Visiting the Office of Rail and Road

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) is the government department that produces yearly statistics on estimates of station usage for railway stations in Great Britain.
It's from this that we know of famous 'least used' station such as Shippea Hill and Tees-side Airport, and on the day that the statistics for 2016-2017 were published we went along to talk to them to ask them some questions about how they work.
Note: the 'All The Stations' project took place between May to August 2017, and any activity or publicity from this is NOT represented in this years statistics, instead we'll have to wait until 2018, when the stats for April 2017 to March 2018 are released.
Our huge thanks to Simon and Rebekah at the ORR for letting us in to talk to you:
ORR Station Usage Stats: orr.gov.uk/stat...
You might also like to read DG's extensive blog post on station stats, here: diamondgeezer.b...

[@ianvirco5897]

Vicky your so natural infront of the camera you could host the One Show on the BBC.

[@1292liam]

true

[@ambivalent_hoax]

I don't know how you do it, but you manage to make dull topics fascinating. Well done.

[@practicallyfamous]

Ever since I found out about Shippea Hill I now plan to use it regularly. If next year the number is still higher than last year, remember me! :)

[@ianluscombe]

I am still waiting for the video where Geoff sings Moquette man to the tune of Elton John's Rocket Man while wearing a suits made from his favourite seat fabrics.

[@ianmcclavin]

"I think it's gonna be a long long time" before he does that!!!

[@brettnorris1428]

The question I have - how did they count the 'All Line Rail Rover' tickets used by Geoff and Vicki on their All The Stations journey? Maybe they should just add 2 to every single station to make sure they've covered Geoff and Vicki's trip.

[@matthewperegrine4552]

Amazing to watch that brave question about Shipey Hill. Made me giggle to hear that answer! Very interesting interview. Thank you for the upload.

[@IBLRG]

Brigg is up from 1000 to 1700 on a line with a 1 day a week service since 1993 which was set to close in 1988, delighted Olga & Co at Pilning station got a mention 😊

[@BruceJSkelly]

Still, one of my favorite episodes.

[@martenkats6915]

Barry Links is local to me. I feel a strong urge to go there soon. :)

[@brian9731]

I'm wondering about measurement of usage of places like Clapham Junction and Crewe which are major interchanges but which probably have a disproportionately low amount of traffic through the gates.

[@DavidShepheard]

They have a ton of security cameras in stations like Clapham Junction. If they feed that into a computer that can recognise people, they can estimate the number of people walking up and down the stairs up to the overbridge and the stairs down to the foot tunnel. If they can get those estimates, they can work out who is going between the different platforms. That won't tell them everything, but it should give them an idea about making sure there is not overcrowding.

[@ianshort2935]

Just got the stats, Barry Links is now the least used in the country, Shippea Hill is 14th now.

[@pandapaws3444]

At the start of the video I like the logo of all the stations and the music Geoff.

[@Sim0nTrains]

Someone did this on twitter but I ask this question again, if I brought a ticket from Golf Street to Barry Links but not travel, does that still count for the figures for 2017-8?

[@VickiPipe]

Sim0nTrains yes it would. It's not the only figures that are used but ticket sales to contribute to the final figures.

[@Sim0nTrains]

V Pipe thanks, now I'm going have to eat my own hat. I said over twitter if buying a ticket but not travel counts (which it doe) I will buy 10 tickets from Golf Street to Barry Links 🤣

[@RichardLartey]

I'm actually really disappointed that there wasn't a theme tune. I'm going to have to play it on repeat on Spotify now to make up for this.

[@AllTheStations]

which bit of the theme tune (which starts at 0:25) did you not hear ... ?!

[@DavidShepheard]

Perhaps he didn't hear All The Theme Tune - all of it. ;-)

[@RichardLartey]

Oops 😂😂😂 oh well any excuse to play it on Spotify again

[@lindahyslop9948]

Richard Lartey Mario lanza

[@rosiefay7283]

If the stats are based on the origin and destination as specified on the ticket, this fails to distinguish between stations in the same town in some cases, e.g. Colchester (COL/CET). And CET has no ticket barrier anyway. So in a case like that, how is the usage of the lesser-used station estimated?

[@rjl1v07]

If every subscriber to All the Stations buys a single from Barry Links, then we can right this wrong! As an aside, so many people legitimately travel on the railway that aren't captured in the statistics. TOC staff, engineering staff and those that alight prior to their ticketed destination are not recorded. These stats are a lot of fun to analyse but only a rough estimate!

[@TheMichaelWilcock2016Railways]

What a dull office, not 1 image of a train on the walls !!

[@skiesofireland3429]

You should try and make a least used station in the UK every year!

[@martinmansley3039]

Any thoughts on deliberate skewing of figures by train staff not selling tickets. I know of people who have insisted on buying tickets for short journeys e.g. £0.50 to improve the recorded foot fall at stations. Many other passengers travelled free so were not recorded.

[@simontay4851]

What are the stats for Craven Arms and Broome stations on the Heart of Wales line.

[@alistairmitchell3852]

Simon Tay even Hopton Heath that has no car park or facilities. I must try and find that out.

[@PinderProductions]

Interesting stuff in that video.

[@grahammm1]

Another complication is tickets to/from "XXX Stations" rather than the individual station withing the group.

[@dancudds]

Congrats on making Have I Got News For You!

[@seprishere]

How do the stats account for people not actually going to the station they buy tickets to? For example, people buying tickets from A to D via B and C, but only travelling from B to C (or maybe A to C one way, and D to B the other way)? Or is this just ignored?

[@Boating_David]

Is it wrong to say I've missed hearing the All The Stations music each week? 😂

[@DerekHartley]

strombidae Why don't you have the album? ;-)

[@Boating_David]

DerekHartley Ah then I'd have All The Tracks 😊 *taxi!*

[@TheNgandrew]

Very interesting video.

[@TheWkc19]

Of course Network Rail are not doing a great job at Stevenage. Still no platform 5

[@alfie3914]

they've been talking about it for years lol probally wont happen.

[@WolfGratz]

Frankly that sounds to me as if the stats for say a hugely populous area with untold journeys paid for by means of zonal tickets and annual seasons (ie London) may well potentially be what is known in the trade as a load of old tut - especially when it comes to drill downs for individual stations or even routes.

[@GraemeBray]

No, not quite. An estimate may be made but then physical research is conducted to verify if the estimate is accurate. As she mentioned for the St Ives branch where they have physical counts for the day at a station. New technology is allowing for surveillance cameras to be used, with computers registering the numbers of people too.

[@WolfGratz]

Well yeah - St Ives is doubtless fair enough. But King's Cross? London Bridge? Clapham Junction? Even Lewisham? I don't think it makes any sense to base London commuter area stats on a combination of individual ticket sales and presumptions regarding the use of zonal tickets - especially if those tickets have a high proportion of period seasons .

[@GraemeBray]

WolfGratz that was the only example mentioned. For larger stations, it is still the same but with more people and effort. In statistics, the quality of data is essential and is verified in everyway possible.

[@WolfGratz]

Sigh. Yep - I understand all that. But it has no relevance to what I'm saying - which is that when the method of purchase and pattern of travel in any area is that different from any other part of the network using the same method of data capture is liable to produce unsound raw data and any amount of compensatory and checking procedures and controls won't really render your conclusions fully reliable. It's not simply a matter of size - although that makes attempts at verification much more problematic - it's a question of customer behaviour.

[@WolfGratz]

Which btw is more or less what Rebekkah (sp?) was sort of indicating generally except she was mainly talking about small-scale local factors and I'm questioning the reliability of results for a whacking great proportion of total journeys in a geographically fairly limited but strategically important area.

[@JasonCliftJones]

That 1200% increase at Shippea Hill; the regular passengers you ran into? :)

[@tomsmith5584]

That would be a cool place to work.

[@russrh]

James Bond will be back, in 'On her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate'

[@MelodeonTunes]

1 Kemble Street, spent many a boring hour in there when it was the HQ of the CAA and known as CAA House.

[@landymann]

Interestingly, the Civil Aviation Authority influenced the design. As they enter the building you can see the tower is supported not by boring pillars, but by 3 blade concrete 'propellers'.

[@Debbiestrainsandtoys]

I think I contributed to the figures for North camp, Farnborough, Kings Cross, York and London Waterloo and Woking

[@a340642]

Does a station's stats include connections?

[@lionvillelion]

How many were going to St Ives?

[@cesariojpn]

The one guy.

[@lionvillelion]

ORR say 659,000 in 2016-2017. Slight discrepancy.

[@webrarian]

ALL are going to St Ives :-)

[@ZGryphon]

Nine: the narrator, the man he saw, and that man's seven wives.

[@thorsteinj]

Check the statistacs!

[@robz7846]

Waterloo still holding strong number one! I guess in terms of national rail South of the River London > North of the River London

[@JustSomeBloke1]

When I first read this reply I thought you mean River Thames not River London, but then I read it a second time and it made more sense!

[@billygray8863]

hey Geoff,Vicki wanna come to a station with 33,000 anual users?

[@darrenblois8495]

The way they count season tickets is strange. Surely much less than 100% of season ticket holders are using their ticket once each way every day. Could they not do surveys to find out that season ticket holders use X% of their allotted trips, and then adjust the season ticket count by X% to get a more accurate figure?

[@theowletblog]

Did you boost the Shippea Hill stats? :D

[@stephendines1936]

Split ticketing would mess things up a bit.

[@camotech1314]

We are all just a number guys and girls 😮

[@TSimchak]

That's archetypal soulless British government office space.

[@LiftFan]

I've had to travel without tickets in the past, predominantly before I had a debit card. It really didn't help when my local station has a ticket office that closes at midday and the machines don't take cash, so if there's nobody to buy the tickets from on the train and no barriers at the other end then may as well save the money.

[@arfski]

My neighbours didn't put any locks on their house door and went out to work every day, so I stole all of their stuff. It's fine though, as they were not in, and there was no locks.

[@qwertyTRiG]

arfski I travelled ticketless all the way from Helen's Bay to Tullamore. I tried to purchase a ticket two or three times en route.

[@cameronamoils6915]

To be perfectly honest, Vikki's proposed Bond film can't possibly be worse than Spectre.

[@DitzyNizzy2009]

Cameron Amoils - It would also be 10x better than Quantum of Solace.

[@matthewdunderdale8685]

Catherine Bradbury "i'm going to raise your water bill"... thats basically the plot of quantum... it sucked!!

[@MostlyLoveOfMusic]

Erm so why does wanting to visit a small station for the fun of it constitute skewing the statistics? I don't think it does tbh

[@koohlwranchdoughreetoes3356]

Because of a rare mathematical anomaly. Where X=bureaucracy, and Y=fun, abs(Y)>[abs(Y)+X] is always true, regardless of the value of X.

[@lordmwa25]

Why do you use the trainline out of interest?

[@Mainline421]

They were paid a while back to promote that scam site. I do hope they're not actually using it, as they must notice all the extra fees for which you get nothing in return.

[@Mainline421]

Every single ticket sold by Trainline without exception can be purchased from any train operating company's site (such as GWR.com or a ticket office) without any booking or card fees. It's impossible to get a cheaper deal on Trainline no matter what anyone tells you, as all you're doing is effectively paying Scamline to buy the ticket from the TOC for you, when it's quicker easier and cheaper to do it yourself. Not only that but if you purchase a ticket from them it can make getting a refund very difficult in times of disruption and mean you're not informed about planned cancellations. If you like Trainline's layout just use virgintrains.com, as they're actually powered by Trainline but without fees. Really they are a scam site and what they are doing should be illegal.

[@deadzedcomics]

Mainline421 if you notice it's the GWR app on her phone, I'd recognise the green and cream anywhere

ahh, in my country, rail stats is confidental...ughh

[@tirandys]

You can't really 'skew the stats' for this, the reason why someone bought a ticket doesn't matter, just whether they did.

[@JeromeJHall]

tirandys if all you're concerned about is "are we generating revenue from this station?", then you'd be correct. But if you're trying to see how to allocate resources on the line, such as improvements to waiting facilities, in theory this would impact that analysis. It all depends on how the data gets used. As for Shippea Hill, the novelty may have worn off now, so passenger numbers for the next year may see a sharp decline. And let's face it nothing says "let's close a station" quite like a 1000% drop in usage.

[@tirandys]

I think that it doesn't matter much. If the passenger numbers increase by 1000 in a year, that's still less than 3 per day. That's not going to change the planning much, if at all.

[@JeromeJHall]

tirandys I'll give you that. I was just citing an example of how it might skew the usage of the data. The biggest skew might actually come from people buying tickets to Barry Links because it's half the price of a cup of coffee even though they've got no intention of actually visiting.

[@lexpip9735]

i'm genuinely disappointed that not only are you using the Trainline app... but that you are almost endorsing it .... come on guys you are better than that, that website has been ripping people off for years don't add to their advertising

[@michaeloriordan2381]

Poor audio

[@Satters]

I had to stop watching ater the interviewee for the third time started her reply "so... ARGHH :(