What TfL learned from tracking your phone on the Tube

Very interesting, thanks for that link.

It's more "this spot has the most phones within 5m during their use of the station" and less "pseudoscientific parapsychology used to imprison currently innocent people". Other than that yes.

I'd like to see more of the results, especially the path maps.

A member of staff at a station will be able to tell you which areas are busiest, but not necessarily the route people take around the station.
At Bank for example there are four logical routes between the Central Line and DLR:
1. The signposted route to the DLR: western exit from platform, over the westbound tunnel, straight down past the passage to the DLR and then to the DLR interchange passage.
2-4 Use the exit from the Central line platforms signposted to the Northern line, down the spiral stairs and to the end of that passageway.
2 and 3 use the first and second respectively crosspassages to get to the top of the escalators to the DLR level.
4 continues straight ahead to use the the stairs at the south end of the Northern line platforms.

I normally use route 2 or 3, sometimes 1 and only twice I can remember route 4 (once when I was travelling with someone who was interchanging to the eastbound District line but was not confident about the route, and the other occasion I was simply distracted and not paying attention to whereI was going)

I am surprised. No-one wanted nice air-conditioned rides to / from Kings Cross with them changing trains at Embankment (if travelling via Liverpool Street) or Westminster (if travelling via Notting Hill Gate).

Admittedly using the Circle Line in this way would have been slower but on a hot summers day it would be more comfortable, and if you have a book / newspaper to read a longish seated journey would be ideal. Maybe the journey takes long enough for some PAYG passengers to find themselves falling foul of journey time limits? The route via west London would have been more scenic, with more open air 'nicer' historic stations, although admittedly unless one is very lucky there would also be the unattractive enforced change at Edgware Road.

Because of the very long walk its a mystery quite why people would choose to change trains at Green Park. Unless that is they are "un-knowing" or fancied some exercise?

The most arcane routes are those which involved four trains. I never contemplated that anyone would follow either of these routes. Truly bizarre! I suppose that interchanging at Bank requires less walking distance than Green Park but only one of the three routes that include changing trains at Bank station makes sense - this being the Northern Line / W&C interchange.

The percentage difference between passengers who chose the Bakerloo Line (3.7%) and the Jubilee Line (0.2%) between Waterloo and Baker Street is a surprise. At Baker Street these lines are right next to each other, so maybe the very different locations of the platforms for the two sets of lines at Waterloo is a significant factor?

Simon

Just to break down usage a bit on the diagrams on page 41. Unsurprisingly most journeys between KX and Waterloo involve a trip on the Victoria (66.4%), followed by the Bakerloo then Jubilee. The line of least use in such journeys was the Circle/District, with only 0.2% of journeys involving it. Unsurprisingly, possibly because of the ease of interchange at Oxo. Thats a particularly important point for planners to heed, as since Phase one Jubilee, the idea of building cross-platform interchange has been totally ignored to the point of hideously inconvenient and lengthy interchanges being justified by such measures as improving crowd phasing. Chelney, as suggested in 1974, would have included cross platform at potentially Victoria (though this might have proved impossible in the end), and Holborn (thanks to the Aldwych branch).
On the subject of the Aldwych branch, I suppose one of the unintended conclusions to draw from the trial is that had it been extended to Waterloo as proposed, it would likely have been, because of the lack of intermediate stations and convenience of interchange at Holborn, the most popular routing today, and possibly have had a not insignificant decrease in crowding on the Vic.

Hmmmm!!




(It would be more useful to further segregate lines into directions too, but for the purposes of this post its overkill)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, TfL are due to roll out WiFi tracking to the whole network in early July.

www.wired.co.uk/article/london-underground-wifi-tracking