Complaints data from TfL

As covered here by London Reconnections, TfL have released some figures (at the back of this report by the Commissioner to the TfL Board) on complaints received from the public about various transport services in London during the financial year 2011/12. The summary table, reproduced below, shows that complaints levels per 100,000 journeys made were much higher on the Dial-a-Ride and Cycle Hire services than on the mainstream services.

One thing that might be of note is that according to the figures for bus complaints, there were around 4,700 complaints made in 2011/12 about ‘poor or dangerous driving’ by London bus drivers.

Filed under: 2011/12, Complaints, London, TfL

London Dashboard

The GLA have launched a ‘dashboard‘ of data covering a range of topics, to be updated at regular and frequent intervals. It includes a number of items on transport such as journeys by public transport and by cycle hire. The cycle hire data is broken down not just by month but by day so you can observe patterns over short and long timescales. When the cycle hire scheme was launched it was expected to generate about 40,000 trips a day (see paragraph 447 in the Mayor’s Transport Strategy here) but as of the latest data (to the 8th of July) this level had only been reached five times. TfL have since said that there were record numbers of hires during the Olympics period so it will be interesting to see what the next update shows.

Filed under: Cycling, Data, GLA, Historic, London, Modal share, TfL, Traffic

Road casualties in London in 2011

In late June TfL published a factsheet on road casualties in 2011, which you can find alongside previous versions here. There were 29,257 casualties recorded by the police in 2011 (inevitably an under-estimate, since many injuries don’t get reported, particularly the less serious ones). Of these, 159 were fatalities, 2,646 were serious injuries, and 26,452 were slight injuries.

The number of people killed or seriously injured (KSI) fell 3% from 2010 to the lowest number since 1986 (the earliest year of police reporting at Greater London level). But there were huge differences in trend for different categories of road user: while the number of car occupant KSIs fell by 31% and the number of bus or coach occupants by 12%, the number of cycling KSIs increased by 22% and the number of pedestrian KSIs by 7%.

Of course, these divergent trends are partly due to different trends in traffic for each mode, with car traffic generally falling and cycling rising in recent years. But it’s very unlikely that car traffic fell by 31% or that cycling rose by 22%, so it is highly probable that the car casualty rate fell and the cycle casualty rate rose. We should get more evidence on casualty rates when DfT update this table and others in a month or so.

It is also worth noting that DfT publish very detailed data for every single recorded casualty recorded on data.gov.uk. The data is at case level so you can analyse it any way you like, but be warned that the data is quite complex (you may need to match vehicle records with casualty records, for example) so it might take some time to understand.

Filed under: 2011, Data, London, Report, Safety, TfL

Long-run trend in commuting into central London

The first statistics on commuting into central London were collected in the 1850s (of which more later), but the first figures comparable to the present date from around a century later. The chart below shows the trend since 1956 in the number of people (in thousands) measured as entering central during the weekday morning peak, broken down by whether they used rail (national rail, London Underground or TfL), bus or private transport (car, coach, taxi, cycle and motorcycle). NB, walking isn’t included.

The number of morning commuters peaked at about 1.25 million in 1962 and then fell through most of the next twenty years. The pattern over the last thirty years is dominated by peaks and troughs linked to London’s economic performance, with notable booms and busts in the late 1980s, early 2000s and in 2007-08.

Rail is the dominant mode throughout this period, even more so in recent years, reaching 79% of the total in 2010. In fact the more interesting changes happened on the road and only really show up when you leave rail out. Detailed data on road traffic only starts in 1969 but the chart below interpolates back to estimates from 1961 to show the broad modal split of road commuting over a nearly 50-year span. It shows buses and cars twice swapping places as the dominant mode of transport for commuters, with bus ridership sliding throughout the 60s and 70s before shooting up again in the early 2000s. Interestingly, this latter shift seems to have started before the introduction of the congestion charge: the number of car commuters into central London fell by nearly a quarter between 2000 and 2002, before the C-charge was introduced in 2003.

The most notable trends in the last decade have been the continuing fall in the car share of commuting, and the rise in cycling. The chart below shows cycling’s share of road commuting into central London since 1969. In the early 1970s cycling accounted for just 1% of road commuting (and therefore a much smaller share of total commuting), but by 2010 this had risen to 12%. Given the combined motorcycle/cycle figure in 1961 was 13%, it seems fairly plausible that cycling now accounts for a higher share of central London commuters than at any point in the past. Also, if current trends continue (a big if) it won’t be long before more people are coming into central London on two-wheelers than in cars.

I mentioned at the start that these kind of statistics were first collected in the 1850s. This refers to a survey by Charles Pearson, who hired ‘traffic-takers’ to stand ‘at all the principal entrances to the city of London, to take their station from eight o’clock in the morning till eight o’clock at night’ and count the number of persons and vehicles leaving or entering the City over the twelve-hour period. The City was a much larger part of ‘London’ in the 1850s than it is now, and Pearson measured somewhat different flows and used a different methodology, but his results, shown in the table below, are still fascinating.

Estimated number of persons and vehicles going into and out of the City daily in 1854, counting them all both ways.

Omnibus	88,000
Other vehicles	52,000
River steamers	30,000
Via Fenchurch St and London Bridge rail	54,000
Foot passengers	400,000

Railways were still in their infancy and there was no Tube yet, but the most striking result here is how many people walked into Central London. That’s not so surprising, as London was much smaller and denser than it is today so most people would have been within an hour’s walk of the City. It’s frustrating that we don’t have comparable figures on walking today (at least, not that we could easily find) but as the city is so much more spread out you would expect walking’s share to be much lower, though still significant.

Filed under: Data, Historic, London, Modal share, TfL, Traffic

Travel in London Report 4 out

We’re a little late on this due to the holidays, but TfL published the 4th edition of their excellent Travel in London report just after Christmas. You can find the PDF here and hopefully it will be joined by some data tables soon as in previous editions.

Filed under: 2011, Cycling, London, Modal share, Noise, Report, Safety, TfL, Traffic

London Overground usage stats

In case you missed it, here’s a superb analysis by London Reconnections of a recent TfL report on the current and future usage of the London Overground.

Filed under: London, Rail, Report, TfL

Updated: trend in cycling flows on TLRN

We have posted previously about TfL’s statistics showing the trend in cycle flows measured on their network of main roads in London. Data for the second quarter of 2011/12 is now available and the charts below (and accompanying data) have been updated accordingly.

It’s important to note, though, that this is just one way of measuring trends in cycling in London, and probably not the best.

Filed under: Cycling, Data, Historic, London, TfL

Measuring trends in cycling

How do you measure cycling in London, and its growth over time? The answers to these questions aren’t just interesting in themselves – they’re also important for measuring whether cycling is getting more or less safe. Unfortunately there’s no perfect way to measure the number of people cycling or the distance they cover, but there are a few decent attempts, which this post will describe.

One measure we hear mentioned a lot is Transport for London’s count of the number of cyclists on its network of main roads, the TLRN. The chart below, from a previous post, shows the quarterly trend since 2000. On an annualised basis this shows an increase of about 150% over ten years.

The good thing about this data is that it’s available quarterly and TfL keep it pretty up to date. The drawback is that it only covers a small subset of London’s roads. The map below shows all the TLRN count sites TfL use to measure this flow.

The Department for Transport do their own counts of road traffic in London and elsewhere, in order to construct estimates of the distance travelled by each mode in each region in a given year. They survey a huge number of roads, but only once a year for main road sites (of which there are nearly two thousand in London) and less than annually for minor roads. Here’s what the trend in DfT’s count of cyclists on major roads looks like in London. According to these figures cycling on major roads in London increased by ‘only’ 78% between 2000 and 2009, much less than the TLRN count would indicate.

As mentioned above, DfT use these figures to calculate the distance travelled by each mode. The resulting trend for cycling in London is shown below. This trend is even flatter, showing an increase of only 38% between 2000 and 2010. The reason seems to be that most of the growth in cycling flows has been seen in areas where the count sites are more closely packed together so each extra cyclist counted translates into only a small increase in distance travelled (see DfT’s note on how traffic counts are turned into distance travelled).

Lastly, we go back to TfL, who in their third Travel in London report recognise the issues with the simple TLRN count and come up with a new way to estimate the number of cycling ‘journey stages’ in London on a typical day. Using data from their TLRN counts, the DfT counts and from their London Travel Demand Survey they estimate that cycling journey stages increased by 61 per cent between 2001 and 2009 (see p. 56 here).

So what you’re left with is a range of different ways of counting how much cycling there is in London, each of which produces a very different figure for the amount of growth in the last decade or so, from 38% to about 150%. Which one you use has important consequences, most notably for deciding whether the accident rate (per trip or per km) is rising or falling in London. This report from TfL says:

Comparing 2010 with 2009, total pedal cycle casualties rose by nine per cent (from 3,669 to 4,007), while the number of cycle journeys increased at a faster rate, by 15 per cent, indicating that cycling is becoming relatively safer.

But that 15% figure refers to the TLRN count, so comparing it to the London-wide casualty total is not comparing like with like. Every other measure, including TfL’s own measure of journey stages, shows slower growth. DfT calculate their own statistics on casualties per 100 million kilometres, and they show an increasing cycle casualty rate in recent years – see this recent post at Cyclists in the City for the trend, and for the raw data go here for 2010 and for previous years table 2.5a in each edition here.

In summary then, measuring how cycling has grown over time is very important, but it’s also very difficult. It’s vital to keep in mind how the different measures are constructed and what they mean if the right conclusions are to be drawn.

Filed under: Cycling, Data, DfT, Historic, London, Modal share, TfL

Parking spaces in London

TfL have made available (through their ‘Romulus‘ site) two studies of the number of parking spaces in London, the first carried out in 1999 and the second in 2004/05. You can find them by expanding the ‘Reports’ section of the left-hand menu, but be warned, they’re both big files (56mb in the case of the first one!).

The most interesting bit is probably the impact of the congestion charge on parking availability in Central London, as reported in the second study:

• In central London there was a reduction of 45% in the number of parking spaces for employees at workplaces, compared with 1999/2000. With the introduction of congestion charging in 2003 there was less incentive for employees to drive to work in central London, and there were fewer small car parks available for employee parking.
• There was also a 10% reduction in spaces available to the general public in central London car parks. The overall reduction in central London car park spaces (excluding those in residential car parks) was 24%. By contrast there were increases in available car park spaces in inner and outer London, outside the central area. In inner London there was an increase of 23% and in outer London an increase of 30%.
• There was a reduction in on-street parking spaces other than at meters and pay-and-display areas. In central London there were 27% fewer spaces on single-yellow or single-red lines, which normally allow parking in the late evening and at night. In inner and outer London there were 9% fewer unrestricted on-street spaces.

Filed under: Car parking, Historic, London, Report, TfL

Traffic casualties in London since 1901

TfL’s most recent report on traffic casualties shows that 126 people died in collisions on London’s roads in 2010. While this figure represents a terrible loss of life, one which can and should be reduced, it is also – as TfL point out – the first time the number of road fatalities has fallen below 150 since their records began in the 1970s.

It is in fact possible to go further back in history then that. Statistics for 1901 onwards were collected by the London County Council and then the Greater London Council, first covering the Metropolitan Police District and then (from the mid 1960s) the Greater London area. Fortunately these two geographies match up fairly well – the Metropolitan Police District is larger than the Greater London area, but until around the mid 60s its outer reaches were sparsely populated enough to make little difference. Using LCC and GLC statistical reports found in the libraries of the London School of Economics and the Greater London Authority, we reconstructed trends of fatalities and total casualties (i.e. including ‘serious’ and ‘slight’ injuries) in London between 1901 and 2010, shown in the two charts below.

Some clear overall patterns emerge. First, each world war resulted in a large fall below trend in both fatalities and total casualties. Taking the effect of the wars into account, the basic trend in terms of fatalities seems to be an increase to a peak of around 1,400 a year in the early 1930s, followed by a long decline that continues to this day, with the 2010 figure of 126 deaths the lowest in the entire record. Total casualties peaked much later, in the early 1960s at 70-80,000 a year, and have fallen proportionately less to around 30,000 a year.

The chart below, derived from the two above, confirms that fatalities have fallen as a share of total casualties over time, though again with notable breaks from trend at the time of the two world wars. The overall downwards trend is presumably due to improvements in emergency care and overall health over time, with the ‘blips’ during the wars probably due to a combination of factors such as blackouts and a shortage of medical care.

You can download the data for these charts in csv format here. In a future post we’ll look at the long-run trend in cyclist casualties.

Filed under: Data, Historic, London, Safety, TfL