Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 9 February 2021 to Question 148874, what assessment he has made of the effect of longer-term changes in behaviour as a result of the covid-19 pandemic on rail services.
The Department continues to actively work to understand the impact of coronavirus and other factors on rail demand. As part of this we are ensuring that we use a range of rail demand scenarios based on a series of factors that could drive rail demand over the short and long term to influence decisions. These include economic forecasts and behavioural factors. The Department continues to monitor evidence on behaviour changes as a result of the pandemic.
Given the considerable uncertainty that the pandemic has caused, these scenarios cannot be used as forecasts. However, they do reflect some of the possible impacts of the pandemic on future rail demand.