Rail transport: April 2019 to March 2020

This release has been scaled back from the usual statistical bulletin as we prioritise resources towards analysis on the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The data in this headline relates to the period from April 2019 to March 2020, which covers a small period at the start of the pandemic. COVID-19 may have had a small impact on some of the data sets as it began towards the end of the 2019-20 financial year.

Main points

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• The number of rail passenger journeys in Wales decreased by 3.8% in 2019-20 compared with the previous year.
• There were 29.9 million rail passenger journeys which either started or ended in Wales in 2019-20, compared with 31.1 million in 2018-19. Two-thirds (69%) of these journeys were within Wales.
• Rail passenger journeys within Wales decreased to 20.5 million in 2019-20, a 5.2% decrease on 2018-19.
• Cardiff was the most common destination for within-Wales journeys, accounting for 42.9% of all journeys.
• In 2020 there were 11 railway fatalities, all of which were suicides.
• In the last five years there have been between 5 and 14 recorded suicides annually and less than 3 other fatalities.
• In 2019-20, offences on Welsh railways decreased by 5.9%.
• There were 1,459 notifiable offences reported on Welsh railways in 2019-20, a decrease of 91 from the previous year.

Further information

Transport Focus also release tables on passenger satisfaction with rail operators in their National Rail Passenger Survey. However, these statistics are no longer National Statistics due to the survey only being carried out in the spring and autumn and also because they only ask respondents about their last journey, and not their broader satisfaction with the operator.

Further detailed tables can be found on StatsWales and key quality information can be found in the April 2017 to March 2018 report.