Data and statistical analysis is key in making business decisions, but statistics need to be interpreted with care and in the right context.
We often see references to (bus) passenger journeys per head of population. A useful metric, but what of areas with significant numbers of non-resident bus users?
The Isle of Wight was recently cited as coming 16 out of 100+ local authorities, but there is a huge imbalance between summer and winter bus use there, the former boosted by many thousands of tourists using the island’s excellent bus services, as I did last summer.
The glaring example is of course London, which consistently tops the charts by a massive margin and is held up as an exemplar as a result.
But how many passengers on Transport for London’s (TfL’s) buses are workers or tourists who live outside London? London probably has the greatest disparity in this respect. Working from home will have reduced the number of regular non-resident commuters, but the tourist market is still strong.
I regularly travel round London by bus, having arrived there by train from my home in Essex, but what sense is there in relating the number of trips I and millions of others make against the population of London? It’s comparing apples and pears.
Mind you, since my ITSO-specified ENCTS pass can’t be read by TfL’s ticket machines, and few drivers seem to press the pass button when I board, I wonder how many of my journeys are counted (even if ‘every journey matters’ in TfL-land)?
I realise that it is near impossible to identify travel by residents as distinct from visitors, although I’d be interested to know if TfL in particular has any measure of this. But what is clear is that trips per head of population is a flawed measure in many areas.
Richard Delahoy,
Southend on Sea
