I know what you’re saying.
The fact of the matter is that very, very few people will give up cars (1st, 2nd or more) simply because they are working at home more. If that was the case, they’d have done so already - it’s been 10 months now. Do you know anyone who has? I don’t. For a car commuter to give up their car they’d need to be working from home full time and have no other use of it. Generally speaking they’re not going to, except for a very small minority.
Charters would be the big winner, but there’s none of them!
Actually I do know of at least 1 who has reduced the number of cars from 2 to 1 and although I don't know then personally there's quite a few who haven't gone and got a new car (as new car sales are down by about 30% to a thirty years low).
Due to the poor return from selling a secondhand car, I suspect that many will just keep hold of what they've got and then not replace them once it's got a big bill to fix it or the lease is up for renewal. As such even after 10 months you may not see much of a shift.
That lack of news cars has the potential to push up the cost of car ownership as fewer secondhand cars enter the market in the years to come.
That could make it harder for those to get their first car and so encourage more to do without and use public transport.
One other factor in the lack of movement of disposal of cars at this time is that the companies that they work for may currently be permitting WFH and I suspect that there's quite a few who would like to try working in the office again before deciding their working patterns, as such there could be a level of keeping hold of vehicles just in case (which would be sensible, especially given that no one knows what public transport will look like coming back out ify this, so what was possible before may be quite a bit harder if services are reduced).
I suspect that there's likely to be a bit of an age divide, those aged 50 and over would probably be more likely to keep cars even if they don't use them much. Whilst those under 40, especially those who are trying to save for a house or to get a bigger house, would probably be more cautious about keeping cars that were under used.
Long term there'd have to be significant WFH for an average of more than half the time (i.e. 5 days or of 10 or more) to see much more than a 20% fall in rail use.
Given these a fair number (some estimates have it about 25%) who would opt not to WFH hardly at all (those who live on their own, those with small children, those without suitable space, etc) or would be told that they aren't suitable for WFH (new graduates who need to learn off others, those who have shown they don't work well at home, etc.) then such a high level of WFH would be unlikely.
There's also those in education (secondary schools, 6th form colleges, private schools and to a lesser extent universities) who would continue to use rail for their commuting (and many don't have the option of driving as their not old enough to have a license).
Then there's those who only travel short distances by rail, where the savings from WFH would likely be fairly limited.
Yes that's still got the potential for a 20% fall in passenger numbers (however if they swap from annual season tickets to any time tickets that may not be a 20% reduction in revenue), but that's only likely to be going back to about 2011 passenger numbers.
Although even within that it could be that passenger numbers on the majority of the network see little movement whilst the numbers commuting into London in the peaks could fall significantly.
Whilst that would mean that there would need to be more subsidies or cuts it'll be hard to argue that a line which has (say) 2018 passenger numbers (a fall but not all that much as the users of the line aren't WFH a lot) should be closed.
Chances are, once things settle down, cuts will be to the likes of the 442's, extra units brought in to deal with capacity (primarily during the peaks), with then new units brought in after (say 5-10 years) when passenger numbers have recovered (if needed). With then a sight reduction in services, but with an eye as to how to maintain frequencies without slowing down services too much.
Drastic cuts make a lot of sense in the short term. Longer term in the peaks rail travel will be more pleasant as it may be possible to get a seat. (The quality of the seat is another topic) Off peak and leisure travel will thrive once major restrictions are lifted.
People will be keen to travel in summer 2021.
Indeed, there may actually be quite a lot of travel on trains which were otherwise busy with commuters (which again could limit the fall in revenue as they wouldn't be paying much less than average by buying a season ticket).
