4 ms·

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.

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.