The Standard has this to say on some recent information about the West
London Tram survey (the one that came out in favour of the tram, as
opposed to the consultation that did not).

---
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/l...ing%20Standard

Mayor 'misled public'
By Ross Lydall Local Government Correspondent, Evening Standard
6 April 2005

Transport for London today stands accused of trying to mislead the
public over the level of support for a controversial £648 million tram
scheme.

More than 17,000 people responded to an official consultation on the
plans for the West London Tram, with almost 60 per cent against the project.

But TfL tried to disguise the level of opposition by commissioning a
separate survey of 817 people, which generated a three-to-one majority
in favour.

This allowed Mayor Ken Livingstone to claim the public consultation -
the biggest such exercise ever undertaken by TfL - was "skewed" because
only opponents bothered to take part.

Now new documents have raised questions over the significance of the
survey, which was undertaken for TfL by market research firm Synovate.

The company carried out interviews in six west London boroughs and in
South Buckinghamshire.

But it admitted that in four of the areas, the number of people
questioned was too small to make its findings "robust". Synovate
interviewed-67 people in Kensington-and Chelsea, 47 in Brent, 40 in
South Bucks and 32 in Hounslow. It warned TfL: "The information for
these boroughs should be treated as indicative and not as statistically
significant."

Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat chairwoman of the London Assembly
transport committee, accused TfL of using "smoke and mirrors" and said
it was another occasion in which the Mayor had refused to bow to
widespread opposition.

The Standard reported yesterday how the Mayor defied advisers to go
ahead with increasing the £5 congestion charge to ?8 on 4 July.

Ms Featherstone said: "Mr Livingstone's second term as Mayor has already
been littered with numerous occasions where he has left himself
increasingly cut off from what people in London really want.

"In the face of such hostility towards the tram, the Mayor should pause
for thought."

Anthony Lewis, of Save Ealing's Streets, said: "There is frustration and
anger that objections to the scheme have been ridden roughshod over."

The tram would run 13 miles along Uxbridge Road via Ealing and would
require the closure of part of Shepherd's Bush roundabout and the
re-routing of west-bound traffic from Acton High Street.

The Mayor says the tram, which would carry four to eight million
passengers a day, is essential to prevent the congested Uxbridge Road
coming to a halt.

But opponents say that with Uxbridge Road carrying 27,000 vehicles a
day, huge amounts of traffic would be diverted through residential areas.

Business lobby group London First said it could not back the scheme as
it shadowed much of the proposed Crossrail train line and was not a
priority for limited cash. The CBI and the London Chamber of Commerce
were also opposed.

A TfL spokeswoman denied the survey was flawed. She said it provided a
valuable insight into the views of residents who failed to respond to
the formal consultation.
---

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"?

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.

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.

My maths may be wrong, and I invite comments. If I'm right, maybe I
should write to the Standard... but I doubt they'd listen.

--
Dave Arquati
Imperial College, SW7
www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London

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.

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.

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.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

Richard J. wrote:
Dave Arquati wrote:
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.
--


His point is that if you remove the statistically unrepresentative part
of the survey it shows at least 68% of the people in the locality of
the new tram route do support it and that that is representative.

As always, when you do a survey of specific people, the results follow
the general opinion better than when you ask everyone for their views
because inevitably only people who are strongly against something write
in

wrote:
Richard J. wrote:
Dave Arquati wrote:
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.

His point is that if you remove the statistically unrepresentative
part of the survey it shows at least 68% of the people in the
locality of the new tram route do support it and that that is
representative.

Of course it's not representative! It only covers the boroughs through
which the road runs. If you ask people in buses queuing along the
Uxbridge Road whether they would like a shiny new tram with other
traffic removed from the bottlenecks, of course you'll get a favourable
answer (or at least you will if you don't tell them they'll have further
to walk to their nearest tram stop). But if you ask people in Chiswick
whether the tram is a good idea although it will divert traffic along
their residential roads, you'll get a different response, which
apparently you think can be discounted.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

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

"Dave Arquati" wrote in message
...

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.

Let's do a little maths. We'll call those voters in the boroughs where
small samples were taken, "bad" voters.

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.

If that's what the survey said, I'll give you the money myself! A more
realistic hypothesis would be that the voters in Kensingtyon, Brent etc
would all vote *against* the tram, since they will be paying for its
construction but won't benefit from it in any way.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 00:50:32 +0100, Dave Arquati wrote:

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.

The whole project has had zero impact on Hounslow, the question might as
well have been "Do you support trams".

Without further knowledge on just how traffic flow might be affected in the
area, I don't see how anyone can really comment either way.

Steve

Steve Peake wrote:
On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 00:50:32 +0100, Dave Arquati wrote:

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.

The whole project has had zero impact on Hounslow, the question
might as well have been "Do you support trams".

Without further knowledge on just how traffic flow might be
affected in the area, I don't see how anyone can really comment
either way.

Which is why, no doubt, TfL chose to announce very late in the
consultation the recommended diversionary routes for traffic forced off
the Uxbridge Road at places like Acton High Street. The information was
in an extra .pdf file on their site, but they didn't bother to tell all
the people who had by then received the consultation leaflet which
omitted that information. One wonders how much those surveyed in
Hounslow were told about the diversionary routes.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

Did the mean Hounslow the town or Hounslow Borough?

If they meant Hounslow borough then that takes in Chiswick, Brentford and
Osterley.
ie some of the places directly affected by the tram route which as the
article says
'may' force additional cars into those areas.

Hounslow the town may well say yes to the West london tram as they would not
be directly affected.
Hounslow needs a tram itself (along the A315 from Chiswick to Feltham) but I
have doubts anyone would vote for one.

A.

"Richard J." wrote in message
...
Steve Peake wrote:
On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 00:50:32 +0100, Dave Arquati wrote:

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.

The whole project has had zero impact on Hounslow, the question
might as well have been "Do you support trams".

Without further knowledge on just how traffic flow might be
affected in the area, I don't see how anyone can really comment
either way.

Which is why, no doubt, TfL chose to announce very late in the
consultation the recommended diversionary routes for traffic forced off
the Uxbridge Road at places like Acton High Street. The information was
in an extra .pdf file on their site, but they didn't bother to tell all
the people who had by then received the consultation leaflet which
omitted that information. One wonders how much those surveyed in
Hounslow were told about the diversionary routes.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

londoncityslicker wrote:
Did the mean Hounslow the town or Hounslow Borough?

The London Borough of Hounslow.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)