Estimating Passenger Flows on the

London Underground using Oyster Data

Harsha Ravichandran • 17 July 2013

Ridership Analysis

How many people take the Piccadilly Line during

the AM Peak?

How well does the supply of trains match this?

Ridership Analysis

Performed for the

Full AM Peak (7am-10am)

For the peak 30 minutes of the AM Peak

But which are the peak 30 minutes?

Eastbound (EB) and Westbound (WB) directions

Averaged from May 9-13 2011

Data Used

Oyster

A record for every journey made in the Underground

No data on route taken

RODS (Rolling Origin-Destination Survey)

Rolling survey on user route choice

Does not cover all possible OD pairs

Gateline totals

Information on total number of passengers entering/exiting a station

Methodology

Query Oyster for trips &

expand

Use RODS to figure out

path choice

Aggregate trips

What to Query?

All trips?

Only Piccadilly-Piccadilly trips?

Something else?

What about non-oyster trips?

Expansion factors from Gateline totals

Isn’t that all we need?

D O

What does RODS tell us?

Path 1 X%

Path 2 Y%

Path 3 Z%

What does RODS tell us?

Description OD pairs Trips

Total Queried (for 5 days) 28,822 1.17 mil

RODS data available 34% 76%

Can we infer more from RODS?

Assumption #1

OD pairs inferred: 34% 39%

Trips inferred: 76% 80%

D O

D O

Assumption #2

D O

D* O

OD pairs inferred: 39% 60%

Trips inferred: 80% 92%

Assumption #3

D O

D O

OD pairs inferred: 60% 65%

Trips inferred: 92% 95%

Next Steps

The remaining 5%

Loads on segments Ridership profile

What about those other trips?

>2 transfers, Piccadilly line in the middle 4%

What about service frequencies?

24 scheduled trains per hour in Central London

How many do they really operate?

Capacity: 800 passengers/train

Peak of the Peak

Which is the peak 30 minute period?

Central London: King’s Cross – South Kensington

0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

120000

140000

7:00 -

7:30

7:10 -

7:40

7:20 -

7:50

7:30 -

8:00

7:40 -

8:10

7:50 -

8:20

8:00 -

8:30

8:10 -

8:40

8:20 -

8:50

8:30 -

9:00

8:40 -

9:10

8:50 -

9:20

9:00 -

9:30

9:10 -

9:40

9:20 -

9:50

9:30 -

10:00

Central London Arrivals

Acceptable Trips

Compute acceptable intervals for every station

When should a trip start (or end) to reach Piccadilly Circus

between 8:40 and 9:10?

Filter trips

Repeat analysis for the “acceptable” trips

Supply

Assume all scheduled trips are operated