A common argument used against the reinstatement of the Peaks and Dales line is that not many people will use the railway once it’s rebuilt. Possibly these people have looked at a map and noticed that there are relatively few people living along the 13 missing miles from Rowsley to Buxton, and drawn the erroneous conclusion that passenger numbers will therefore be low. But remember that both ends of our railway reach places with much larger populations.

Connecting Manchester to Derby (and Leicester and Nottingham, and Birmingham) gives people living all the way along the line access to jobs and education in all those cities. And it allows people in Derby (and Leicester etc.) to travel to Manchester, without having to go via Sheffield (and vice versa). It could also help businesses within the Peak District find the staff they need. A recent study by the University of Derby found that “rural businesses in the Derbyshire Peak District are facing significant challenges recruiting and retaining skilled staff” and one of the reasons was the cost and availability of public transport.

And don’t forget Buxton. Every summer the town hosts the highly successful Buxton International Festival, Buxton Festival Fringe, and the International Gilbert & Sullivan Festival, which all draw audiences from all over the UK, and beyond. At the moment anybody arriving by train from London has to change at Stockport, on to the slow and creaky Northern stopping service to Buxton. A reinstated Peaks and Dales line offering an express service from St Pancras would be extremely popular! And having rail connectivity to the south would give the festivals, and Buxton Opera House, which has events throughout the year, access to much wider potential audiences. As noted in a previous blog, you cannot leave Buxton towards Bakewell and destinations beyond, by public transport, after 6.08pm in the evening. With a train service somebody living in Derby could attend an evening performance in Buxton and return home before the train turns into a pumpkin.

Increasing numbers of visitors

The latest figure we have for the number of people visiting the Peak District each year is 13.25 million (STEAM, 2018) and it’s highly likely that has gone up since the pandemic. The current state of our public transport infrastructure means that most people visiting the Peak District do so by car. As anybody who lives in the Peak District National Park (PDNP) knows, traffic congestion and cars parked everywhere is a regular feature of weekends and school holidays.

The Lake District National Park seems to be some way ahead of the PDNP in tackling the issue of private car use.  Their 2040 vision includes:

• Transformational transport enabling 50% more visitors to reach the National Park by rail and integrated onward travel linking showcase areas of the Keswick, Ullswater and Windermere corridors.

• As a minimum % visitors arriving by car decreasing from 83% in 2015 to 64% in 2040. Less than ½ of visitors’ main mode of travel around the Lake District is car by 2040. Ideally, we are aiming for even greater increase in sustainable visitor travel.

The PDNP hasn’t got such a developed vision yet, but there is a new Sustainable Travel Officer, who it might be an idea to an interview for a blog at some point!

Changing trends in rail usage

You may have heard on the news that rail passenger habits are changing. With more working from home or hybrid working, commuting passenger numbers are down compared to pre-pandemic numbers. But overall rail usage is rebounding. And the biggest growth sector is leisure travel, as this graphic from The Great British Railways Transition Teams’ (GBRTT) Train Travel Snapshot for 2023 Quarter 2 (1 July to 31 September 2023) shows:

So there are plenty of people who will want to use the Peaks and Dales railway when it returns. We’ll need a better bus network to support it, with reliable and regular services. Integrated ticketing would be a big help. Cornwall is leading the way in this so by the time we get our railway the technology will probably have reached Derbyshire, and Hulleys will have recruited enough drivers.

Interestingly, underestimating passenger numbers seems to be a common mistake of the people who write railway business cases. This BBC article describes how usage of the Borders Railway, between Edinburgh and Tweedbank, was 22% over expectations for the first six months since the line opened in September 2015. An article from Railnews, the industry magazine, notes “…the totals for each station reveal that the planners were often wrong when they calculated likely usage — in some cases very wrong.  For example, they thought that just under 19,000 single trips would be recorded at Tweedbank, the line’s terminus, but in practice there were almost ten times as many…. Five times as many people as expected have used Galashiels and Stow.”

We look forward to reading similar reports after the Peaks and Dales line is reinstated.