Great Western Coffee Shop

They've been released today and are available to download at http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/server/show/nav.1529 (http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/server/show/nav.1529)

I won't have time to download and look at them until later, though I'm sure others on the forum will appreciate the heads-up...  :)

Thanks II.

Continued solid growth in much of the west, although in general it seems a bit lower than in the previous year (eg combined north somerset stations were 6% higher, against 10.9% the previous year). However, this is probably as 10/11 performance represented a bounce back from the general fall seen in 09/10 following the recession, so the growth has now returned to a more normal level.

Over a 7 year period many stations are showing growth of between 50% and 100%, with those where the service has noticeably improved performing best (eg Severn Beach line where Clifton Down is +232% ie over tripled). Conversely, where the service has got worse over that period, there's been a fall, with Melksham down 58% in that period. Up only 3% this year, the period included the successful summer sunday service, so only growing by 300 in a year (ie 150 return journeys) surprised me somewhat.

Of course, these figures are out of date by the time they are published, with the following year just ending. (Why does it take so long to produce them?)  With overall rail use having risen again in the last 12 months, I can confidently predict a further increase this time next year.

Note also that there has been an attempt this year to include the effect of St Ives branch ranger tickets, which has seen an additional 297,000 entries and exits at St Ives, though curiously they've attributed around half of these to have the other end of their journey at Carbis Bay, and relatively few at Lelant Saltings, when I'd have guessed the other way around. They may have taken the distribution of non ranger ticket figures to estimate where people using their ranger got on and off - I guess there's a limit to how much research and local knowledge can be done, although having made the effort, you'd have thought they might have asked someone.

Interestingly none of the other rangers (eg Looe Valley line) have been similarly allowed for.   

Don't have Excel so will have to wait until the figures are posted either here or on relevant Wikipedia pages, but reading the report it's interesting to see Lympstone Commando in the top 10 of passenger decreases. Continuing the trend, according to the report, but what would the reason for this 'buck in the trend' station be?

Figures added to some of my graphs and you can see changes by postcode area via URLs such as
http://www.wellho.net/demo/railuse.php?place=BS

Raw data showing comparison of years at
http://www.wellho.net/resources/ex.php?item=h309/railstats.txt

New stations (in 2011-12) not yet added to the tables:
WPE ...  1081332  ... "Wapping"
CAC ...  90976  ... "Caldercruix"
SIA ...  56834  ... "Southend Airport"
ARM ...  126086  ... "Armadale"
BSV ...  91632  ... "Buckshaw Parkway"
WCA ...  3643542  ... "Whitechapel"
BKR ...  43258  ... "Blackridge"
SQE ...  1801232  ... "Surrey Quays"
FAR ...  4942964  ... "Farringdon"
SMC ...  136  ... "Sampford Courtenay"
CDN ...  467004  ... "Coulsdon Town"
HGG ...  1172578  ... "Haggerston"
SDE ...  1658564  ... "Shadwell"
HOX ...  1042854  ... "Hoxton"
DLJ ...  2276848  ... "Dalston Junction"
CAW ...  4883228  ... "Canada Water"
SDC ...  2617616  ... "Shoreditch High Street"
ROE ...  979092  ... "Rotherhithe"
OKE ...  3526  ... "Okehampton"

Our "page top charts" updated too - look for stations in an area, and for stations with similar passenger numbers.

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/smr/SVB.html

Need to be logged in as member to access this portal for anywhere except Melksham.  If you're NOT a member, why not sign up now! - http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?action=register

Anyone know what plymouth's figures are. From that massive excel table I got 4 million ha ha that's wrong isn't it.

3580   PLY   PL4 6AB   SX 476554   50.3778173616   -4.1433631306   Plymouth   1519011   1629011   1845958   2026852   2249849   2278718   2401082    2596746

Last figure 2011/12 then goes back year by year.

And I note some shining examples of improvements where a decent service is provided:
Dronfield   12502   14882   17548   17710   35372   114552   144228    152792
Parson Street   7231   14293   19172   32511   46670   57374   68840    77722
Severn Beach   29295   37088   38202   54034   74712   88504   113480    141714

And what happens when a TOC reduces services:
27446   24426   22001   38081   27656   10028   11046    11330   

Thanks :) I don't think that excel document was meant to be viewed on an iPad :)

Nice increase again :) Im guessing its increases across the board.

Maidenhead amazes me how busy it is taking entry / exits and transfers is over 4 million

Calstock has seen a decrease for 2nd year running. But all the other tamar valley stations have increased. Dockyard has a large nice increase which I'm surprised at.

As you say, a really good increase at Dockyard.  The other Plymouth stations are good too.

In terms of Calstock and the other rural stations, I wouldn't worry too much.  We have the unusual situation where up to a fifth of the journeys from these stations are made with our Carnet tickets and these don't go through the LENNON system on which these figures are based.

The journey figures from FGW for the Tamar Valley Line show a 1.3% increase in 2012 over 2011 (calendar years) - that's just over 2,000 journeys to a total of 175,105.  The 2010 figure was 164,448.

These figures include the Carnets, which are added in manually by FGW each four week period, but the people compiling the ORR data will be using the raw data. 

I think it shouldn't be a surprise to FGW though really.. Although it appears to have been.. Even though passenger numbers have steadily increased since they took over from Thames trains, the trains are just now horribly overcrowded a lot of the time. Investing in some new longer trains at the start would have been sensible and would have helped the overcrowding situation we have now.

I seem to recall at the start that the DfT refused all / any upgrades to the requirements they laid out in the franchise.

Which if my memory serves, *really* caused immediate problems in the far west....

I read in several of the news mediums that the ORR counts have been totally discredited.  I am sorry, I cannot remember the sources but better beware it seems.

They must be read with caution and caveats, and local knowledge  ;D

Thanks for that informed information posted here, RichardB.  :)

We see similar apparent anomalies on the Severn Beach Line, where local ticketing realities have to be factored in to any such 'passenger counts'.

Indeed.  I went to Okehampton last year but on a Freedom of the South West Rover so I assume I am not counted as one of the 3,526 who passed through the station.  If I had stopped off at Sampford Courtenay my rover meant I could not make a useful boost to its figure. Nor indeed will I appear in any of the figures for the nurmerous trips I made on the Devon & Cornwall branches using rovers.

Following on from Grahame's comments, another interesting example of where an improved service brings more traffic is on the Far North Line. The first 7 stations (Beauly to Tain) have seen aggregate entries and exits increase from 117,000 to 332,000 over the seven year period as service improvements have made travel into Inverness a realistic alternative to the car.

Mind you, that total is still less than for one medium-ish station in this area (eg Nailsea), so I'm sure a debate could be had over the ongoing cost of providing the service improvement and the benefit that it brings to the area. Last month another station opened at Conon Bridge, which is likely to provide some further upward momentum to the aggregate figures.

Here's my usual spreadsheet for the usage figures for all of the FGW stations, and a comparison of the usage figures over the previous three years.  This time I've added a few selected non-FGW operated stations which either have FGW trains stopping at them, or are on the fringes of our network, or are just interesting places (such as the recently opened Aylesbury Vale Parkway).

Firstly listed in alphabetical order.

(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8405/8628071545_9d6e8e72e3_b.jpg)

(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8126/8628071369_a68e87829c_b.jpg)

(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8380/8628071187_468a3a1f05_c.jpg)

And then listed in order of the percentage increase from last year.  The known issue with the St. Ives line means you can disregard those figures as a comparison, and we all know that some others are a little dodgy (Tackley for example) but there are some other interesting gains, such as the continued success of Bicester Town.  In total 183 stations saw their usage increase (according to the data) and just 26 saw a decrease.

(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8117/8629178412_e5aa57142a_b.jpg)

(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8540/8628070889_552ebb2926_b.jpg)

(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8393/8628070709_b2591f1d6d.jpg)

Many thanks for your work in preparing those posts, IndustryInsider!  ;)

Indeed, Lympstone Commando, just for example, does seem to be an interesting individual case: see http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=12252.0

I love playing with figures ....

Passenger growth by station operator (percentage, year to March 2011, year to 2012):

 112.72 68070475 76727936 "london midland trains"
 107.82 149781128 161490108 "national express east anglia"
 106.09 118666068 125888884 "first scotrail"
 109.15 106573058 116328320 "northern rail"
 102.49 1627348 1667834 "south west trains (island line)"
 107.53 191026233 205418462 "southern"
 110.96 33586328 37267690 "chiltern railways"
  95.49 75519049 72112632 "merseyrail"
 102.86 38374508 39472600 "east midlands trains"
  77.94 432334 336982 "glasgow prestwick airport"
 104.13 32308884 33643264 "east coast"
 105.22 253096633 266306990 "south west trains"
 157.52 51563890 81225196 "london overground"
 103.90 21470589 22308272 "first transpennine express"
 115.07 25882993 29783456 "london underground"
 103.07 37382672 38528568 "virgin trains (west coast)"
 106.44 120066730 127795492 "first capital connect"
 102.62 175640492 180237504 "southeastern"
 102.35 53647288 54906734 "arriva trains wales"
 107.10 112344542 120318740 "first great western"
 104.51 601917586 629047816 "network rail"
 107.54 44534718 47890560 "c2c"

And by the nuts2 Spatial area (whatever that is!):

 102.39 49977364 51170394 "hampshire and isle of wight"
 103.09 26498790 27316820 "east wales"
 105.27 74789020 78728704 "berkshire, buckinghamshire and oxfordshire"
 104.07 4469948 4651958 "highlands and islands"
 102.32 8926140 9133172 "tees valley and durham"
 108.92 760559871 828424122 "inner london"
 108.78 44060634 47931182 "eastern scotland"
 105.40 13420824 14145780 "shropshire and staffordshire"
 107.94 63675866 68729378 "greater manchester"
 104.25 16272145 16963018 "cheshire"
 101.84 19445580 19804282 "west wales and the valleys"
 104.99 32776012 34410406 "east anglia"
  99.61 6133492 6109552 "cumbria"
 102.64 61580672 63205592 "kent"
 118.46 75320926 89224454 "west midlands"
 102.27 10485842 10724308 "dorset and somerset"
 104.84 70209155 73606708 "bedfordshire and hertforshire"
 106.30 34106754 36256644 "gloucestershire, wiltshire and north somerset"
 107.17 308778380 330912436 "outer london"
 104.69 155180581 162461518 "surrey, east & west sussex"
 108.75 4641314 5047596 "north eastern scotland"
 103.57 15987456 16558960 "lancashire"
 106.31 111168755 118182576 "south western scotland"
 109.08 15404456 16802502 "herefordshire, worcestershire and warwickshire"
 103.66 19363990 20072896 "derbyshire and nottinghamshire"
 102.55 60886855 62437498 "west yorkshire"
 104.20 18910926 19706058 "south yorkshire"
 108.74 13628096 14819516 "devon"
 121.36 5066746 6149060 "cornwall and isles of scilly"
 102.76 10575170 10866722 "northumberland and tyne and wear"
 101.69 13365932 13592130 "leicestershire, rutland and northamptonshire"
 104.69 13923262 14575994 "north yorkshire"
 103.57 5844128 6052646 "east riding and north linconshire"
 103.53 71146901 73657774 "essex"
  98.99 92414145 91482434 "merseyside"
 106.02 4517418 4789250 "lincolnshire"

Please excuse all lower cased places and companies - it appears that some data lines have First Scotrail and other First ScotRail (nice clean data set  ;D) and it was easier just to thump them all to lower case!

106.71 2313514557 2468853618 grand totals

I notice both Dorking West and Dorking Deepdene have seen a fall in percentage terms.  Has there been changes to the service on the North Downs?  (Although admittedly it wouldn't take many fewer feet at West to effect a big change.)

Good work there Grahame! Some weird anomolies when looking at the data - like I'm surprised there are 112 interchanges at Penzance!

I recognise the interchanges are estimates, however I think these should be as accurate as possible to assist with future planning.

Also interestingly I have noticed several stations where I have personally interchanged yet none are recorded, specifically Stapleton road and Lawrence hill (when traveling between Bristol parkway and the Severn beach line these are often quicker than going in to temple meads as advised by the national rail website!).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUTS_2_statistical_regions_of_the_United_Kingdom

I'm guessing it could well be related to the problems allocating the usage figures within the Dorking group, Dorking West's figures should be much higher.

Industryinsider, you seem to have left out stations E-I on your first tables and thus leaving some stations out on your next set of tables.

Shouldn't Bicester Town now be in the list of the few non-FGW stations? As it is now operated by Chiltern Railways.

Have you got your browser on zoom?  I did with Internet Explorer in order to read some of the figures but then discovered there were no scroll bars which meant the far right table - E to I was off the screen with no way to get to it.

Good to see Taplow with 8.3% increase, now if only we had a Sunday service!

I did wonder about that, but it is listed in the datasheet as FGW still - I'm wondering if that's an error, or is it that technically FGW still operate the stations despite not running any services there?  The FGW style help points are still installed at Islip and Bicester?  We'll see if it changes next year!


Yes, as 'bobm' says, the whole of the data is listed and displays OK on my screen using Firefox and a 1680x1050 screen resolution, but that might not be case on all browsers/screen sizes, so you might have to scroll over to see it.

Bicester T was still an FGW station during the collection of those figures....

Yes, I suppose it was - though not for the majority of the period the data was collected for.  But it probably is the owner at the start of the period that is listed rather than at the end of it.

The Dorking figures should be taken with a pinch of salt and as suggested previously, the figures are confused by being grouped under Dorking stations. On some of the peak services, you can get as many passengers boarding 1 train on 1 day as the figures show for the entire year! (Dorking West is my closest station). Bobm, the number of trains serving Dorking hasn't changed in recent years.

The interchange information is iffy at best and really can't be relied upon, although it does at least accept Clapham Junction as #1 which is a start. The assumption is that everyone would change at BRI even though that is far from true; I once changed at both on the same journey just so I could say I'd stood on their platforms!

Of course, the worst one has to be Fishguard Harbour from 2007-08 (I think there may be a couple of others too?), with the incredible interchange value of -1...

Those aliens again, they keep on spiriting folk away.