september to December quarter see travel return to pre pandemic patterns? I doubt it.
So the rail industry, soon to be in the clutches of the treasury, may respond by slashing non front line jobs. it’s the quickest way to make savings. It may accelerate investment toward technologies to automate retailing, reducing some front line roles, but increase others.