Research on PTL (Passenger Time Lost) measure for Wales

Hi there,

I am doing research on Wales and Borders railway, particularly on the new punctuality measure called Passenger Time Lost (PTL). But since I am external to this franchise, I am finding it really hard to obtain detailed info on how this measure will be calculated. I would really appreciate if you could share useful links or documentation that could enlighten me!

Welcome to the forum.

I believe that the concept (if not the precise methodology) has been used for the London Underground for some years. You could perhaps search for some documents or results on the TfL website, etc. as some background.

LMOE said:

Hi there,

I am doing research on Wales and Borders railway, particularly on the new punctuality measure called Passenger Time Lost (PTL). But since I am external to this franchise, I am finding it really hard to obtain detailed info on how this measure will be calculated. I would really appreciate if you could share useful links or documentation that could enlighten me!

Click to expand...

The general formula is set out in an ORR report http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/25376/review-of-new-performance-metrics-2017-07-18.pdf see section 3.2.

As Dr Hoo mentions London Underground have used Lost Customer Hours for some time - from memory it was introduced for the ill-fated PPP maintenance regimes to incentivise companies to balance costs of maintaining the network against disbenefits to passengers - ie how to work out if it was more economic to close lines at weekends to do upgrade work rather than spend years of working at nights.

LMOE said:

Hi there,

I am doing research on Wales and Borders railway, particularly on the new punctuality measure called Passenger Time Lost (PTL). But since I am external to this franchise, I am finding it really hard to obtain detailed info on how this measure will be calculated. I would really appreciate if you could share useful links or documentation that could enlighten me!

Click to expand...

In a former life I worked on the PTL calcs for one of the bidders for W&B - effectively it is a weighted version of average minutes lateness where service lateness at a location is multiplied by average passenger alightings (usually by service group). The argument is that this more accurately represents the impact on passengers, especially compared to PPM and similar where lateness is only recorded at the end of the route. The document linked to by @deltic is a good place to start.

Cheers,
Slip

Thank you all @Dr Hoo, @deltic and @slipdigby, I had the chance to look at the ORR report, which is a very good introductory info and discussion on the reliability of these new metrics. I'll check the TfL website for more info. I agree that PTL is more focused on the customer satisfaction across the whole journey than PPM, so I guess it is a positive shift from the older metrics. Thanks for sharing!