Dear Wellington Regional Council,

In March of this year, you kindly responded to an OIA request regarding punctuality of trains on the Wellington network, as noted in the monthly reports on the Metlink website. I refer you to the request here: https://fyi.org.nz/request/12336-train-p...

I have since had a chance to analyse the data you provided and have some followup questions.

You provided data for November 2019 on the HVL, with patronage and timeliness/lateness information for every service. I then compared this to the report provided on the Metlink website here: https://www.metlink.org.nz/assets/Upload....

The official Metlink HVL report for Nov 2019 states that 88.4% of services ran on time. The spreadsheet you provided, on the other hand, indicates that only 76.1% ran on time. The difference of 12.3% matches (to within 0.1%) the number of bus-replaced services. It appears, therefore, that bus-replaced services are being counted as "on time" train services in your statistics and reporting.

My questions are:

1. Can you confirm that bus-replaced services are being counted as "on time" train services?

2. Is this being done for data on all Metlink train lines?

2. Why are you combining the two types of services for statistical purposes (if this is indeed what is happening)?

I see several problems with counting bus-replaced services as "on time" train services. They are not the same type of public transport and face different issues relating to punctuality: they are not comparable data sets and should not be simply added together. Two, the stats count all bus-replaced services as "on time", when in fact the buses are frequently - if not always - behind schedule in my experience. Lastly, combining such statistics is highly misleading in terms of your monthly reports and posters at train stations.

Yours faithfully,

Michael Brown

Dear Alice Clark,

Thanks for passing on Scott's response to my OIA request.

To me, it begs more questions about the GWRC's analysis and presentation of the data. The initial followup queries I have are: Is the punctuality of the bus replacements measured and if so how? The previous data you have supplied simply had the category "Bus replaced", with no further granularity around "On time", "5 to 7 mins late", etc.

The only conclusion one can draw is that the bus replacements are always on time or are assumed by GWRC to be always on time (as per their separate timetable) . If stats on the punctuality/lateness of the HVL bus replacements is available for Nov 2019, can you please supply it?

I am appending this to the current OIA. If you would prefer me to make a separate OIA request, please advise.

Given these OIAs are merely seeking clarification on standard procedures around how operational data is gathered and analysed, I would not expect them to take nearly the full 20 working days to answer and would appreciate quicker followup in future.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Brown

Dear Alice,

Thanks very much for forwarding this information and so promptly. I really appreciate it.

Just as an addendum, I am well aware of the challenges the train network faces and the various factors that are causing train lateness/cancellation. It is also grea to see the various track upgrading going on at present. My inquiries have not been concerned with the lateness issues per se, but are more focused on the quality of the data measuring the impact of these issues, as it is reported.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Brown