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If you're wondering what to click and not from the UK: Paddington (busy station): https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/P/PAD-rail.png http

If you're wondering what to click and not from the UK: Paddington (busy station): https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/P/PAD-rail.png https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/P/... Penzance (rural endpoint): https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/P/PNZ-rail.png https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/P/...

ExoticPearTree 3y ago
So it displays the number of people that transit through a specific station? Or is it the station "reach"?
- avianlyric 3y ago
  It’s the number of passengers that traveled from a specific station to any other station in UK. Passengers are assumed to have taken the shortest rail route from station A to B. Which is interesting, because it might not have been the fastest route. For example there are a few different routes between Euston and Crewe, and I don’t think the fastest non-stopping trains take the shortest route.
  - VBprogrammer 3y ago
    Yeah, I noticed that there was no link from Edinburgh to Glasgow on the East Coast mainline from my local station. Presumably the passengers that took this route were assumed to have taken the West Coast Mainline.
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    Someone adventurous did Wick-Bodmin Parkway... I hope he's arrived by now.
  - midasuni 3y ago
    Crewe does take the shorted route - Stafford, Trent valley, then bypassing rugby. The cheap trains do the same route and just stop along the way. The ticket itself is valid for say journey into Birmingham, soend the day, then continue via Banbury to Marylebone. I’ve done that myself several times, but it’s a minor flow compared to the direct train. Manchester to London - at least pre covid, had 3 trains per hour, one via Crewe which was slightly longer, the others via Stoke.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  I think it's showing the shortest path routes from the chosen station A to the destinations B, weighted according to the number of tickets sold from A to B.
- michaelt 3y ago
  I believe this data is based on ticket sales. In the UK you can buy a ticket from Cambridge to Norwich where you can get a direct train or you can change at Ely, depending on what time of day you use the ticket. But the ticket sales data can't tell if you changed at Ely or not. So presumably this visualisation draws cambridge-to-norwich tickets on the shortest route, without trying to figure out or show if they go via Ely.
  - tialaramex 3y ago
    The UK sales data (if that's what they have) actually can tell you the route in some cases. This is in fact a bad thing, so let's explain... Britain has repeatedly elected Conservative Party ("Tory") governments, the Tories have an ideological preference for the Free Market, regardless of whether that makes any sense. So, instead of a single nationally owned and likely unprofitable railway industry, it is divided into a lot of separate elements that in theory could be profitable but in fact take enormous subsidies to keep around, for our purposes we care about just one of those elements, the Rail Franchises, a whole lot of separate companies which undertake to provide passenger journeys on set routes and employ staff to operate trains, provide custom services, hire the rolling stock and so on. Originally these Franchises were supposed to compete for passengers. But if they provide unrelated routes obviously that's not much "competition". A route from Leeds to Glasgow isn't in any meaningful sense "competing" with a route from Salisbury to Cambridge. So OK, what if they're competing only where the endpoints are the same? Well, the immediate problem is that the customers don't want to buy a ticket for "Bob's Railway" they want a ticket from one place to another and couldn't give a shit who provides that journey. So the franchises "fixed" this by creating special tickets with weird rules. For example instead of a "Bob's Railway" ticket you make a ticket which requires passengers to travel via Tinyton, a small town nobody cares about but which is served only by Bob's Railway. Do the trains stop in Tinyton? Technically yes they do, but you'd barely know it, this is mostly just a way to satisfy the requirement that "Via Tinyton" means "Only use Bob's Railway" and so Bob's Railway can claim 100% of revenue for these tickets. That revenue doesn't actually matter any more, for a few years now the government just takes all revenue and pays the franchises whatever they want instead - but the pretence of competition must remain, because you know, "Free Market". The result is that tickets are needlessly complicated or incredibly expensive or both, indeed if you're not using software or a specialist human to help plan your journey you will probably pay far more than you should and you might have a terrible journey anyway. The Tories love to say somehow the "Free Market" is going to fix this, but of course the correct fix is ideologically impossible for them, "Take the railways back into public ownership" is at once cheaper, more practical, and completely unthinkable thanks to ideology.
johndunne 3y ago
This is very interesting. It looks like most of the London train stations have a regional focus. I often travel to London from Leeds, so Kingscross is the terminating station (true for Scotland and the North East), Euston seems to be mostly North West, St Pancras is the midlands and South East, Paddington is South West and Victoria is South/South East. Fascinating to see this illustrated in Graph form. Nice!
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  Yes, that's exactly how train stations were built around the centre of London. It's the same in Paris, for instance, where the stations' names make it more obvious. It's also interesting to see the reach of London. Many people as far as Oxford and Cambridge seem to commute into London.
  - xenocratus 3y ago
    And weirdos like me who commute out from London into Cambridge, via London Liverpool Street mostly.
    - FartyMcFarter 3y ago
      That must be a nice quiet commute.
      - varispeed 3y ago
        I used to commute out of London. It was anything but nice and quiet. I actually had to buy a car, because using train was not viable (expensive, always late and crowded or trains cancelled, often impossible to board). After coming late nth time, manager said either improve this or we will be looking at letting you go. Getting a car was the best thing I've done. Our country really need to focus on improving the public transport as at its current state is not fit for purpose.
        tharmas 3y ago
dspillett 3y ago
Also York (popular destination, middle of the east coast main line but good connectivity to stations west (Leeds, Manchester, …) & elsewhere, with both through-trains and those that start/terminate there): https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/Y/YRK-rail.png https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/Y/... Not as busy as any of the London terminals, but a key station for many travellers.
- gnfargbl 3y ago
  York is a good example of how building high-ish speed railways that actually take people somewhere they want to go, leads to people using those railways. Look at the way the plots taper off to the north and south of York; this isn't just people shuttling to and from London, this is ordinary commuters and rail travellers using the railway as a decent mode of transportation. I wish the government had the gumption to recognize this and respond appropriately.
  - DrBazza 3y ago
    Rob Holden, who lead HS1, and delivered it under budget said HS2 has been such a disaster, paraphrasing, because HS2 publicly declared its budget for each section, so the Cotswold tunnels, for example had a budget of, say, $10bn. So the contractors bidding to do it, bid... $9.9bn. Whereas HS1 invited bids from contractors who had no idea how much the government was prepared to spend. Absolute idiocy. More details in this and the links in the story: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/hs2-rishi-sunak-tory-conference-b2422922.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/hs2-rishi-sun...
    - AlecSchueler 3y ago
      I remember they started doing it this was because there was concerns about companies with insider information being unfairly advantaged in the bidding stages.
      - DrBazza 3y ago
DrBazza 3y ago
Ashford International, one end of the HS1 line is pretty well served: https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/A/AFK-rail.png https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/A/... or the other end of HS1, St Pancras: https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/S/STP-rail.png https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/S/... And yet, we've more or less cancelled HS2. Oh well.
n_plus_1_acc 3y ago
Can anyone explain why there so little traffic to Heathrow? Do most people take the Tube and not the Heathrow express? It also looks like traffic between the Terminals is not shown. IIRC, you have to get a ticket to cross the ticket gate (which is free I think), so they must have the numbers somewhere.
- Marazan 3y ago
  The Heathrow Express is extremely expensive. I imagine most people tube, bus or get dropped off by car.
  - krallja 3y ago
    Yes, and the expenses get much worse if you’re traveling in a group. I certainly took the Tube, with my family of four, to Heathrow last spring. It was hundreds of pounds for us to take the Express, or <£30 for the Tube.
    - Symbiote 3y ago
      The opening of the Elizabeth Line was partway through the statistic period used here. That line provides the cheaper and almost-as-fast option to Central London and beyond, using the same tracks as the Heathrow Express but also stopping at some intermediate stations. Unfortunately, Heathrow Airport have very good signage to the Heathrow Express, and abysmal signage to the Elizabeth Line. I assume this is intentional. I'm thoroughly confused on what it costs. The airport supposedly adds a surcharge as they own the last bit of track, but I can't find an official website saying what this surcharge is. More than the tube, but significantly less than the Heathrow Express, anyway. (Before the Elizabeth Line there were also non-"Express" trains running on the same tracks, but the service was less frequent. Not many people knew about it.)
      - OJFord 3y ago
        There's no airport-specific surcharge, it's just zone 6. Which for the Piccadilly line happens to only contain Heathrow, and Elizabeth line only Heathrow & non-London. But it's not hidden/secret, there's a zone 7, and other lines have more in 6.
mfbx9da4 3y ago
What if I'm from the UK and I am still wondering what to click?

ExoticPearTree 3y ago

So it displays the number of people that transit through a specific station? Or is it the station "reach"?

avianlyric 3y ago
It’s the number of passengers that traveled from a specific station to any other station in UK. Passengers are assumed to have taken the shortest rail route from station A to B. Which is interesting, because it might not have been the fastest route. For example there are a few different routes between Euston and Crewe, and I don’t think the fastest non-stopping trains take the shortest route.
- VBprogrammer 3y ago
  Yeah, I noticed that there was no link from Edinburgh to Glasgow on the East Coast mainline from my local station. Presumably the passengers that took this route were assumed to have taken the West Coast Mainline.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  Someone adventurous did Wick-Bodmin Parkway... I hope he's arrived by now.
- midasuni 3y ago
  Crewe does take the shorted route - Stafford, Trent valley, then bypassing rugby. The cheap trains do the same route and just stop along the way. The ticket itself is valid for say journey into Birmingham, soend the day, then continue via Banbury to Marylebone. I’ve done that myself several times, but it’s a minor flow compared to the direct train. Manchester to London - at least pre covid, had 3 trains per hour, one via Crewe which was slightly longer, the others via Stoke.
Symbiote 3y ago
I think it's showing the shortest path routes from the chosen station A to the destinations B, weighted according to the number of tickets sold from A to B.
michaelt 3y ago
I believe this data is based on ticket sales. In the UK you can buy a ticket from Cambridge to Norwich where you can get a direct train or you can change at Ely, depending on what time of day you use the ticket. But the ticket sales data can't tell if you changed at Ely or not. So presumably this visualisation draws cambridge-to-norwich tickets on the shortest route, without trying to figure out or show if they go via Ely.
- tialaramex 3y ago
  The UK sales data (if that's what they have) actually can tell you the route in some cases. This is in fact a bad thing, so let's explain... Britain has repeatedly elected Conservative Party ("Tory") governments, the Tories have an ideological preference for the Free Market, regardless of whether that makes any sense. So, instead of a single nationally owned and likely unprofitable railway industry, it is divided into a lot of separate elements that in theory could be profitable but in fact take enormous subsidies to keep around, for our purposes we care about just one of those elements, the Rail Franchises, a whole lot of separate companies which undertake to provide passenger journeys on set routes and employ staff to operate trains, provide custom services, hire the rolling stock and so on. Originally these Franchises were supposed to compete for passengers. But if they provide unrelated routes obviously that's not much "competition". A route from Leeds to Glasgow isn't in any meaningful sense "competing" with a route from Salisbury to Cambridge. So OK, what if they're competing only where the endpoints are the same? Well, the immediate problem is that the customers don't want to buy a ticket for "Bob's Railway" they want a ticket from one place to another and couldn't give a shit who provides that journey. So the franchises "fixed" this by creating special tickets with weird rules. For example instead of a "Bob's Railway" ticket you make a ticket which requires passengers to travel via Tinyton, a small town nobody cares about but which is served only by Bob's Railway. Do the trains stop in Tinyton? Technically yes they do, but you'd barely know it, this is mostly just a way to satisfy the requirement that "Via Tinyton" means "Only use Bob's Railway" and so Bob's Railway can claim 100% of revenue for these tickets. That revenue doesn't actually matter any more, for a few years now the government just takes all revenue and pays the franchises whatever they want instead - but the pretence of competition must remain, because you know, "Free Market". The result is that tickets are needlessly complicated or incredibly expensive or both, indeed if you're not using software or a specialist human to help plan your journey you will probably pay far more than you should and you might have a terrible journey anyway. The Tories love to say somehow the "Free Market" is going to fix this, but of course the correct fix is ideologically impossible for them, "Take the railways back into public ownership" is at once cheaper, more practical, and completely unthinkable thanks to ideology.

johndunne 3y ago

This is very interesting. It looks like most of the London train stations have a regional focus. I often travel to London from Leeds, so Kingscross is the terminating station (true for Scotland and the North East), Euston seems to be mostly North West, St Pancras is the midlands and South East, Paddington is South West and Victoria is South/South East. Fascinating to see this illustrated in Graph form. Nice!

mytailorisrich 3y ago
Yes, that's exactly how train stations were built around the centre of London. It's the same in Paris, for instance, where the stations' names make it more obvious. It's also interesting to see the reach of London. Many people as far as Oxford and Cambridge seem to commute into London.
- xenocratus 3y ago
  And weirdos like me who commute out from London into Cambridge, via London Liverpool Street mostly.
  - FartyMcFarter 3y ago
    That must be a nice quiet commute.
    - varispeed 3y ago
      I used to commute out of London. It was anything but nice and quiet. I actually had to buy a car, because using train was not viable (expensive, always late and crowded or trains cancelled, often impossible to board). After coming late nth time, manager said either improve this or we will be looking at letting you go. Getting a car was the best thing I've done. Our country really need to focus on improving the public transport as at its current state is not fit for purpose.
      - tharmas 3y ago

dspillett 3y ago

Also York (popular destination, middle of the east coast main line but good connectivity to stations west (Leeds, Manchester, …) & elsewhere, with both through-trains and those that start/terminate there): https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/Y/YRK-rail.png https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/Y/... Not as busy as any of the London terminals, but a key station for many travellers.

gnfargbl 3y ago
York is a good example of how building high-ish speed railways that actually take people somewhere they want to go, leads to people using those railways. Look at the way the plots taper off to the north and south of York; this isn't just people shuttling to and from London, this is ordinary commuters and rail travellers using the railway as a decent mode of transportation. I wish the government had the gumption to recognize this and respond appropriately.
- DrBazza 3y ago
  Rob Holden, who lead HS1, and delivered it under budget said HS2 has been such a disaster, paraphrasing, because HS2 publicly declared its budget for each section, so the Cotswold tunnels, for example had a budget of, say, $10bn. So the contractors bidding to do it, bid... $9.9bn. Whereas HS1 invited bids from contractors who had no idea how much the government was prepared to spend. Absolute idiocy. More details in this and the links in the story: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/hs2-rishi-sunak-tory-conference-b2422922.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/hs2-rishi-sun...
  - AlecSchueler 3y ago
    I remember they started doing it this was because there was concerns about companies with insider information being unfairly advantaged in the bidding stages.
    - DrBazza 3y ago

DrBazza 3y ago

Ashford International, one end of the HS1 line is pretty well served: https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/A/AFK-rail.png https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/A/... or the other end of HS1, St Pancras: https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/S/STP-rail.png https://github.com/anisotropi4/kingfisher/blob/main/image/S/... And yet, we've more or less cancelled HS2. Oh well.

n_plus_1_acc 3y ago

Can anyone explain why there so little traffic to Heathrow? Do most people take the Tube and not the Heathrow express? It also looks like traffic between the Terminals is not shown. IIRC, you have to get a ticket to cross the ticket gate (which is free I think), so they must have the numbers somewhere.

Marazan 3y ago
The Heathrow Express is extremely expensive. I imagine most people tube, bus or get dropped off by car.
- krallja 3y ago
  Yes, and the expenses get much worse if you’re traveling in a group. I certainly took the Tube, with my family of four, to Heathrow last spring. It was hundreds of pounds for us to take the Express, or <£30 for the Tube.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    The opening of the Elizabeth Line was partway through the statistic period used here. That line provides the cheaper and almost-as-fast option to Central London and beyond, using the same tracks as the Heathrow Express but also stopping at some intermediate stations. Unfortunately, Heathrow Airport have very good signage to the Heathrow Express, and abysmal signage to the Elizabeth Line. I assume this is intentional. I'm thoroughly confused on what it costs. The airport supposedly adds a surcharge as they own the last bit of track, but I can't find an official website saying what this surcharge is. More than the tube, but significantly less than the Heathrow Express, anyway. (Before the Elizabeth Line there were also non-"Express" trains running on the same tracks, but the service was less frequent. Not many people knew about it.)
    - OJFord 3y ago
      There's no airport-specific surcharge, it's just zone 6. Which for the Piccadilly line happens to only contain Heathrow, and Elizabeth line only Heathrow & non-London. But it's not hidden/secret, there's a zone 7, and other lines have more in 6.

mfbx9da4 3y ago

What if I'm from the UK and I am still wondering what to click?