On Mon, 23 Apr 2007, Paul Corfield wrote:

On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:09:41 +0100, Tom Anderson
wrote:

What fraction of LU stations are gated? What fractions of trips on LU
are now done with Oyster?

Very close to 100% for stations being gated. However a proportion of
entry and exit is via open interchange and there is no need to validate
at these points unless using PAYG.

True. Any guess as to the scale of that?

I have not seen the figures for a while but a considerable proportion of
LU trips are now on Oyster but it is not as high as you might think due
to One Day Travelcards remaining on magnetics and also a lot of people
will be using TOC purchased Travelcards that are also on magnetics.

Ah yes, had forgotten about those. Are you meaning normal travelcards
bought from NR stations (are these not on oyster?) or tickets like
Sticksford-on-Sea to Z1 seasons, which include a travelcard part?

If the answers to these questions are both 'the vast majority', then LU
should now have a massive amount of data about journeys being made on
its network - in terms of where they start and end, at least. Actual
hard numbers, not estimates or surveys of passenger density on each
line. This would be really interesting to look at. Does it exist, is it
public, and what would be my chances of getting it via FOIA?

It was certainly the intent that the data would be used for journey and
service planning.

That's what i thought.

To be honest it is more valuable in some respects where it shows modal
interchange or bus to bus interchange. The opportunities to better
understand "total" journeys rather than just the rail element are more
attractive and adjusting bus services to provide through or "round the
corner" services is easier.

Absolutely - although the lack of people touching *out* of buses is going
to hamper this, at least at the finish of a rail-bus journey.

Nevertheless, the tube-only info would also be interesting!

I have yet to see anything internal to LU that shows how the Oyster data
is being used in terms of planning. Planning data is not adjusted every
few months so the use of Oyster derived data may not have happened yet
on any large scale. There are certain key models that would use it but I
don't know when these are being updated (not really my area to be
honest).

Fair enough. We've had oyster for a while now, though, so i'm surprised
the data hasn't made it out there.

The other key issue is the reliability of the data and its statistical
robustness. The collection of Oyster data is relatively new and while it
is obviously based around actual usage there will still be some risks as
to its reliability and these would have to be assessed and compensated
for before it was used for modelling purposes.

True, but i would think that armed with the raw counts, reasonably
accurate entry/exit figures for each station and the dodgy but simple
assumptions that travelcard trips through ungated stations are distributed
in the same way as PAYG trips, and that paper ticket trips are distributed
the same as oyster trips, you could come up with something coherent and
useful.

The fact that take up is still being promoted and that TOC equipment
roll out is yet to come will affect the data for years to come.

True, but right now, we should have usable data for LU.

You have not specified the granularity of the information you would want
but I would be surprised if the data was released to the public at any
great level of detail. You might get broad brush annualised data for
journey flows but perhaps not "xxx passengers travelled from Epping to
Loughton on Sunday 22 April 2007".

I'd be quite happy with a matrix of annual flows between each pair of
stations, or perhaps several such matrices, for different days of the week
and times of day.

Still there's nothing to stop you asking under FOI.

True!

Also, am i right in thinking paper tickets either don't have a unique
ID on them, or that this isn't recorded by gates? If not, LU should
already have had this data.

Some magnetic tickets did have unique numbers but they were a very small
part of the overall population. The vast majority did not and although
they were counted by type at each gate you could not follow "ticket
123456" through the system.

As i suspected.

Cheers for the info!

tom

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