Richard J. wrote:
Dave Arquati wrote:
snip
Now let me make some observations.
Firstly, it seems to be unfashionable in the media to support the
WLT in any way. The article makes a great deal of the fact that
TfL claim the consultation result was "skewed" in favour of the
opponents. Is it just me, or doesn't that seem pretty logical?
After all, who can bothered to respond to a consultation by
saying "OK"?
People whose daily journeys by bus or other means are slow/crowded or
otherwise unpleasant, and who would welcome something better. If there
aren't many people who care enough to say so, the case for the tram is
not proved.
I don't think that's true - if the case for any given scheme was only
ever measured by the number of people who cared enough to say they
supported them, then many things wouldn't go ahead. Opponents of
something are always more vociferous than proponents - after all, the
case *for* a scheme is already being fought if it exists at all, but the
case against it must be taken up by someone.
Secondly, the article says that the survey company carried out
interviews in 6 LBs as well as South Bucks - but the sample size
was too small to be worthwhile statistically in South Bucks,
Kensington & Chelsea, Brent and Hounslow.
It strikes me as somewhat obvious that those four areas are all
outside the area the tram travels through, and therefore it
wouldn't make sense to survey a large number of people in those
areas because they're not as affected as much as people in the
three other boroughs, which I presume are Hillingdon, Ealing
and Hammersmith & Fulham.
There is certainly a lot of concern in areas away from the Uxbridge Road
about diverting general traffic on to unsuitable residential roads or on
to other main roads which are already congested. In L.B. Hounslow, for
example, Chiswick would be affected in that way; wesxtbound traffic on
Acton Vale would be diverted down Askew Road, Goldhawk Road, Chiswick
High Road, Chiswick Lane to the A4. There's no point in surveying that
area so thinly that the sample size doesn't allow valid conclusions to
be drawn.
OK, you make a good point. I would say that the views of the people
living closest to the tram route are the most important, but it doesn't
do any favours to under-survey those further away from the route who
will also be affected.
Let's do a little maths. We'll call those voters in the boroughs
where small samples were taken, "bad" voters. Let the voters in
the 3 remaining boroughs be called "good" voters. There are 631
"good" voters and 186 "bad" voters.
The quoted support for the tram was 75%, which is probably
rounded, but we'll take the figure. Of the total 871 voters,
there are 653 "for" the tram and 218 "against".
Let's introduce a worst-case scenario. Those naughty "bad" voters
all vote "for" the tram, skewing the poll in favour of it, when
their votes statistically don't count. By means of punishment and
correction, we can remove those 186 "bad" voters from the total
count and also from the "for" group. That leaves 467 voters "for"
the tram, out of 685 "good" voters.
What figure does that leave? About 68% in favour, and that's a
*minimum* support for the tram in the remaining boroughs - I'm
sure some people in the outer boroughs voted against it.
And your point is? You seem to be trying to argue something from
considering only part of this small and unrepresentative survey of West
London.
I was arguing that the Standard article says that the survey is invalid
because of the low sample sizes in those areas less affected by the tram
scheme, and it implies that therefore people *don't* support the tram. I
think the survey results are more important than the consultation
results which will naturally be skewed towards the opponents, and I
think that the survey cannot be invalidated as it provides valuable
information.
However, in the interests of good science, I don't want to back myself
into a corner with regards to the scheme (TfL and the Standard seem to
have backed themselves into opposite corners) - so I looked up the
survey results for myself, which are on page 76 of this PDF document:
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/trams/download...2004-app-a.pdf
Interestingly, the Standard-quoted total surveyed is 871, but the survey
reports 815 total. Even more interestingly, the sum of the numbers
surveyed in each borough totals 828!!
Using a total of 828, some analysis reveals that:
- In the inner area (the boroughs through which the scheme passes), 51%
of the sample explicitly support the tram, with 15% neither supporting
nor opposing, 20% explicitly opposing, and 13% not knowing enough about
the scheme to make a judgement.
- In the outer areas (the indicative results), support is 66%,
on-the-fence is 18%, opposition is 9% and not-knowing is 7%.
- I attempted to find the TfL figure the article quotes (a three-to-one
majority in favour). The likely candidate seems to be the sum of both
supporters and on-the-fencers across all surveyed areas, which yields
71%. The same figure just for the inner area is 67%.
- Just to see what figure you could produce if you really wanted to, if
you take everyone who doesn't explicitly oppose the scheme, you can get
80% for the inner area... and 49% don't explicit support it.
My new conclusion is that there seem to be f-ups all round, and perhaps
someone - preferably neither TfL nor the Standard - should carry out a
new survey.
PS out of interest, nobody surveyed in Hounslow explicitly opposed the
scheme, and 81% explicitly supported it. Although the sample isn't large
enough, it would be interesting to see where the people surveyed in
Hounslow lived.
--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London