 800,000 train delays 'cost £1bn'
In message <ZlyCj.19549$fx1.16540@newsfe4-gui.ntli.net>, at 17:12:25 on
Fri, 14 Mar 2008, Jack Taylor <Jack@Carney.co.uk> remarked:
>> Leisure time is still worth something to people. I think a figure of
>> about £8 an hour is used as an average. Others may not have the
>> opportunity to "flex" their work, or book a new job interview (having
>> missed the first one when a train was delayed).
>
>Agreed. I don't deny that - I just think that it's an unquantifiable figure.
>To come up with any meaningful statistic you need to know the full details
>of each journey being made, the purpose and the flexibility of the
>traveller. Otherwise you may as well stick a finger in the air and guess a
>number, which is pretty much what they've done. There are the very good
>examples that you've given - but I tend to think that the majority of
>journeys (other than where exceptional delays occur) probably contain
>sufficient margin of recovery time not to count. For example, I think that
>most infrequent, leisure travellers allow enough connection time (due a
>natural fear of travelling) that a small delay can easily be absorbed - or
>services are sufficiently frequent that catching the next train does not
>cause great difficulties. Likewise, the majority of business travellers
>either allow a good margin for delays when making a business trip or are in
>a position to adjust their working day accordingly if a delay does occur.
I agree that the consequential "cost" of a delay starts escalating
rapidly after you are about half an hour late, and that less than that
may well be "absorbed". However, when calculating the delay on roads I
think they just add up all the minutes as if the first, second,
hundredth and hundred-and-first minutes are all equally valuable (at
about 13p a minute).
--
Roland Perry | 
