Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment his Department has made of trends in the level overcrowding on Thameslink trains between Bedford and St Pancras during peak times.

The Department publishes statistical information on levels of overcrowding on an annual basis. These statistics represent overcrowding levels during a typical autumn weekday peak and are available by train operator for central London stations and major cities in England and Wales.

The table below shows the average passengers in excess of capacity (PiXC) for Thameslink services arriving and departing St. Pancras International in autumn 2016, the latest period for which data are available.

Passengers in excess of capacity (PiXC) for Thameslink services at St. Pancras International; autumn 2016

Passengers in excess of capacity, or PiXC, shows the percentage of standard class passengers above a service’s capacity at its busiest point. For example, a train with a capacity of 90 carrying 100 standard class passengers has 10 passengers in excess of capacity, and its PiXC percentage is 10% (that is, 10 passengers out of 100 are over the train’s capacity).

Further disaggregation of this data i.e. for particular services or routes are not published as they are deemed to be commercially confidential.