ABSTRACT

Passenger traffic deserves pride of place in any consideration of British Rail's (BR) revenue because, although freight and parcels accounted for over half of railway revenue up to 1970, the position has since been reversed. Government-imposed delays to fare increases in 1973 then led to a reduction in real fares, and, as a result, traffic rose again and, but for the impact of industrial action, would have regained its 1970 peak. BR's projections depend to a large extent on service improvements which will divert traffic from air and road, and will also generate entirely new journeys. Models which are used to predict flows of traffic between different pairs of zones are generally of the gravity type, which seek to explain traffic between two zones as a function of the sizes of the zones and the cost of travel between them. Traffic is expected to rise from 18,100 million passenger miles in 1972 to 20,350 million miles in 1981.