Orcats

[Intermodal]

Any good guide on how this works or is it generally private?

 

[First class]

Private unfourtunately.

TOCs can't even see what each other gets, although it is probably easy to guess on some flows.

 

[martinsh]

Private unfourtunately.

TOCs can't even see what each other gets, although it is probably easy to guess on some flows.

They make it up as they go along, don't they ?

 

[First class]

What does the OP want to know about ORCATS?

I can help, but won't provide numbers.

LENNON is also key to ORCATS. Depending on what you want to know, LENNON may be relevant.

ORCATS (Operational Research Computerised Allocation of Tickets to Services), is a large centralised legacy computer system used in the UK. It is used for real time reservation and revenue sharing on interavailable tickets between Train Operating Companies (TOCs). The system is used to divide ticket revenue when a ticket or journey involves trains operated by multiple TOCs. The system was owned by British Rail, and is now managed by the Association of Train Operating Companies.

 

[Intermodal]

Well, I was just wondering how it is calculated. For example if there is an Off Peak return at £30, and three TOCs can be used each way, would each TOC get £10, or is it done based on who's "turf" it is, or based on service frequency, or what? How do open access operators come into it?

 

[First class]

Well, I was just wondering how it is calculated. For example if there is an Off Peak return at £30, and three TOCs can be used each way, would each TOC get £10, or is it done based on who's "turf" it is, or based on service frequency, or what? How do open access operators come into it?

Lets say Liverpool to Chester SDS Any Permitted, £8.50.

Step 1
9% of that ticket goes to whatever TOC sold it (at a station)

Step 2
Merseyrail, ATW, Virgin, London Midland, TPE, EMT and Northern are all entitled to a part of that ticket due to various permitted routes being available, (via Runcorn, Warrington & Birkenhead).

Step 3
Allocation Factors
-Who runs the most trains
-Journey times of those trains
-The route of the trains
-The frequency of service
-The capacity of the rolling stock

My Chester Any Permitted example would meanthe fare split as follows:

Merseyrail - 60%
Arriva - 15%
Commission 9%
All other TOCs share remainder.

If it was route BIRKENHEAD
Merseyrail - 91%
Commission 9%
All other TOCs 0%

The operator who sets the fare is *usually* the one who stands to make the most money from the flow, although this isn't always the case. Sometimes it is better for one operator to set the fare, despite say never operating any services.

Consider this,

Merseyrail can increase fares by Inflation only.
ATW can increase fares by more then inflation.

Example:
If Liverpool-Chester Any Permitted was priced by Merseyrail initially, then "given" to ATW, then Merseyrail will still get most of the ORCATS share (as per above criteria). Merseyrail therefore have a "fares rise" that is "out of their control" but increases their revenue nonetheless.

 

[bb21]

There is also an example of ORCATS working here.

 

[yorkie]

Well, I was just wondering how it is calculated. For example if there is an Off Peak return at £30, and three TOCs can be used each way, would each TOC get £10, or is it done based on who's "turf" it is, or based on service frequency, or what? How do open access operators come into it?

There is no way to know what the formula is, so no way to know how much each TOC would get. All we can go on is little snippets of information that have been revealed. But if TOCs don't like what the formula produces, they can appeal.

119. The majority of rail tickets are ‘inter-available’ which means that they are valid for use
on the trains of more than one operator. For example, on the Leicester to Leeds route,
passengers might choose to travel on any combination of services provided by three
different operators.226 There is no record of the passenger’s actual choice of service
operator, so unless a very restrictive fare was chosen, there is no way of knowing which
operator actually carried the passenger. As a consequence, a central industry model,
ORCATS*, is used to compute the allocation of fare box receipts to the different operators
on a route. To do this, assumptions are made about the most likely choices of passengers. It
is assumed, for example, that passengers are more likely to choose a faster, more frequent
service than a slower, less frequent one if their ticket allows.228 This system is vital in
facilitating passenger choice, but it also potentially enables a new operator on a route to
extract revenue from existing operators, thereby significantly altering the financial
circumstances of the franchise.

* The Operational Research Computerised Allocation of Tickets to Services system which is used to divide up ticket
revenue between passenger rail operators.

 

[RJ]

Manual ORCATS surveys are periodically undertaken in some cases. I spent a day in revenue management learning a thing or two about it.

 

[142094]

Probably a good thing about ORCATS is that it has allowed fringe operators such as GC to get into the market. Also would be good if some of the other Open Access scheme that have been mooted got off the ground, but half the time it seems to be the DfT saying it would extract revenue from other TOCs (then again wasn't privatisation meant to encourage competition? :roll.

 

[swt_passenger]

There is usually a section on ORCATS at the back of the annual stations usage report, because they need to use it to determine one of the usage stats, which is interchanges. Appendix 1 here: http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/upload/pdf/stn_usage_report_0910.pdf

Appendix 1 – Overview of the ORCATS Allocation Process
This section gives an outline of the Central Allocations File (CAF), which is used in producing the interchange figures, and the ORCATS process which is used to create the CAF.
Most of the train tickets that are sold are inter-available – the customer has a choice of routes and operators. For example, when a customer buys a ticket to travel from Leicester to Leeds, that customer may travel on various combinations of East Midlands Trains, East Coast, CrossCountry Trains and Northern, and may interchange at Doncaster, Sheffield, Derby or Nottingham. LENNON captures the sale of the ticket, but unless the ticket has stringent route restrictions, the route actually taken by the customer is not recorded.
The route taken by any particular customer may never be known, but some route options are more attractive than others. The customer is more likely to choose a faster, more frequent service than a slower, less frequent one. This likelihood can be translated into the proportions of customers choosing each route option, on a particular flow. (A ‘flow’ represents all journeys from a given origin station to a given destination station, irrespective of the route taken.) The revenue received from all customers on that flow should be split between different operators to reflect the proportion of customers which each operator carried. ORCATS was developed to model the choice made by the customers, and to allow revenue to be split between operators. It applies passenger choice modelling to the train timetable, to determine the relative attractiveness of different route alternatives. It then weights the results by journey mileage.
For any given timetable, ORCATS works out the possible routes between each origin and destination, and calculates the percentage of the passengers that are expected to choose each route based on the services in that timetable. The output from ORCATS is the Central Allocations File (CAF). This lists the proportion of journeys on each flow (or origin-destination pair) estimated to be made by each route alternative. For journeys involving interchanges, each leg of the journey is listed. By combining this information with LENNON data, which contains actual ticket sales figures for all flows, the number of interchanges occurring at individual stations has been estimated.