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Historical passenger flow data
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WatcherZero
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That fine a level of detail is commercially sensitive. You can sort of extrapolate more linear routes from station usage.
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Not so sensitive in the US, where Amtrak publish the annual revenue and ridership for each of their routes.
https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content...p-and-Revenue-Fact-Sheet-4_17_17-mm-edits.pdf
(opens a PDF file - see page 2)
WatcherZero
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Amtraks a state owned company with no competition, they publish the annual ridership on routes there to try and justify their continued state funding.
WatcherZero
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coppercapped
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A very difficult question to answer!
Firstly it depends how far you want to go back. Pre computer the only way would be to tot up the ticket sales from each station on the route to each other station on the route. Some passenger counts might have been made - along the lines of the 1961 Beeching traffic studies - but if any records survive I would be surprised. For this sort of thing the library at the NRM or the Public Records Office would be good places to start.
For later data, collected by BR or the TOCs, this is most likely to be in electronic format and, again, the ticket sales from A to B would have to be collated in the same manner as with the card tickets. I have no idea if the data have been archived or are even accessible.
ORR's data sets are at too high a level to be of much use for your purposes, station foot falls can be used as a sanity check but the data don't show the route the feet took - if you see what I mean!
Firstly it depends how far you want to go back. Pre computer the only way would be to tot up the ticket sales from each station on the route to each other station on the route. Some passenger counts might have been made - along the lines of the 1961 Beeching traffic studies - but if any records survive I would be surprised. For this sort of thing the library at the NRM or the Public Records Office would be good places to start.
For later data, collected by BR or the TOCs, this is most likely to be in electronic format and, again, the ticket sales from A to B would have to be collated in the same manner as with the card tickets. I have no idea if the data have been archived or are even accessible.
ORR's data sets are at too high a level to be of much use for your purposes, station foot falls can be used as a sanity check but the data don't show the route the feet took - if you see what I mean!
Thank you for all your responses. I was looking for data from around 1992 when Redhill to Tonbridge was electrified.There was a drive at the time to get people from Kent to use it to get to Gatwick.I think numbers have declined since Southern were given it to operate.
Has anyone ever had a satisfactory reason as to why it's supposedly commercially sensitive?
Such information only appears to have become so highly commercially sensitive around the time that HS2 popped its ugly mug up, with varying and at times dubious looking passenger figures spouted here and there.
How many people use the railways on a daily station by station and station-pair route by route basis, is of paramount public interest given the amount of money the taxpayer and fare-payer pay up for the system. They have a moral right to know whether that money is providing proper value, and without being able to ascertain actual performance vs numbers that isn't possible.
And when billions are proposed to be spent on railway work on the basis of supposed demand even more so.
There's no credible commercial reason for keeping this basic information hidden and top secret, and the secrecy and lack of transparency when so much money is changing hands is an affront to the notion that the government is securing best value for the taxpayer. We should never have to take politicians at their word and hand over our money without question.
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coppercapped
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Is there really a correlation between 'commercially sensitive' and the advent of HS2?
Passenger flows for each individual station are well known and are published on a regular basis by ORR.
Station-pair flows are not generally published - partly due, I would suggest, because of the enormous number of station pairs making the data set unwieldy. There are also inaccuracies because of the grouping of stations and the use of season tickets and similar which are sometimes difficult to allocate to a specified pair of stations.
Because of the these inaccuracies due to the very nature of the ticketing system at one of my local 'Meet the Manager' events it was said that the only really accurate figures are obtained from interviews of passengers on trains or at stations.
Anyway detailed information on the number of passengers making up any particular station to station flow gives no information about the revenue for that flow as ticket prices vary and the revenue will depend on the mix between full price, season tickets, child tickets, reduced price off-peak tickets and any other special offers.
This, I suspect is the information you really want. It is the reason BR developed ORCATS.
The number of people making journeys is of key importance when certain decisions are made, not just the money brought in.
It is the type of data inside ORCATS which should be freely available to the public (who pay for ORCATS), not hidden away. As for datasets being "unwieldy", I work with huge datasets all the time and it would be by no means anywhere near the largest dataset open to interrogation on the net by a long shot (as a side swipe, if a government computer can cope with it, normal peoples' will have no problem).
We should be able to see exactly what goes on within the system which we all pay for. The secrecy is inexcusable.
It is the type of data inside ORCATS which should be freely available to the public (who pay for ORCATS), not hidden away. As for datasets being "unwieldy", I work with huge datasets all the time and it would be by no means anywhere near the largest dataset open to interrogation on the net by a long shot (as a side swipe, if a government computer can cope with it, normal peoples' will have no problem).
We should be able to see exactly what goes on within the system which we all pay for. The secrecy is inexcusable.
coppercapped
Established Member
I also pay for my shirt at Marks and Spencers. Does that mean I should be able to look at their shirt sales statistics?
Who says its secret? Why not try and write to whichever TOC or indeed Network Rail for such information??
DarloRich
Veteran Member
or perhaps more pertinently the manufacturing & supply costs involved in getting that shirt to your hand
coppercapped
Established Member
Then I would suggest the methods used by the Trans-Wilts Community Rail Partnership to count passengers on their route through Melksham might be suitable. You might need a few helpers though.
I think you'll find that they say it's commercially sensitive.
I can't argue the rights and wrongs of it, but detailed flow data is only available to TOCs that run the route. The only time the data is generally made available to others (excluding Government) is at bids, when bidders are provided with Lennon datasets.
Plus a time machine to go back to 1992.
coppercapped
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Right...
Bits of it leak out in various ways. Some of the Network Rail Route Utilisation Strategies, TOC press releases, DfT statistics on crowding levels in/out of major centres, the station footfall stats from ORR. It is possible that FOI requests have gone there but expect them to be declined on commercial confidentiality.
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