This report describes the progress made so far in an attempt to determine elasticities of demand for suburban rail travel using British rail's NPAAS (national passenger accounting and analysis system) data - a four-weekly time series started in 1971 and giving passenger flows by ticket type. It describes the method of analysis used to determine the elasticity of rail travel demand with respect to the main types of fare used. The model used has been applied to a sample of sixty-two flows with origins outside greater London and with destinations at one of the main London terminals. The analysis has covered the period from the setting up of NPAAS to the middle of 1977. Elasticities of about -1.0 for reduced-fare tickets, -0.7 for full-fare tickets and between -0.2 and -0.4 for season tickets have been obtained. A similar model applied to a small sample of flows where there have been appreciable service changes showed no plausible frequency or journey time elasticities significantly different from zero. (Author/publisher)
Abstract