How are ticket revenues split between TOCs? (ORCATS)

[ys123]

I assume that if I buy a Manchester to Stockport any permitted ticket, the money will be split between all TOC'S that do that route with TOC'S that have more frequent services getting a bigger share of the cash, but how would it be split if I buy a Manchester to Newcastle any permitted ticket as I can think of 20-30 different combinations I could've done?

 

[najaB]

...how would it be split if I buy a Manchester to Newcastle any permitted ticket as I can think of 20-30 different combinations I could've done?

That is where ORCATS comes in.

ORCATS (Operational Research Computerised Allocation of Tickets to Services), is a large centralised legacy computer system used on passenger railways in Great Britain. 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.[1] The system was owned by British Rail, and is now managed by the Rail Delivery Group.

 

[ys123]

That is where ORCATS comes in.

Thanks

 

[matt_world2004]

Travelcards are done on passenger surveys so if you are really peeved off with the train operating company that provides you with a service request a travelcard survey and fill out an itinery that leaves off your TOC and they will lose the revenue based on whatever weighting is attached to your survey responses.

 

[bb21]

Travelcards are done on passenger surveys so if you are really peeved off with the train operating company that provides you with a service request a travelcard survey and fill out an itinery that leaves off your TOC and they will lose the revenue based on whatever weighting is attached to your survey responses.

... and hand other TOCs who don't really deserve the revenue additional money?

 

[MikeWh]

Travelcards are done on passenger surveys so if you are really peeved off with the train operating company that provides you with a service request a travelcard survey and fill out an itinery that leaves off your TOC and they will lose the revenue based on whatever weighting is attached to your survey responses.

I think that Oyster PAYG journey history is now used as a significant guide.

 

[edwin_m]

Are Oysters loaded with Travelcards also monitored to compile statistics on the origins and destinations of each journey?

Even with monitoring of Oysters, computer models and surveys are still needed to establish the choice of route between origin and destination, except for the relatively few journeys that require an intermediate touch out and back in.

 

[gray1404]

Not really much information available as to the inner workings of ORCATS.

 

[yorkie]

...how would it be split if I buy a Manchester to Newcastle any permitted ticket ...

it's a secret however the vast majority would go to TPE as they run frequent direct services. It is rarely quicker to change onto another operators service. However other operators would get a small amount, and if they feel the calculated amount is insufficient, they can contest it and seek a manual adjustment.

Revenue allocation doesn't determine validity, though some people try to make arguments on that basis, they are totally without merit.

Previous threads include:

• What is an ORCATS raid?
• ORCATS and the complex routing guide
• Article on ORCATS
• Orcats

(I've edited this thread title to include ORCATS, so in a few years' time I can add this to my list )

 

[Starmill]

I think maybe the best guide is to plan the fastest journeys and see which operators appear most often in the list of fastest journeys all day. That's how I think about it. Nobody knows exactly what goes over the top of that, if anything. Or if a flow has been disputed and a different, specific allocation has been set up.

 

[gray1404]

Why is this information so sensitive and kept quiet?

 

[Starmill]

I suppose it's because they don't want any third parties to guess what kind of revenue each train pulls in for them, to protect themselves from cream-skimming behaviour by a new entrant to the market. Even if that's not realistic, I suppose it's common practice to include granular sales data in the 'commercially sensitive' bracket. Presumably if you ask Tesco won't tell you what their revenue was on just Heinz baked beans last month?

 

[matt_world2004]

... and hand other TOCs who don't really deserve the revenue additional money?

Arguably a toc who regularly cancels trains , short forns their services and runs services late doesn't deserve the money either. During the heathrow connect disruption last year my travel cars diary showed me boarding the 607 and central line to Lancaster gate instead

 

[bb21]

Arguably a toc who regularly cancels trains , short forns their services and runs services late doesn't deserve the money either.

That is not for you to decide.

Why would you want to give false/misleading information to a serious survey? That is very childish behaviour.

During the heathrow connect disruption last year my travel cars diary showed me boarding the 607 and central line to Lancaster gate instead

Filling it in truthfully about the journey you made, if it did not involve the TOC you hate, is perfectly fine. Giving false/misleading information deliberately is not. If you used a company's services, they deserve money for carrying you. If the train is late over a given threshold, you will be entitled to compensation.

 

[bb21]

Why is this information so sensitive and kept quiet?

Why does anyone outside the industry need to know?

 

[matt_world2004]

That is not for you to decide.

Why would you want to give false/misleading information to a serious survey? That is very childish behaviour.

Actually it is. I am travelling on the service with a valid ticket willing to present a valid ticket when requested I am not breaking any bylaws and it seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable way of hitting back legally against a TOC breaking its contractual agreements with me.

Filling it in truthfully about the journey you made, if it did not involve the TOC you hate, is perfectly fine. Giving false/misleading information deliberately is not. If you used a company's services, they deserve money for carrying you. If the train is late over a given threshold, you will be entitled to compensation.

and I deserve to recieve the service I have paid for, if they don't provide that service I am allowed to take any measures that are legal to ensure that not only am I compensated for not but also that the TOC is financially hit for its failings, being 20 minutes late on a 20 minute journey is unacceptable yet there are no methods of redressing this in delay repay and it is left to the customer to take into their own hands.

Railway contracts are horribly in favour of the TOC, and even then the TOC in that example cannot keep to them, If the DFT actually offered a serious financial disensentive for service failings there would be no need to take measures like that.

 

[yorkie]

Can we get back on-topic please?

I've deleted the last couple of posts; if that particular conversation is to continue it can be done via PM if necessary but not on this thread, and I'd like to remind people that if they have a concern about any post they should report it using the report button (

).

 

[ys123]

Why does anyone outside the industry need to know?

One word: Curious

 

[Muzer]

Why does anyone outside the industry need to know?

This is a stupid attitude. Plenty of other industries don't have this issue. I remember when a slot became free on the (at the time only) Freeview HD multiplex, the multiplex being operated by the BBC, and so it had to be put to tender by Ofcom themselves. Every single bid was public, with only specific financial information redacted. Bids being private IMHO is the worst instance of this sort of ridiculous secrecy the privatised railway has, and I really don't see a need for it. Public bids (with actually sensitive information like specific finances redacted) add transparency and let the public decide if the department is really doing their job correctly. After all, a railway is clearly a more important public service than HD television, and yet they can manage it for the public interest!

I can't think of any specific use for that information right now but that doesn't mean there isn't one. The attitude of "why do you need to know?" stifles innovation and reduces transparency, and does not belong in this age where it is trivial to release most information.

 

[Andrew1395]

The DfT data room has all the data any bidder requires including sales and earnings data, so innovation in bids is not affected by the current status if data. In addition al, TOCs can see ORCATS allocations through Lennon. They can agree with other service providers their own sakes allocations of sales. ORCATS is not specified in the TSA, it says allocations should be done by surveys,but until the format of surveys is agreed ORCATS should prevail. It is a very sophisticated model. Originally devised to support allocation of BR costs to revenue holders by service code more than 30 years ago. ORCATS evolved and changed under BR, but very few changes since 1996. It's strength is partly incumbency, partly because alternatives are considered to costly and the impact on revenue unknown. Only Travelcard for the inboundary elements have used survey and real usage data (PAYG). Maybe widespread use of gates and validators, with digital ticketing, will lead to the retirement of ORCATS.

 

[Muzer]

I'm talking in general, and about innovative uses of data or information by third parties, not by bidders.

 

[najaB]

I can't think of any specific use for that information right now but that doesn't mean there isn't one. The attitude of "why do you need to know?" stifles innovation and reduces transparency, and does not belong in this age where it is trivial to release most information.

The thing is, it's commercially sensitive information. The railway is run as a business, and there are very few businesses that have to publish the details of how they work out their pricing strategy.

 

[bb21]

This is a stupid attitude. Plenty of other industries don't have this issue. I remember when a slot became free on the (at the time only) Freeview HD multiplex, the multiplex being operated by the BBC, and so it had to be put to tender by Ofcom themselves. Every single bid was public, with only specific financial information redacted. Bids being private IMHO is the worst instance of this sort of ridiculous secrecy the privatised railway has, and I really don't see a need for it. Public bids (with actually sensitive information like specific finances redacted) add transparency and let the public decide if the department is really doing their job correctly. After all, a railway is clearly a more important public service than HD television, and yet they can manage it for the public interest!

I can't think of any specific use for that information right now but that doesn't mean there isn't one. The attitude of "why do you need to know?" stifles innovation and reduces transparency, and does not belong in this age where it is trivial to release most information.

None of this answers the question I asked.

If you want to know the price of the bids, which I can see a good reason for, that is for you to FoI the DfT about. It has nothing to do with ORCATS.

 

[bb21]

One word: Curious

Unfortunately "need" and "want" are two very different things.

 

[bb21]

Actually it is. I am travelling on the service with a valid ticket willing to present a valid ticket when requested I am not breaking any bylaws and it seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable way of hitting back legally against a TOC breaking its contractual agreements with me.



and I deserve to recieve the service I have paid for, if they don't provide that service I am allowed to take any measures that are legal to ensure that not only am I compensated for not but also that the TOC is financially hit for its failings, being 20 minutes late on a 20 minute journey is unacceptable yet there are no methods of redressing this in delay repay and it is left to the customer to take into their own hands.

Railway contracts are horribly in favour of the TOC, and even then the TOC in that example cannot keep to them, If the DFT actually offered a serious financial disensentive for service failings there would be no need to take measures like that.

So you go and mess up a travel survey, which TfL conducts in good faith? Do you even understand the other purposes it has than revenue allocation? Say you hate SouthEastern. If many other people do what you do and the results show that SouthEastern have a much lower passenger count than reality, what do you think will happen to the services in future? Please think about the consequences before you do something. You may think you have got one over the TOC, but in reality these actions will only harm people who use their services in the long run, if lots of people do it. SouthEastern meanwhile either couldn't care less about losing your odd fares, or that they will be in revenue protection should the sums involved be massive, so these actions end up hurting the customers while the TOC escapes relatively unscathed.

 

[matt_world2004]

So you go and mess up a travel survey, which TfL conducts in good faith? Do you even understand the other purposes it has than revenue allocation? Say you hate SouthEastern. If many other people do what you do and the results show that SouthEastern have a much lower passenger count than reality, what do you think will happen to the services in future? Please think about the consequences before you do something. You may think you have got one over the TOC, but in reality these actions will only harm people who use their services in the long run, if lots of people do it. SouthEastern meanwhile either couldn't care less about losing your odd fares, or that they will be in revenue protection should the sums involved be massive, so these actions end up hurting the customers while the TOC escapes relatively unscathed.

2600 travelcard surveys are done a quarter, Meaning the weighting of each travelcard survey is quite a bit more than one ticket. It would be an act of gross incompetence for Southeastern or Great Western or any other TOC to use it for loadings and demand measurement. Especially as the majority of tickets on the national rail network are not travelcards, peoples route timings on these surveys are likely to be wildly inaccurate too, So it would be impossible to work out what train the customer actually boarded to reach their destination, unless the customer used a very low frequency route. Merely used to assertain the route taken (Indeed I believe the agreement used between TfL and the TOC's explicitly states that these surveys should not be used for measuring passenger demand on the network, just revenue allocation)

If the DfT actually punished companies seriously enough for service failings, there would be no need for passengers to take their own measures to correct their grievances with the TOC they use.

 

[Clip]

One word: Curious

This is a stupid attitude. Plenty of other industries don't have this issue. I remember when a slot became free on the (at the time only) Freeview HD multiplex, the multiplex being operated by the BBC, and so it had to be put to tender by Ofcom themselves. Every single bid was public, with only specific financial information redacted. Bids being private IMHO is the worst instance of this sort of ridiculous secrecy the privatised railway has, and I really don't see a need for it. Public bids (with actually sensitive information like specific finances redacted) add transparency and let the public decide if the department is really doing their job correctly. After all, a railway is clearly a more important public service than HD television, and yet they can manage it for the public interest!

I can't think of any specific use for that information right now but that doesn't mean there isn't one. The attitude of "why do you need to know?" stifles innovation and reduces transparency, and does not belong in this age where it is trivial to release most information.

Please give me and this forum complete acces to your credit files, bank account details and addresses along with any credit c ard information you have.

After all we are just curious :roll:

 

[Andrew1395]

I'm talking in general, and about innovative uses of data or information by third parties, not by bidders.

I don't see how the outputs of a cost allocation model would help anyone outside of the DfT or bidders/TOCs, it's not real data in the sense that it shows you how many people travel on a flow or an individual train. It's outputs take no account of factors like quality of service, train type, etc. The similar demand predictive tool MOIRA and Passenger Demand Forecasting Outputs might be more interesting.

 

[Camden]

Why does anyone outside the industry need to know?

Because as both taxpayers and as fare payers we fund this whole system, and provide the profits that the railway companies take.

Yet the system is so secretive and complex that at no point are we ever in a true position to judge whether that remuneration is fair, whether the fares are fair, or whether the right bidders have won the right contracts.

And at no point is it realistically possible for any of us to form a TOC and bid for these contracts.

In summary, we pay for this system, people make a lot of money from this system, yet we - the ones who fund that completely - are locked into a position of subservience, paying blindly, compulsorily, with little to no explanation from those that spend the money and take their "earnings" in various forms.

The saying goes "no taxation without representation"... apart from when it comes to things like this it seems.

 

[Camden]

I don't see how the outputs of a cost allocation model would help anyone outside of the DfT or bidders/TOCs, it's not real data in the sense that it shows you how many people travel on a flow or an individual train. It's outputs take no account of factors like quality of service, train type, etc. The similar demand predictive tool MOIRA and Passenger Demand Forecasting Outputs might be more interesting.

I think it might give an insight into how absurd the system is, and how costly it must be to run, for no passenger benefit whatsoever.