Counts and Surveys - 11th to 14th October - results

[whole diary]

[grahame]

I'm opening this thread in preparation for posting results of the TransWilts counts and surveys.   Initially it's a placeholder so I can give people a URL to get back to in due course

[grahame]

Background

The train service on the northern section of the TransWilts line (Swindon to Westbury) was improved from 2 to 8 trains each way per day last December, under an LSTF^▸ (Local Sustainable Transport Fund) (local sustainable transport fund) grant ... and other were were and are being done to improve connectivity and infrastructure to handle more passengers.    The numbers of passengers on trains, and ticket sale data, is available which gives us sow usage data, but it doesn't tell us why people are travelling, how they get to the station, nor which trains are busy for picking up / dropping off at which stations.

One day per year, Wiltshire Council run a full survey / count - that was done in February, but with a line that's changed to much this year we need more data, we need to know about weekends as well as weekdays, we need to know if Monday / Friday differ from midweek days ... and we needed to know which of our marketing approaches worked best so far.  We also can't wait until results from next February before we start talking for the next franchise period.   Thus we ran a survey and count over the last four days.

Far too early to say what the surveys / counts tell us - much analysis to do - but here's a note of the letter I have just sent to all those magnificent people who were up very early or late to bed, standing on wet platforms or pushing up and down through crowded trains to hand out and pick up forms.  THANK YOU to those people!

Dear everyone,

THANK YOU ^

Thank you for your help in counting, surveying, organising the TransWilts Rail survey that ran from Saturday to Monday, and train counts from Saturday to Tuesday.    And thank you too to the First Great Western operational staff who hosted / helped us on the trains, and to the management there who made this possible.   Nick - are you able to post this THANK YOU in the staff room?

We (that^s the community, the council, and FGW^▸ (First Great Western)) now have the raw data to tell us a very great deal - not only about current journeys, but also about marketing, strong and weak points in our product and what people want and what stops them, and how they get to and from the station.   Which all helps stand us in very good stead for the future.

What have we learned? I don^t know yet.  Some things are obvious like the enthusiasm of the passengers, with extraordinary return rates of surveys and people telling us their stories of just how much difference it has made to them; this is no casually used leisure service for many - it^s already an integral part of their lives and makes a real difference to where they live and whether they can take work in particular places.  Other things will be learned as the data is entered, correlated and analysed which is a big job ^ thanks to that very high return rate.

How will we use the results?  I don^t fully know.  It will depend on what we learn; this was no ^box ticking exercise^ - it was a piece of community and council research  the results of which will help meld the future.  We are already talking beyond 2014 ^ up to 2019, and numbers, uses, journeys help us plan and make the most appropriate case to put to decision makers, and give us the data to back up those cases.

I^ve opened a public ^thread^ at
   http://twcrp.info/t14732
in which I^ll post (and we can discuss) conclusions / counts / some results.   We have to take care that individual survey responses aren^t identified back to specific individuals / groups under data protection, although the questions were formulated to provide information but reduce such concerns, and our cover letter (for those who asked) went into this.  So I won^t be flooding you out with raw data.   Where a specific concern has been raised on the forms, we^ll be looking at that in the background.

Finally ^ you may have seen a note about the ^TransWilts Link^ meeting this coming Saturday - 18th October.    It^s a six-monthly meeting where various travel and Transport groups we have connections with.   Final venue decision taken ^. WELL HOUSE MANOR, Melksham, SN12 7NY
   http://twcrp.info/t13705
Lifts available from Melksham Station off 09:14 arrival (from Swindon) and 10:04 arrival (from Westbury).   Meeting to start at 10:15.   Lifts back to station for 15:21 departure to Swindon, and 15:38 departure to Westbury.   It^s WONDERFUL that we can start moving the venue around ;-).   Please let me know (for numbers) if you^ll be coming.   If it^s ^don^t know^, then you^re welcome to just turn up.

Graham

Graham Ellis - graham@atrebatia.info
Press and publicity, TransWilts Community Rail Partnership
TransWilts CRP^▸ (Community Rail Partnership), 48, Spa Road, Melksham, Wilts, SN12 7NY
http://atrebatia.info - 0845 459 0153

[grahame]

I've posted an update on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TransWilts

Here's the text ... on Facebook there are also a couple of pretty pictures!

The big "thank you" to our volunteers (around 20 of you) who helped with passenger counts and surveys a fornight ago. And a HUGE thank you to all the passengers who filled in the surveys. Survey response rates of around 20% are generally regarded as being excellent ... so our return rate, with data covering the majority of journeys, is astounding! THANK YOU again ... you've created us a welcome lot of work in entering the data and analysis, so I'm not able to give you any immediate statistical analysis results; one of our team's about halfway through data entry from some 500 forms (some covering multiple passengers and / or 2 journeys - out and back) as I write.

For the first time, these surveys included weekend as well as weekday journeys to help us get a 7 day rather than a 5 day picture, and we counted two weekdays to see if there was a significant difference between end-of-week (Monday and Friday) and midweek (Tuesday to Thursday) traffic. What we immediaty learned is that there is no such thing as a "normal" day or weekend and that we have to be careful in extrapollating the figures / data gathered. The various things that happened which will have distorted our figures from a perfect 4 days include:
* A postoned soccer match and poor Saturday weather which will have depressed traffic
* Diversions of passengers onto our line / trains (or, rather, 1 train) due to an operating incident in Gloucestershire - an increase of around 40 passengers
* Sunday engineering works from Swindon to Didcot, and from Warminster to Salisbury, depressed journeys (people won't take a train trip out if the train is replaced by a bus) but then added some, with some Chippenham to London people routing via Westbury.
* Warminster Vintage Bus Running day on the Sunday brought a once-a-year (slight) upwards blip in bus enthusiast traffic
* The first two trains on Monday were re-routed and missed out Melksham, with Melksham passengers catered for by replacement road transport as appropropriate - and we weren't able to quantify or survery that traffic ... two peak trains
* One of the evening peak trains was cancelled on Tuesday / again, road replacement was provided to get commuters home, but those journeys are missing from our figures.
* On Monday and Tuesday, the line from Castle Cary to Taunton was closed for enginering works ... this was preplanned, but never the less will have depressed our figures as there's a noticable number of journeys made from Swindon / Chippenham to Westbury to catch the trains to the west on a normal weekday.
In summary, a typical "up" and "down" mix, many of which show our importance as a linking line and part of the network. Overall, I would characterise the weekend as a quieter one on balance, and if we scale up the figures and genaral statistics based on what we saw we'll end up with cautious figures. That suits us - it would be hard for anyone to argue that we were being overoptimistic if we scaled he figures, which could have happened had we chosen a weekend of wonderful weather, lots of special events, great soccer matches in the area, and free from engineering works.

A look purely at the passenger counts gives us around 1800 individual journeys over the 4 days - that's 50% more passengers than the target that the TransWilts Community Rail Partnership set itself as an average for the third year of the new service. Not bad going in the first year. And the service sentiment is fantastic - it's making such a positive difference to people's leisure trips and daily commuter journeys. That doesn't mean that we can relax in any way; having provided extra trains on top of the existing service for 2014, questions are being asked as to whether these trains can be efficiently integrated with the old service and run more efficiently in the future. Proposals are on the table for such a sortout for Sundays from next May, and that's a really good idea as at present there are long gaps then two trains within the hour. There are also more worrying suggestions for weekdays which might put efficiency of operation ahead of passenger requirements - that's further out - but the data we have gathered will be the most enormous help in evaluating proposals and allow us to hit the ground running when it comes to commenting. Finally, the excellent "via Melksham" fares have certainly encouraged more users, but at the same time have reduced the farebox revenue per journey, so we also have to understand and if necessary defend the cost basis of the line; don't let me be too dramatic about that, as we're already one of the busiest FGW^▸ (First Great Western) / single train / infrequent service branch lines where a year ago we stood out at the bottom of the heap - but it is something we need to be aware of.

I'll follow up with further reports via [link to this page] as we analyse the survey data, with occasional headlines on our Facebook page. Some fantastic data - we have already learned so much about journeys and it's standing us in really good stead. Just can't jump to any conclusions until it's all together, and even then it's much more a case of having the knowledge to use, as inevitabley we will need to, in 2015.

[JayMac]

Thankfully there's no image of the person doing the data entry. That wouldn't be a pretty picture! 

[Chris from Nailsea]

Caps off to that man!