At 17:47 31-10-01 +0000, David Uzzell wrote:
>A great deal is said about how rail operators have increased their revenue
>in the UK in recent years. I have been told that the increases are due to
>increased frequency and scheduling, and increased promotion of off-peak
fares.
Trying to sort out the effects of a particular parameter in a sea of
parameters that are all changing is fraught with statistical problems. So
if the effects of frequency and scheduling are to be isolated the likely
impacts of other parameters must also be understood.
>
>If anyone has some evidence of this it would be really useful to hear from
you.
>
The bulk of the evidence is usefully summarised in the former BR Passenger
Demand Forecasting Handbook. Unfortunately unless you know a friendly face
at one of the TOC's this isn't generally available. The alternative is
therefore to go trawling through the Journal of Transport Economics and
Policy looking out relevant articles, e.g. Owen & Phillips (1987). Short
cut to where these are is in Harris and Godward (1992) or Fowkes and Nash
and others (1994). In the former Sheldon sets out the Elasticities based
on Stated Preference studies for Rail which show:
Journey purpose Fare Time Frequency
(Trains/Hour)
Business -0.7 -0.7 +0.2
Optional -1.4 -0.5 +0.2
So for a 10% increase in frequency we might expect a 2% increase in
patronage.
A great deal of work was done by Institute of Transport Studies, Leeds
researchers and names to look for include:
Chris Nash
Dudley Fowkes
Mark Wardman
John Preston
So having set out the framework with which to test the current effects what
do the recent data show.
From a variety of sources including DTp, DETR, DTLR, OPRAF, SRA, ORR and
Annual Reports & Accounts of TOC's Holding Companies and ATOC the basic
data since 1994/95 shows year on year % changes of:
Passenger Kilometres -5.48% 5.11% 6.82% 7.20% 4.99% 6.98%
Train Kilometres -1.48% 3.40% 3.46% 3.68% 6.00% 3.69%
Revenue 8.63% 8.41% 9.88% 9.50% 9.04% 1.37%
Recent work by ITS suggests that changes in growth due to external factors
may be significant, e.g. GDP, Regional effects of GDP, Car ownership,
Congestion and Fuel Price effects
I hope this helps.
Ernest Godward
>Many thanks
>
>David Uzzell
>-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
>David Uzzell
>Professor of Environmental Psychology
>Department of Psychology
>University of Surrey
>Guildford, GU2 7XH, UK
>
>Tel: +44 1483 259430
>Fax: +44 1483 259512
>-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
>
>
>
Ernest Godward
|