DfT Response to user views.

DfT welcomed the opportunity to hear user views at the recent Joint TSUG/RSS seminar 'Finding your way round Transport Statistics'. Below is a summary of DfT's response to the issues raised.

Data sources and data analysis

Road casualties:

There are a number of initiatives to extend the scope of published analysis.

• Development of a consistent approach to the collection of information about contributory factors to accidents.
• We are setting up a research project to investigate the level of under recording of road casualties in police records
• Summary statistics are now published on a quarterly basis
• Results for individual local authorities are to be published annually on the DfT website

Congestion:

The DfT is enhancing its congestion monitoring capability by developing existing and new data sources (for example GPS data derived from in-vehicle tracking devices) and measures which better reflect the key aspects of congestion, such as delays (including those caused by road works and incidents), journey time reliability and peak spreading.

In particular the DfT has secured an agreement that will provide data collected from satellite navigation systems fitted in over 50,000 private and commercial vehicles. This will enable DfT to produce detailed reports on the pattern and location of congestion, identifying congestion hot-spots and showing the impact of measures to tackle the problems. The resulting information will be available for use by DfT, the Highways Agency, Transport Direct and local authorities.

Rail statistics

The SRA is in the lead on collection, analysis and publication of information on railways. A wide range of statistics are published quarterly on patronage, passenger receipts, punctuality and freight volumes. The SRA collects information on volume of freight, from private freight operators, but not on income or costs. The range of detail on freight operations will increase significantly when the EU Rail statistics regulation is implemented, including information on origin and destination flows.

Passenger transport fares indices

A rail fares index is compiled by SRA and published in the Quarterly Bulletin. It tracks fares for a variety of ticket types.

The DfT Bus Fares Index is being revamped, following the recommendation of the recent Quality Review of Bus and Coach Statistics. This is not straightforward due to complexity of bus ticketing arrangements. The work is expected to be completed by April 2005.

CO2 Emissions:

The DfT is investigating sources and requirements with a view to extending and improving the range of data published in TSGB. More detailed information is published e.g. by ONS in Environmental Accounts . Work is underway to improve the Environmental Accounts methodology for estimating transport emissions.

Sea Passengers:

Comprehensive statistics on both international and domestic passenger journeys are already published in TSGB, Maritime Statistics and in quarterly Sea Passenger Bulletins .

International Comparisons

The difficulties of making meaningful comparisons between countries are well documented. We very much welcome the suggestion for a TSUG seminar on International Comparisons to explore more fully particular user concerns.

Data Quality

Through the programme of National Statistics Quality Reviews the majority of DfT outputs will be scrutinised over a five year cycle. User consultation forms a key element of these reviews. Reviews have been completed on the National Travel Survey, Bus and coach Statistics, Road Freight Statistics, Waterborne Freight and Road accidents. Forthcoming reviews include Road Traffic Statistics and Maritime Statistics.

In addition DfT is considering the possibility of a 'high level' cross cutting Review, which will home in on improving links between data sources (e.g. transport and health data) and reveal the potential for cross analysis of data across topic areas.

More generally, we will be ensuring that all of its statistical outputs are accompanied by a minimum set of meta data. This will go some way to providing users with guidance about data quality and to alerting them to possible limitations.

Access to published data

DfT is working to improve web accessibility and 'signposts' for users. Developments in the pipeline include

• Better search engine
• Site map
• Longer time series for all TSGB tables
• Better links to related websites

However we recognise there is still a demand for 'hard copy' and these will be retained for all key publications for the foreseeable future.