Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what proportion of the total amount spent on UK railways was raised through passenger fares for each year since 2010.

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) publishes rail industry financial data in their annual UK Rail Industry Financial Information publication. The data are available from 2010-11 and the latest published data relate to 2015-16. See here:

http://orr.gov.uk/rail/publications/reports/uk-rail-industry-financial-information

For the purpose of this response, the rail industry includes Great Britain’s franchised passenger train operators and Network Rail, as these data are available for the full time series. Data for Open Access operators, freight operators, High Speed 1, Rolling Stock Companies and Northern Ireland Railways are only available for 2015-16 and have therefore not been included.

The total passenger income and gross expenditure for the rail industry from 2010-11 is set out in the table below. This includes train operators’ total gross payments to government, which will vary significantly between operators (with some making a payment to government and some receiving a net government subsidy). The expenditure total also includes Network Rail’s amortisation of capital expenditure (i.e. Network Rail’s enhancements and renewals costs spread over the useful lifetime of the investment).