Though Cowards Flinch

Glancing idly at the news reports on the New Year rail increases, I sniffed a statistical strangeness.

While the Daily Mail headline shouts ‘Rail fares set to increase by 15 per cent in 2010’, the ensuing story includes the following:

 Instead Atoc [the Association of Train Operating Companies] said average fares – heavily influenced by the 0.4 per cent regulated fare decline – were going up by only 1.1 per cent.

 So I had a look at the press releases. 

Here’s the one from Passenger Focus claiming higher increases, and here’s the one from Atoc, rebutting the former:

The handful of fares being quoted by Passenger Focus and the unions are well above the average and will only be paid by a tiny proportion of customers…….. By picking out changes that affect a small minority of people, Passenger Focus and the unions are giving a very partial impression of ticket prices in 2010.

The fact is that fares will rise by an average of 1.1% in January. Not only is this the lowest rise since privatisation, it also comes in below the expected rate of inflation, representing a real terms cut in fares for many passengers.

The rail regulator’s figures show that the average price paid for a single journey is just £5.05. The 1.1% increase will mean this figure will rise by 6p to £5.11.

That sounded convincing enough, especially as the figures appear to come from the Office of Rail Regulation. 

But I wasn’t wholly convinced; while it was clear that the single journey price of £5.05 was based on the regulator’s data, it still wasn’t clear where the 1.1% figure, or the £5.11 figure came from.  Look at the wording closely.  It doesn’t say these latter figures come from the regulaotr; it just implies it.

I looked to see where the £5.05 figure was from, and found the ‘notes to editors’ from an earlier  Atoc press release (see notes 1 and 3).  These notes confirm that, while the  £5.05 figure comes from the regulator, the 1.1% figure simply comes from ‘an analysis’.  This is presumably Atoc’s own analysis, and it is not clear how the 6p rise to £5.11 has been arrived at i.e. whether they are using the same methodology to reach this average price as the rail regulator uses, or their own.

 Intrigued, I dug out the most recent data from the regulator’s National Rail Trends, and at the bottom right corner of page 12 of this pdf file, I found something very interesting indeed.

What I found was that the £5.05 figure is, much as the note 3 in the earlier press release states, the ‘revenue per journey’ for the third quarter of the 2009 calendar year (July-Sept). 

What this little ‘note to editors’ in the earlier press release shows is that, while the 1.1% figure may be technically correct as a rise since the July-Sept 2009 quarter, the claim in the later press release that the New Year price rise ‘comes in below the expected rate of inflation’ is wholly misleading, because a quarterly figure has been directly compared to an annual figure.

In fact, the more comparable figure is for the 1^st quarter  of 2009 (Jan-March).  This is £4.80.

The more relevant rise is therefore actually an ‘inflation busting’ 5.2%, since the same point last year (even if we assume that the £5.11 figures provided by Atoc is actually a  ‘revenue per journey’ figure calculated in the same way as the regulator’s £5.05).

The conclusion? It may be that Atoc has not actually lied about its average price rise, but it has willfully misled the press and public by using figures that should not be compared, and by clever wording in its press releases to give the impression that all the figures used are those of the regulator.

Very clever.  And very dishonest.