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Abbey Line Monitoring
Client: Hertfordshire County Council, 2006 - ongoing
The Abbey Line, between Watford Junction and St Albans Abbey is a Community Rail Partnership (CRP) line, where London Midland (the train operator), local councils and rail user groups work together to improve patronage, awareness of and services on the line. The Railway Consultancy has been supporting the CRP since 2006, and has undertaken a range of counts and surveys, which have provided information about the market for rail travel on the line, and its growth in recent years. The latest surveys were undertaken in May 2008. The journey purposes and trip frequencies of passengers on the line have changed little in recent years, but we were also specifically asked to investigate the take-up of new carnet tickets, which were introduced last Autumn. These still have a very small market share, probably because they cannot be purchased from train-borne staff, who otherwise provide the majority of ticket sales on the line.
However, much more change has taken place in terms of the scale of demand on the line. Exceeding even the general traffic increase on the railway, demand has risen very significantly during the two years of our monitoring. This no doubt reflects, at least in part, the activities of both the CRP officer, and the local users’ group. Weekday demand is 25% higher than in May 2006, whilst Saturday and Sunday demand were found to be 4% and 43% higher respectively. Although specific (e.g. sporting) events can impact on weekend traffic a great deal, these differential growth rates probably do reflect generic trends in transport demand, especially since West Coast main line engineering work is gradually providing a better service on Sundays, for ‘weekend-away’ leisure trips.
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http://www.railwayconsultancy.com/abbey.php
Last Modified: Tuesday, July 8, 2008
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