Station Usage figures from the ORR

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Sorry, meant as in the numbers are not a true reflection of those people that are using the station because they need to.
The Twitter group is exactly that, they use these figures to highlight stations with little usage and then organise days out to visit these stations. it's kind of a badge of honor to them to not only to visit these stations but to also see a spike in usage figures

The whole "need" v "want", and "want because encouraged" is an interesting discussion.

Most people who use Trowbridge station use it because they need to. They live there, work there, have business there.  The traffic for people coming to see the Trowbridge Museum, the Teasel dryers or the Isaac Pitman train because they want to is (sadly) low ... and the town lacks a harbour, sandy beaches or a theme park.

A lot of people use St Ives station not because they need to, but because they want to.  It's a great day out and when on holiday why not go there?  It's in  holiday area, an excellent choice, and it does have some of those things that Trowbridge lacks.

For a small number of people, there is more pleasure in the journey and aspects of it that the destination, and where a station's use is low, those people will be a significant part of the station usage but, yes, for the station to grow to a sustainable passenger number you need to encourage others as well - lunch trips to The Plough, take your surfboard to The Wave, travel to work at Westgate ... connect to the bus to Wildplace ... and service start to increase to meet the demand. Up to a certain level of service and you then become a viable commute for residents into the nearby city and as they take jobs there you move up from want to need, you put up property values, you encourage some more housing perhaps.    The great oak tree that can grow from the current acorn of one of our least used (but much increased to show it can be done) stations.

[stuving]

The whole "need" v "want", and "want because encouraged" is an interesting discussion.

It may be, but surely there is one relevant sense in which the "friends of poor little put-upon Pilning station" journeys are less real. That's where you are using passenger numbers, and growth in those numbers, as a basis for forward projections to a future with more of a train service (and more of a station to go with it).

[Dispatch Box]

How many has Gloucester got, cant find anything about it.

[grahame]

The whole "need" v "want", and "want because encouraged" is an interesting discussion.

It may be, but surely there is one relevant sense in which the "friends of poor little put-upon Pilning station" journeys are less real. That's where you are using passenger numbers, and growth in those numbers, as a basis for forward projections to a future with more of a train service (and more of a station to go with it).

There is also the sense that they show that the station has community support - so perhaps they are more significant. I'm writing a press release for Melksham Rail User Group, where we have moved up from under 5 journeys each way per day - many of those to encourage use and promote a strange and underused service - to over 105 - many of those daily commutes, and few (these days) being those stepping stone journeys encouraged to prove that the community did support its station.

[grahame]

How many has Gloucester got, cant find anything about it.

See (Gloucester - next trains).html" target="_blank">http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/smr/GCR.html on this site

[Dispatch Box]

How many has Gloucester got, cant find anything about it.

See (Gloucester - next trains).html" target="_blank">http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/smr/GCR.html on this site

Thanks, OUR GRAHAM!, Was a riveting read, Sorry I sound a bit like cilla black.

[didcotdean]

"Distortion"s as I would describe them come in with some of the ticket sales anomalies such as buying tickets to other stations beyond where you're going as they may be cheaper, or splitting your journey at Didcot which (on  return trip) will give 4 uses that don't exist

Didcot has both potential distortions. A few years ago the Oxford-London season tickets bought at Didcot (same price as Didcot-London and more versatile) were added-in to the Didcot Parkway figures, but there is little that can be done about attributing those bought elsewhere and primarily used to/from Didcot.

[grahame]

"Distortion"s as I would describe them come in with some of the ticket sales anomalies such as buying tickets to other stations beyond where you're going as they may be cheaper, or splitting your journey at Didcot which (on  return trip) will give 4 uses that don't exist

Didcot has both potential distortions. A few years ago the Oxford-London season tickets bought at Didcot (same price as Didcot-London and more versatile) were added-in to the Didcot Parkway figures, but there is little that can be done about attributing those bought elsewhere and primarily used to/from Didcot.

Although the compilers make adjustments / calculations for group area tickets and rovers, etc, there is a limit to how far they can go; many issues are well known, and the comparison from one year to the next is often more important than the magnitude - with a further proviso that if a distortion is removed or added, that will show in year on year.

Melksham figures from 2007 for some years were distorted by "Melksham Special" tickets - people travelling from Trowbridge to Bristol but bought Melksham to Bristol because it was cheaper.  Real numbers were a tiny fraction of the ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) reported number - we knew it, and so did the powers that be.   So we had numbers that allowed us to get looked at, but then no current evidence that anyone trusted.

To this day ... off peak return Melksham to stations on the Severn Beach line are cheaper than off peak returns Melksham to Bristol.  Numbers are low enough not to distort Bristol Temple Meads and people are travelling from Melksham anyway, but there's potential to "help" St Andrew's Road and save money too.

[stuving]

By coincidence, Arafer (the French road and rail regulator, somewhat like ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about)) has just produced its annual report on railways for (calendar) 2017. It's full of data - 65 pages of tables and bar charts - so I won't even attempt to summarise it. Unfortunately the regime was changed in 2016, so there isn't much history available, just last year's report on 2015 & 2016. There may be more elsewhere, though not in the same format and I suspect much less complete. Plus, of course, 2016 was a year with a long series of rail strikes in it, so comparisons are of questionable value. There are no figures for all the stations, either.

Given that caveat, they report a 7% overall increase in passenger numbers, after falls every year since 2011. They attribute this in part to the opening of two new LGVs^▸ (Large Goods Vehicle) (Bordeaux and Rennes). But I'm not sure what metric that's based on - there are also some annexes and a spreadsheet of data that may say something else.

I did, however, find some numbers for stations, from SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) and on the data.gouv.fr open data site. These are estimates of unknown methodology, but not from ticket sales, of people present in stations as passengers, and for the biggest stations for other reasons too. The formatting of the .csv file is a bit odd, so I've tidied it up and will attach it and an Excel version. Note: years run 2016-2015-2014, and second column per year is total of visitors, travelling or not.

[SandTEngineer]

.....and: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-wales-46209535

[eightonedee]

I did, however, find some numbers for stations, from SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) and on the data.gouv.fr open data site. These are estimates of unknown methodology, but not from ticket sales, of people present in stations as passengers, and for the biggest stations for other reasons too. The formatting of the .csv file is a bit odd, so I've tidied it up and will attach it and an Excel version. Note: years run 2016-2015-2014, and second column per year is total of visitors, travelling or not.

Thanks Stuving - that's fascinating!

In some ways France is like the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) - by far the largest numbers at the termini and major commuter interchanges in the capital city. However outside (possibly) Lyons, Lille and Strasbourg the main centres outside Paris seem to have less commuter traffic than Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow or even Reading. If the figures for passengers include those changing trains, and if Reading was in France it would be the second busiest station in France outside Greater Paris after Lyons Part Dieu!

Presumably the blanks for the latest year represent closed stations. There seem quite a few with very small (single figure) numbers. I googled the 2 claiming only 2 passengers (Croix D'Hins and La Roche en Brenil), the former closed in 2012 and the latter in 2011. Are they perhaps keyboard mistakes when tickets were sold?

[stuving]

In some ways France is like the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) - by far the largest numbers at the termini and major commuter interchanges in the capital city. However outside (possibly) Lyons, Lille and Strasbourg the main centres outside Paris seem to have less commuter traffic than Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow or even Reading. If the figures for passengers include those changing trains, and if Reading was in France it would be the second busiest station in France outside Greater Paris after Lyons Part Dieu!

Provincial suburban rail services have always been a bit on the sparse side. In 1997 I was leaving Lyon and stopped to examine a couple of suburbs, one of which was Feyzin (11 km from the centre down the Rhone). I was struck then by how poor its rail service was, being essentially a few trains to and from work, some irregularly during the day, and last train by 19:00. Looking again now it has improved, to hourly, and twice hourly in the peaks, but while the last train from Lyon is later (21:24 ex Perrache) it's a bus (a typical SNCF^▸ (Societe Nationale des Chemins de fer Francais - French National Railways) trick).

Though picking a single comparator is dodgy, somewhere like Tipton might do - on a main line but without the big intercity trains. It does have more trains, and the go on later, but with a similar passenger number (ca. 100,000).

Presumably the blanks for the latest year represent closed stations. There seem quite a few with very small (single figure) numbers. I googled the 2 claiming only 2 passengers (Croix D'Hins and La Roche en Brenil), the former closed in 2012 and the latter in 2011. Are they perhaps keyboard mistakes when tickets were sold?

I've found a big cache of SNCF's open data, which is where this came from, but still nothing to say how they got them. But remember that a station (or in the cases you give a whole line) that's closed is still likely to have buses that think they are TERs. In this there is a Mobigo "service" - if you can call it that!

[charles_uk]

Does anyone know when the 2018-19 figures are likely to be released? Normally they come out in December but the ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) website is still showing the 2017-18 figures as the most current.

[Western Pathfinder]

It's later on this month on or about the 14th of January this year .