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Title:

Analysis of Evening Contraflow Fare on the London Underground

Accession Number:

01479193

Record Type:

Component

Availability:

Transportation Research Board Business Office

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Abstract:

This paper studies the impacts of the peak contraflow fare which was introduced by Transport for London (TfL) on the London Underground at the beginning of January 2011. Passengers travelling into central London during a weekday evening peak period using Pay-As-You-Go on Oystercard, London’s public transport smartcard, are charged an off-peak fare instead of a peak fare. The majority of commuters leave the city centre during the peak period and accordingly the main reason for the introduction of the fare was to fill spare capacity on trains travelling into the city centre. Given the fare was so recently introduced, this research is the first study of the fare’s impact. No similar fare structure was found to exist elsewhere during the course of this research and the results of this paper are therefore important for both TfL and transport network operators worldwide. Data collected from a 5% sample of Oystercards was used to conduct the study. No statistically significant change was found between the number of passengers travelling into the centre of London during the evening peak period before and after the introduction of the fare. TfL are therefore making a loss in revenue in comparison with previous years where passengers would have been charged a peak fare. Two primary reasons were suggested to explain these results. Firstly, passengers take time to respond to fare changes. Secondly, TfL’s promotion of the fare seems very low.

Supplemental Notes:

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP030 Public Transportation Marketing and Fare Policy.

Monograph Accession #:

01470560

Report/Paper Numbers:

13-4612

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Rooney, Lydia
Majumdar, Arnab

Pagination:

16p

Publication Date:

2013

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2013-1-13 to 2013-1-17
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

Digital/other

Features:

Figures; References; Tables

Uncontrolled Terms:

Off peak fares

Geographic Terms:

London (England)

Subject Areas:

Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2013 Paper #13-4612

Files:

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Created Date:

Feb 5 2013 12:53PM