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Post by snoggle on Jun 2, 2016 16:08:44 GMT
Not the usual route level reports but a few other bits and bobs that I've spotted and not seen mentioned here before. Annual performance summary updated for 2015/16. As will suprise no one virtually all the performance metrics have worsened over the last financial year compared to the preceding two years. Long term trends updated to include 2015/16. There are six graphs looking at different aspects of performance. Well worth looking at how things have gone sideways over the last three years or so. The operators seem to have tried hard but events have been against them. Bus user survey dating from 2014. I've not seen this one before. Covers a market research exercise to look at who uses the bus network, why and how they pay for their travel, age, ethnicity, disabled or not etc. Quite a lot of detail to get your head round. Bus speed reports TfL are now published bus speeds at network, borough and route level on a 4 weekly cycle. I assume the info is derived from I-Bus and is inevitably averaged across a route. If you want a fast bus ride then go to outer London or catch a school route. The 246 looks to have the highest average speed of any regular service. In fact Bromley Borough seems to be the speed borough of London. Must be all those forum members driving out of Orpington and Bromley garages.
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Post by thesquirrels on Jun 2, 2016 20:47:40 GMT
Not the usual route level reports but a few other bits and bobs that I've spotted and not seen mentioned here before. Annual performance summary updated for 2015/16. As will suprise no one virtually all the performance metrics have worsened over the last financial year compared to the preceding two years. Long term trends updated to include 2015/16. There are six graphs looking at different aspects of performance. Well worth looking at how things have gone sideways over the last three years or so. The operators seem to have tried hard but events have been against them. Bus user survey dating from 2014. I've not seen this one before. Covers a market research exercise to look at who uses the bus network, why and how they pay for their travel, age, ethnicity, disabled or not etc. Quite a lot of detail to get your head round. Bus speed reports TfL are now published bus speeds at network, borough and route level on a 4 weekly cycle. I assume the info is derived from I-Bus and is inevitably averaged across a route. If you want a fast bus ride then go to outer London or catch a school route. The 246 looks to have the highest average speed of any regular service. In fact Bromley Borough seems to be the speed borough of London. Must be all those forum members driving out of Orpington and Bromley garages. I did a bit of timetable browsing on a whim a little while ago and concluded that the 246 has the fastest timetabled TfL bus journey in London - late evening journeys did the 15 miles from Bromley to Westerham in 33 minutes, an average speed of almost 30mph including stops and getting out of Bromley! I note a few minutes have been added in on the most recent timetable. Plenty to pour through here but note that ridership on the 73 is now down 25% between 10/11 and 15/16 - the 38 is down 19% in the same period. I note that TfL have slowly been slicing away at the 38 since de-bendification but not touched the 73... yet.
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Post by snoggle on Jul 2, 2016 0:15:12 GMT
Just updated the year end numbers for bus revenue, costs, direct susbidy and patronage using TfL's own numbers for the respective year ends. There may be rounding issues with the numbers so no quibbles if the maths looks a bit odd. Direct Subsidy is simply revenue less the cost of running the network. It excludes capital investment spend. As you can see TfL spent a fortune last year, earned less money and the subsidy went through the roof for no real improvement. The picture is even worse if you compare to earlier years. It is also worth noting that TfL had a target to add about 60m extra pass jnys last year. By the year end they were 122m pass jnys worse than their target. Year | Bus Revenue £m | Network Cost £m | Direct Subsidy £m | Patronage m | 2013/14 | 1,501 | 1,868 | 367 | 2,382 | 2014/15 | 1,545 | 1,968 | 422 | 2,385 | 2015/16 | 1,534 | 2,003 | 469 | 2,323 |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 12, 2016 7:32:06 GMT
Just updated the year end numbers for bus revenue, costs, direct susbidy and patronage using TfL's own numbers for the respective year ends. There may be rounding issues with the numbers so no quibbles if the maths looks a bit odd. Direct Subsidy is simply revenue less the cost of running the network. It excludes capital investment spend. As you can see TfL spent a fortune last year, earned less money and the subsidy went through the roof for no real improvement. The picture is even worse if you compare to earlier years. It is also worth noting that TfL had a target to add about 60m extra pass jnys last year. By the year end they were 122m pass jnys worse than their target. Year | Bus Revenue £m | Network Cost £m | Direct Subsidy £m | Patronage m | 2013/14 | 1,501 | 1,868 | 367 | 2,382 | 2014/15 | 1,545 | 1,968 | 422 | 2,385 | 2015/16 | 1,534 | 2,003 | 469 | 2,323 |
Maybe they need to promote their bus services better. Especially in Central London. Whenever I work on the streets in the West End, the questions asked of me are not "What bus can I take to St Pauls" .... It's "Where is the stop for the Big Bus tour" or similar. Either that, or tube related questions.
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Post by snoggle on Jul 12, 2016 11:39:08 GMT
Maybe they need to promote their bus services better. Especially in Central London. Whenever I work on the streets in the West End, the questions asked of me are not "What bus can I take to St Pauls" .... It's "Where is the stop for the Big Bus tour" or similar. Either that, or tube related questions. TfL don't actively market the bus network at all. Obviously there is a "base" volume of users on every route but there must be plenty of discretionary patronage to chase after. I'm sceptical that Central London offers much scope at the moment. This is because there is so much disruption and journey times are so unpredictable that it's not the best option for a lot of people. Many tourists are reluctant public transport users and buses are bottom of the pile of their options. I'm not surprised that tour buses, with their simple but expensive tickets / leaflets / guides at stops and on buses, are a more attractive option. It takes the "fear" out of navigating London's complex street pattern. I always use the buses in cities I visit but I'm not normal.
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Post by rmz19 on Jul 12, 2016 12:07:25 GMT
Maybe they need to promote their bus services better. Especially in Central London. Whenever I work on the streets in the West End, the questions asked of me are not "What bus can I take to St Pauls" .... It's "Where is the stop for the Big Bus tour" or similar. Either that, or tube related questions. TfL don't actively market the bus network at all. Obviously there is a "base" volume of users on every route but there must be plenty of discretionary patronage to chase after. I'm sceptical that Central London offers much scope at the moment. This is because there is so much disruption and journey times are so unpredictable that it's not the best option for a lot of people. Many tourists are reluctant public transport users and buses are bottom of the pile of their options. I'm not surprised that tour buses, with their simple but expensive tickets / leaflets / guides at stops and on buses, are a more attractive option. It takes the "fear" out of navigating London's complex street pattern. I always use the buses in cities I visit but I'm not normal. Hmmm I wouldn't be so sure, tourists still use Central London buses in abundance from my frequent observations and there are no signs of abating. Sure tour buses are a more 'fun' way of navigating Central London but that is seen more as a luxury than a means of transport, however buses are the basic and fundamental form of transport whereby tourists in London travel between points of interests within city. Any patronage decrease regarding London's bus network would largely consist of commuters and citizens who acknowledge all the works and projects taking place within the city that affect buses and resort to using other means of transport instead.
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Post by snowman on Jul 15, 2016 15:20:59 GMT
The papaers for the 19th July TfL Board are now online It appears bus use for 4th Qtr (to 31 Mar) is 8% lower than last year content.tfl.gov.uk/board-20160719-item06-ofp-ipr.pdfsection 2.0 shows bus fares income was £87,000,000 below budget, wit a volume shortfall of fare paying passengers of £104.5m (presumably average fare is £1.20) Page 43 shows the buses lost a staggering £628m (or about £1m per route, excluding school routes), or £1.72m per day
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Post by snoggle on Jul 15, 2016 17:02:48 GMT
The papaers for the 19th July TfL Board are now online It appears bus use for 4th Qtr (to 31 Mar) is 8% lower than last year content.tfl.gov.uk/board-20160719-item06-ofp-ipr.pdfsection 2.0 shows bus fares income was £87,000,000 below budget, wit a volume shortfall of fare paying passengers of £104.5m (presumably average fare is £1.20) Page 43 shows the buses lost a staggering £628m (or about £1m per route, excluding school routes), or £1.72m per day Not sure I agree with your interpretation of page 43. You've lumped investment in with all the costs of running the network. The investment numbers are bloated because the NB4Ls are being funded by TfL. Normally capital investment is around £20-25m per annum. TfL is never, ever in a position to fully fund its investment from revenue hence it receives investment grant. The worst case you can present for the bus network's costs are to take revenue and deduct the costs of bus contracts and the cost of central services like Centrecomm, radio, I-Bus, stops and infrastructure operation. That gives a loss of £541m but even that's not really a fair analysis given the capital cost / depreciation of the buses themselves are hidden in the contract costs. The revenue cost (to TfL) of the bus contracts funds large scale investment in assets. There is also the small "other bus income" (advertising etc) of £32m which helps fund some of the shortfall. TfL did commit to presenting the bus network's costs in a different form but I can't where they've done this for the last year. EDITTfL have updated the tables on a different way of looking at bus subsidy since the 2014 business plan page 79. However if you rework the numbers with those from the Q4 15/16 report page 43 for revenues and costs but retain the forecasts for capital cost contribution and concessionary fares income then the 2015/16 net position changes from £35m surplus to £122m surplus. Obviously that's "rough and ready". However it's a very different position from a loss of £630m.
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Post by snoggle on Jul 27, 2016 15:52:06 GMT
Looks like the expected recovery in bus patronage has yet to materialise. Period 1 - down 14.2m pass jnys on a year ago Period 2 - up 1.3m pass jnys on a year ago Period 3 - down 15.9m pass jnys on a year ago [ source London Datastore tfl-journeys-type spreadsheet ] TfL financial years start April in year and each period is 28 days long except P1 and P13 which can vary slightly. So a rip roaring recovery of 28.8m fewer pass jnys so far even though some of most damaging road schemes have completed.
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Post by snowman on Sept 13, 2016 11:29:55 GMT
The National bus statistics have been published, on the link there is a spreadsheet 0106 click on the tab marked chart and see how London is back to 2010 levels, and only marginally above 2008-2010 levels April-June statssome more general stats on costs and revenues, London is separate within the metropolitan area data, in table 0403 there are a (actual prices) and b (inflation adjusted) and per mile most recent 2014/15 is 6th of 11 years. Wonder what 2015-16 will look like as that will reflect the crash in ridership costs fares and revenues data
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Post by snoggle on Sept 26, 2016 16:10:29 GMT
The "invisible" recovery in bus usage continues. The Period 5 numbers have just been updated in the London Datastore. While there is always a dip in usage in Period 5 (Summer school hols) there is a further decline on last year's numbers.
Period 5 has 155.3m pass jnys, down 7m on last year. The cumulative decline (Ps 1-5) for this year is now 41.1m pass jnys down on last year which was lower than for many years previous.
The Underground, Overground, DLR and Tram are all continuing to see growth in pass jny numbers over the same periods last year - tube up 16.9m on the year, DLR up 1.4m, Overground up 28.8m and Tram up 1.1m.
Given that bus revenues will be declining all the while as patronage falls and the Hopper ticket is unlikely to help matters I suspect bus finances may be in a parlous state by the year end unless there is some miraculous increase in bus usage. I suspect TfL are in a real old state trying to cope with the ULEZ impacts on the bus network and worsening finances. I note the stream of consultations has almost crawled to a halt - presumably because improvement schemes are being reassessed / put on hold / cancelled.
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Post by snowman on Sept 26, 2016 18:27:48 GMT
The "invisible" recovery in bus usage continues. The Period 5 numbers have just been updated in the London Datastore. While there is always a dip in usage in Period 5 (Summer school hols) there is a further decline on last year's numbers. Period 5 has 155.3m pass jnys, down 7m on last year. The cumulative decline (Ps 1-5) for this year is now 41.1m pass jnys down on last year which was lower than for many years previous. The Underground, Overground, DLR and Tram are all continuing to see growth in pass jny numbers over the same periods last year - tube up 16.9m on the year, DLR up 1.4m, Overground up 28.8m and Tram up 1.1m. Given that bus revenues will be declining all the while as patronage falls and the Hopper ticket is unlikely to help matters I suspect bus finances may be in a parlous state by the year end unless there is some miraculous increase in bus usage. I suspect TfL are in a real old state trying to cope with the ULEZ impacts on the bus network and worsening finances. I note the stream of consultations has almost crawled to a halt - presumably because improvement schemes are being reassessed / put on hold / cancelled. Assuming it is a four week period, 7m represents quarter of a million journeys less per day. Roughly 30 per bus, or 2-3 passengers per journey. Clearly this is unsustainable, and if the other modes are going up, at some stage travelcard revenue will be reapportioned to reflect the revised usage split which will decimate bus finances further. I suspect the financial numbers are looking ugly on the spreadsheets. I agree that TfL are probably in a horrible state. They only have two options, the virtuous circle of improving quality and thus demand, and thus higher revenue. Or axe wielding or the worst loss making bits. Clearly as some services are suffering crowding, there must be parts that are carrying (non revenue paying) fresh air. There should be a realisation that tiny tweaks to pvrs and minor extensions or reroutes are not consistent with the step change in journey patterns. However I suspect there is no longer the skills or experience to redraw the network. Perhaps we should have a competition (like Boris did for his bus), but this time redraw a part of Londons bus network to make it profitable (or even pay retired people with knowledge to draft it). Maybe it will throw up ideas that TfL staff haven't got time to think up.
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Post by bigbaddom1981 on Sept 26, 2016 19:05:59 GMT
The "invisible" recovery in bus usage continues. The Period 5 numbers have just been updated in the London Datastore. While there is always a dip in usage in Period 5 (Summer school hols) there is a further decline on last year's numbers. Period 5 has 155.3m pass jnys, down 7m on last year. The cumulative decline (Ps 1-5) for this year is now 41.1m pass jnys down on last year which was lower than for many years previous. The Underground, Overground, DLR and Tram are all continuing to see growth in pass jny numbers over the same periods last year - tube up 16.9m on the year, DLR up 1.4m, Overground up 28.8m and Tram up 1.1m. Given that bus revenues will be declining all the while as patronage falls and the Hopper ticket is unlikely to help matters I suspect bus finances may be in a parlous state by the year end unless there is some miraculous increase in bus usage. I suspect TfL are in a real old state trying to cope with the ULEZ impacts on the bus network and worsening finances. I note the stream of consultations has almost crawled to a halt - presumably because improvement schemes are being reassessed / put on hold / cancelled. With the amount of ETM failures, this could have an effect on accurate recording of data. I have certainly seen an increase of times I get on a bus only for the oyster reader not to work
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Post by snoggle on Sept 26, 2016 19:08:23 GMT
I agree that TfL are probably in a horrible state. They only have two options, the virtuous circle of improving quality and thus demand, and thus higher revenue. Or axe wielding or the worst loss making bits. Clearly as some services are suffering crowding, there must be parts that are carrying (non revenue paying) fresh air. There should be a realisation that tiny tweaks to pvrs and minor extensions or reroutes are not consistent with the step change in journey patterns. However I suspect there is no longer the skills or experience to redraw the network. Perhaps we should have a competition (like Boris did for his bus), but this time redraw a part of Londons bus network to make it profitable (or even pay retired people with knowledge to draft it). Maybe it will throw up ideas that TfL staff haven't got time to think up. Alternatively just read some parts of this Forum? More seriously I've long suspected that TfL is "hoist by its petard" in that everything, publicly, has to have a business case before it can be signed off. Obviously Mayor manifesto commitments don't count - TfL and everyone else just has to live with the consequences. The "must have a business case" rule is theoretically fine but it can make it nigh on impossible to do "common sense" things if the data is poor or non existent or formulas can't cope with the case trying to be proved. Similarly TfL is unable to act commercially or speculatively in trying things with bus routes which would probably be very attractive to the public but may have some downsides as well - an example is something like "Gold" standard interiors and "posh" facilities that may be expensive to provide and maintain. I suspect bringing in the "golden oldie" brigade (apologies if any are reading ) would fall foul of the "we don't do it like that anymore" culture or "can't be proved in a business case" dilemma even though the proposals would probably be entirely rational.
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Post by snowman on Oct 18, 2016 10:28:10 GMT
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