Great Western Coffee Shop

Released by the ORR today.

Available to download at: http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/server/show/nav.1529 (http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/server/show/nav.1529)

Many fascinating statistics which I'm sure you'll all enjoy analysing.  One in particular answering my own question of this time last year:


The answer is a rise from 60000 to 105000 per annum.  I make than an increase of 75%.  Staggering what a bit of advertising and the odd extra train can do - even with a route that only has a 30 or 40mph speed limit!

Errr....thats 75%.....?

Good point, Chris - now corrected in my original post.  A combination of being darn useless at maths and getting all excited and carried away with myself!  Still very impressive though, huh?

Indeed, now whether they can compete with the bus *and* make money on the route.....? Be interesting to see what / how Chiltern do pre closure.

Top 15 least used stationsFGW scoring highly with three of the top fifteen.

27% increase in footfall at Pilning - always good news :D

A very sharp drop at Melksham (27,656 to 10,028) along with "No obvious reason to explain change in usage".  Well I can think of something obvious - how about the incredibly poor undeserved service provided to this town.

But doesn't help in getting a decent service restored.

The 10,028 is indeed explained by the service level, and the timing of the two trains that there are away from peak commuter times.  The report states:

"No obvious reason to explain change in usage"  which can be looked at two ways

a) There is no change in station usage!  The figures are ticket sales, which were distorted in past years because of "Melksham Specials".

b) The use of the wording "no obvious reason" is hurtful.  It indicates that our campaign and inputs have not reached the consultant that the ORR employed as their expert ... we've ben shouting about the skewed stats for years, and I'm delighted to report that the GWRUS made an adjustment, as have figures / work done by Wiltshire Council who are also very much aware.

There's an old thread on "Melksham Specials" here:
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=1569.0
and the same thing applied to Bradford-on-Avon and Chippenham too.

Yet, curiously, there's good news for the TransWilts in these figures - the examples already quoted of how things grew at Bicester.  And looking at Melksham in comparison to the nearest similar (better served) town, we see:
* Warminster - 312000 (15.6 journeys per catchment area inhabitant)
* Melksham - 10000 (0.45 journeys per catchment area inhabitant)
Which is an indicator of potential.  So - good in parts; sure, I would rather see many more on the existing services, but people don't want to leave the town at 06:40 in the morning ... only getting back at 19:47 ... on a daily basis. So it's a hard sell.  Double the services, you'll quadruple the traffic.  Run a service at a similar level to Warminster's and - given a year or two to work in - you'll have traffic levels approaching theirs from just this one stations.

There's a huge danger of turning the TransWilts into just "The Melksham story" .  It isn't to the Melksham loadings, which could be 300,000 a year by 2015, you need to add the loadings of all the other flows too and you'll be nudging a million journeys a year - that's somewhere just shy of 3,000 journeys per day, or 150 per train on a 10-train service.  Let's see - a 150 has 150 seats - perfect case  ;D

Did no-one tell the ORR that this hasn't existed since 1989?

Colwall is an interchange?

And how come Deepdene isn't referred to as Dorking Deepdene? At least Dorking West's figures are a little more realistic (still doesn't reflect true numbers)

Unless I have had a glass of wine too many the 09/10 entry and exit figures are absolutely identical. Surely not!

TJ

You're absolutely right that the figures quoted in table 3-1 of the report are identical for exits and entries, but remember that they're only quoted to six significant figures and we're dealing with numbers of the order of a billion. So saying 1,065.39 million is the equivalent of saying 1,065,390,000: the numbers have in effect been rounded to the nearest ten thousand.

But having said that, I just opened the spreadsheet and summed the column for total entries and the column for total exits... Those numbers are 1,065,386,249 and 1,065,386,260 respectively, for a total difference of a whole eleven passengers which still seems implausibly small!

With the full file a bit daunting with all its columns, colours and data, I thought I'd do a simplified version just extracting the First Great Western managed stations, as it makes it clearer to see the trends.

There's two sets of data below, split over three images each.  The first is listed alphabetically, the second is listed by the highest percentage increase.  Noticeable that as well as Bicester Town, Islip also makes the top ten.  If you ignore Dorking West (which is obviously not accurate) and the small base for Quintrel Downs, the next obvious trend is for the Cornish branch lines - with large increases especially on the Falmouth branch, reflecting the improved service frequency.  There's some good increases on the Severn Beach route too. 

Of the large stations (1 million or more a year), Oxford showed very strong growth of 6.8%.  A good year for Cheltenham and Truro, too.  All whilst the country was going through a financial downturn!

(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5172/5482123663_21753e74c4_b.jpg)

(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5251/5482125163_ae06e471dd_b.jpg)

(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5093/5482126325_2590d50d1e_b.jpg)

And listed by percentage increases and decreases...

(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5139/5482128663_9356e1df76_b.jpg)

(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5099/5482725322_3298afbd6a_b.jpg)

(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5296/5482131101_8f300189df_b.jpg)


At least Coombe spared Melksham's blushes (respecting the fact that Melksham's figures are dubious to say the least!).

It'll be interesting to see the impact the barriers at Exeter Central and Truro have on future figures

Apparently Truro has unearthed 600 journeys per week that were going free......

600 journeys a week represents 1200 entries and exits, so around 6% of Truro's footfall.

Note that the Devon and Cornish branchline figures are understated, as Rover and Ranger tickets are not included, as it is not possible to attribute starting or ending points for the journey. Thus Lelant Saltings has only 622 entries and exits all year, whereas I guess it might see that much traffic in a day in August. It's a shame, as it completely misrepresents the value of the branch (and I'm guessing the Looe branch amongst others as well).


But everyone who starts a journey (entries) has to finish it somewhere (exits),  so in theory the answers would be identical. If it were significantly different then it would show that the methodology used to estimate journeys in travelcard areas was not working correctly.

Great to see the Newquay and Falmouth lines on the up due to increase in services.

Plus anyone notice that Euston has now overtaken Paddington?

In defence of Coombe, wasn't it in this period that it was closed for some time because the platform had partially collapsed?

It is heartening to see that the investment - by local groups as well as FGW and Network Rail - in the West Country branch lines is yielding results in spite of the tough economic climate. I can't help but think that were the TransWilts, Portishead and Tavistock projects realised, we'd have similar success stories.



 

Seems odd that most stations between Paddington & Slough recorded quite a big decrease. Where have all the passengers gone? Did the daily ticket inspections at these stations for several months frighten fare dodgers away?

Ah, having re-read some of the earlier posts I think this can possibly be explained.Oyster pay as you was introduced during the 09/10 period wasn't it? FGW don't sell tickets on oyster so the reduced ticket sales at these FGW stations are probably the result of passengers topping up their ticket at their local corner shop.

Incidentally having moved away, my nearest FGW station is now Dorking Deepdene which isn't in the list above. Neither is Paddington unless I missed it. :)

Not sure why I've missed Dorking Deepdene, but Paddington is missing due to it being a Network Rail run station, only FGW managed stations are in my list.  That was purely because it was easy to cut and paste the FGW stations but time consuming to do others.  If you need to refer to those other stations, then they are all contained in the official file linked to at the start of the thread.

Thanks for taking the time to make that mass of data a bit more digestible, II!

Wasn^t sure whether to make comments in the Filton RPO thread or start a new one, hopefully this is as good a home as any.

I note that the Filton figures have increased again by approx 11% in the latest stats, from 536,958 to 598,032, with no prospect of this level of increase diminishing in coming years either. And as most members are aware even these figures do not tell the full story due to the rampant fare dodging which occurs.

I suspect that the recent ticket check exercise will have revealed exactly how inaccurate the figures actually are, as (I understand) the level of uncollected revenue runs into the ^100,000^s. It^s difficult to estimate from that sort of figure the missing footfalls but it must be a fair percentage.

I would also be fairly confident in saying that passenger numbers are probably far beyond the original design capacity, certainly on platform 1 in the eve peak, so as a simple exercise I thought I would see what facilities were on offer at stations with similar usage figures to Filton, and chose 2 at random.  ;)

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

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

I^m fully aware that comparisons are a touchy area, but it was interesting to note that surveyors were busy at Filton this morning. It is probably a bit soon after the ticket checks a few weeks ago to think that action has already been taken to look into station improvements.

I^ll not go into here what I think of the facilities at Trowbridge, and the sort of station a County town should have.  8)

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

yeoford is up 32% but is now a request stop so next year will be interesting

I am sure there are many varied reasons for the differences in station use from year to year that the compilers were unaware of.
However as my main interest was in the Cotswold Line stations use, I was pleasantly surprised how little the figures had declined in the report. In this year the Cotswold Line was closed for 3 weeks in the summer on the line between Moreton and Oxford and for 6 weeks between Moreton and Worcester whilst the preparation works were in progress for the redoubling project currently in full blown progress.
If you allow for this extended closure when ticket sales were much lower as you could very often use the replacement bus service without paying (and I know many did not because the bus drivers were not interested) then I think Cotswold Line use would have shown real greater use compared to many other lines.

These were published today.

http://orr.gov.uk/statistics/published-stats/station-usage-estimates

Many thanks, John. Can't see the full figures as I don't have Excel, but the PDF report shows some fascinating figures. Most eye-catching, for me, is Digby & Sowton, which has seen a 98% increase in traffic. Nothing compared to Dorking West's 348,838% increase (no prizes for guessing how that figure came about!), but when you look at the increase as a physical number rather than a percentage, Digby has increased passenger numbers by 368,000 up to 742,000. That is just astonishing. The report puts it down to new housing in the area - I would say that the Exeter Chief's continuing success is a more significant factor.

New figures now added in to our station comparator ... http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/smr/

Year on year historic data for download - extra column added at http://www.wellho.net/data/railstats.xyz

Graphs for postcode areas at http://www.wellho.net/demo/railuse.php?place=SL

... E & O E with this lot - please let me know of any problems !

At a cursory glance, the growth is much more patchy than in previous years. I'm seeing quite a few stations and areas where the figures look broadly unchanged or have even fallen.

You're missing Fishguard & Goodwick (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/smr/FGW.html), new station for 2012.

And a few others as [thus far] I've just added new data for existing stations - probably for several years.  Here's a first (2011/12 and 2012/13) look at that newer data, and I need to go back further, I suspect, with each of these.

ARM 126088 141076 Armadale
BKR 43262 42646 Blackridge
BSV 91630 225250 Buckshaw Parkway
CAC 90992 92996 Caldercruix
CAW 4883262 6499764 Canada Water
CBD - 3788 Conon Bridge
CDN 300972 286906 Coulsdon Town
DLJ 2295104 2759676 Dalston Junction
FAR 4944088 5040844 Farringdon
FGW - 12072 Fishguard & Goodwick
HGG 1172580 1547454 Haggerston
HOX 1042858 1386818 Hoxton
OKE 3526 3438 Okehampton
ROE 979098 1048310 Rotherhithe
SMC 136 150 Sampford Courtenay
SDE 1658562 2028742 Shadwell
SDC 2617624 3263664 Shoreditch High Street
SIA 57208 340814 Southend Airport
SQE 1809904 2044336 Surrey Quays
WPE 1081336 1270984 Wapping
WCA 3643542 4450390 Whitechapel

Party time at Parson Street (http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/smr/PSN.html), though.

Continued strong growth on the Severn Beach Line, which supports the evidence of my own eyes.

Excepting Redland for some strange reason. That's recorded a 2% drop, whilst all other stations on the line show growth - averaging around a 12% increase.

Doesn't the fare structure make the figures for individual stations on the Severn Beach Line unreliable, though? That's why everyone generally quotes the overall line figures instead, I believe.

Whilst there is a flat fares structure with Inner and Outer Zones, tickets are still sold with the requested boarding/alighting station. There will be some instances when people ask for (e.g.) a Single to Bristol Temple Meads after boarding at Shirehampton, but will be sold one from Sea Mills as that is when the Conductor/ATE gets to them.

I was told early last year that Conductors/ATEs should always try to sell to/from the actual station a passenger is boarding/will alight at. There was a period though when they would (I think for their own convenience) sell tickets to or from either the boundary (Clifton Down) or end points (Avonmouth/Severn Beach, Bristol TM) of the zones.

As I've said though, there are still instances where the actual ticket sold doesn't reflect the journey.

...and then there's the old chestnut of tickets that aren't sold, i.e. people who are given no opportunity to buy one or (as I have seen more than once) have their offer of fare money turned down because the TM is too busy.