‘Unions clash with bosses over the extent of the disruption’ said the sub-headline in the Evening Standard. With the release of tube-radar we can settle the arguments. We release line by line records of the train frequencies throughout the day on all Underground lines. The tube-radar service uses TfL live departures information to calculate average times between trains for quarter-hour periods throughout the day. Tube-radar then plots the actual service (red) against the service expected on a normal working day (blue) based over the last month (for these particular diagrams).
The results are revealing: they show how London Underground eked out their resources by:
- shutting down the edges of the network e.g. Between Woodford and Hainault
- eliminating duplication of service e.g. running no Circle Line
- shrinking the working day by starting services later
- concentrating the services in the peak
- allowing National Rail services to fill the gap e.g. on the Richmond branch
There are some room for arguments with London Underground about how they make these decisions. For example, the Bakerloo seemed to be spared the worst, while the Piccadilly was shut almost entirely through the centre of town (though there were some ghost trains in the morning through Green Park!). Why was there a shuttle from Cockfosters to Arnos Grove and yet no services ran between Rayners Lane and Acton Town where there is no duplication? Plently of room for discussion now the strike is over.
There are some artifacts in the data: some live departure boards recorded no trains (e.g. eastbound Piccadilly Line) but were probably just offline. However, the overall picture is compelling. The data does now allow us to make decisions in real time when strikes are on, and it will allow us to comment with much more justification on what London Underground has done with its resources today. We look forward to a more informed debate!
Jonathan Raper
Bakerloo
Central
District
Hammersmith and City
Jubilee
Metropolitan
Northern
Piccadilly
Victoria
Jonathan Raper
London strike tube-radar diagrams, 3rd November 2010 by Jonathan Raper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.tube-radar.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.placr.co.uk.