Rail Census 2015

[Jamie2k9]

http://www.transportforireland.ie/he...l-census-2015/

The main findings from the 2015 Census are:

Close to 141,500 journeys were taken on census day (Nov 19, 2015), up 13% on the 2014 data

Dublin’s Connolly, Pearse, Heuston and Tara continue to be the busiest rail stations in Ireland, between them handling a third of all rail passengers on census day

The 10 busiest stations on the network between them accounted for nearly half (47%) of all passenger movements on the day

25 stations generated fewer than 100 journeys on census day. Of the quietest stations, 12 experienced fewer than 30 journeys

For the fourth successive year, the busiest train in Ireland was the 8:00 DART from Greystones to Malahide, with a total of 1,336 passengers using this service. The peak passenger load on this service was between Booterstown and Sydney Parade, when 923 passengers were on board

The most heavily loaded commuter service was the 07:12 Drogheda to Bray, which carried 691 passengers between Howth Junction and Connolly

https://fe49d9ec8511d2dc0553-f8f415f...ull_Report.pdf
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One thing I notice is the peak morning loading between 2014/2015 are the exact same apart from the addition of the 05:55 Gorey - Connolly (additional to 2015). On the other had the evening peak are different so is it really possible there was not a single change in the morning loading?

[James Howard]

It's interesting how they quote definitive percentages for DART / Commuter / Intercity. Those numbers would be very different on a Friday or a Sunday.

Yet, I guarantee you we'll here the 11% intercity rate quote as a percentage of Irish Rail's business as a justification of how important DART is. Never mind that the Intercity passenger is on average paying between 5 and 10 times as much as the DART passenger.

This census is a pretty pointless exercise. When push comes to shove they can tell most of what they need to tell from ticket sales anyway.

[ThomasJ]

. The appearance of
Maynooth in the top 10 list could be indicative of increased patronage on commuter services to Heuston.

[Jamie2k9]

The appearance of Maynooth in the top 10 list could be indicative of increased patronage on commuter services to Heuston.

I suppose it would be mad to think that more people in work and moving out of Dublin for reasons we all know have nothing do with increased usage!

This census is a pretty pointless exercise

Justify the existence of another fancy named (but useless) department or whatever you want to call it.

[James Shields]

If I'm not mistaken, the suspension of most of the modern stock can track the weight the train is carrying along its journey, so it shouldn't be very hard to estimate how many passengers (or at least how many kgs of passenger) are on board at any time.

Processing that data and correlating with train location data would give the fancy named department plenty to do, and would provide much more useful data than a one day census.

James

[Jamie2k9]

If I'm not mistaken, the suspension of most of the modern stock can track the weight the train is carrying along its journey, so it shouldn't be very hard to estimate how many passengers (or at least how many kgs of passenger) are on board at any time.

Processing that data and correlating with train location data would give the fancy named department plenty to do, and would provide much more useful data than a one day census.

James

Or they could just use the passenger counters on some if not all the fleet.....or the old fashioned way like the Cork hosts walk through the train after all stops counting the number of passengers.

I don't for a second buy that there was not a single change over the same morning last year.

[comcor]

Originally Posted by Jamie2k9

Justify the existence of another fancy named (but useless) department or whatever you want to call it.

Why isn't it a function of the CSO? After all, they produce usage stats for airports and routes.

[Inniskeen]

While I support the gathering and publication of usage statistics, I am not sure that the census exercise is the best way to gather this information. While a wet day in November might be representative of morning and evening peak commuter demand, it is not representative of usage generally and grossly undestimates mainline usage.

It is diificult to find reliable statistics on rail usage and the Irish Rail annual reports are pathetic in this regard, the prime objective being to hide trends which Irish rail believe do not suit their purposes at any particular time.