On Feb 10, 12:02*am, Arthur Figgis
wrote:
quote [1]
"It is a fact is it not that relatively few Londoners use London
transport in any way. Most people don’t use London transport
any great sense of regularity."
/quote

What do we reckon of the claim?

There is little context, but the use of the term "London (t/T)ransport"
suggests that he might be excluding National Rail.

A lot of Londoners - which I assume means residents rather than
specifically people who eat jellied eels and talk like Dick van Dyke -
aren't regular commuters. A lot of people don't use buses or the
Underground (especially in south London, obviously) very much, and many
people are only dimly aware that the trams exist.

The claim strikes me as at least plausible (excluding the benefits to
motorists of public transport freeing road space), but has anyone got
any hard numbers?

See TfL's "Travel in London Report 4" (it's the most recent one),
which "draws on the latest available data, generally reflecting the
2010 calendar year, or the 2010/11 financial year, and sets these in
the longer-term context of the evolution of transport and related
trends in London" (as per the report's overview).

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloa...n-report-4.pdf

Previous reports available he
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/abou...ions/1482.aspx

Particularly relevant is section 2.10 - "Travel by London residents –
TfL’s London Travel Demand Survey
(LTDS)" - starts on page 38 (PDF page 30).

Table 2.6 is perhaps the most helpful? For the year 2010-2011,
Underground/DLR and bus/tram had a combined modal share of trips by
London residents of 23% - note this does not include National Rail
(and the NR figure of 5% presumably encompasses London Overground pax
numbers), also worth noting that walking counts as a mode here and so
makes up for 30% of trips.

Some of the (diagrammatic) Figures in that section of the report are
quite interesting too (e.g. Figures 2.4 to 2.7). In Figure 2.7 it's
not entirely clear (to me at least) whether or not bus trips made
*outside* Greater London count, for instance a bus trip to get to/from
the railway station from which the passenger then reaches London.

Also worth a gander is Table 2.8, the "distance travelled per day by
London residents" by different modes.

So a spattering of damn lies for you - though it doesn't perhaps
really cover how often those more infrequent users make use of the
system (FSVO 'system'). Plenty more apparently resides on TfL's
'Romulus' web portal (http://romulus.tfl.gov.uk/webview/), but to
access it you need to get a login from the she-wolf first.

I think I have to find Tony Arbour's claim wanting, not least because
of (what seems to me at least) the internal inconsistency between the
first sentence and the second. But 23% of trips - or 28% if including
NR - isn't "relatively few" in my books (and taking walking out of the
picture it's 33%, or 40% including NR).

Someone will be along shortly to rubbish my cack-handed interpretation
of the stats...
(...in my defence, I did at least give the world of empirical evidence
a shot, which is perhaps more than can be said of Mr Arbour's
effort...)