Rail Data - what is a Rail Station and what is a Metro/Tube station?

[drjharrison]

Hey Everyone

I am the Service Owner for the NaPTAN data set - that collection of 'what' is 'where' on the public transport network for all of Englad, Scotland and Wales.

I am starting to resolve some of the NaPTAN data … insanity*… and we are starting with an audit of stations in the 910 (rail) and 940 (metro) data sets.

I wanted to ask youse as a community who deal with data - what in your minds and in passengers minds are the differences between a Train station and an Underground station (in the TfL area only …)

I also want to find places where there are both a Rail and a Metro station at the same stop - e.g. Chalfont and Latimer - where the same platforms might be used

I am stuck in analysis rabbit holes and thought this community might be a good one to ask about how these differ in the “give data to Passenger”

I am also happy to take any improvements to the data feed.

No actual fix times will be given - I am at the figuring out the scope stage

Cheers

Dr J

*Insanity - there are five Clapham Junctions in NaPTAN, there are only three Rail Platforms nationally, most of the Metro in London after some time 2015 has only one Metro Platform - these we know - tell me more insane moments you have to code around!

 

[SynthD]

Who manages what? This is the rule used elsewhere on the national rail network, even when that TOC doesn’t currently serve that station. Map http://merrittcartographic.co.uk/british_railways.html

Euston is three stations, LUL Euston Square, LUL Euston and NR Euston. This will change with the development to include Square, down to two.

 

[Confused52]

Naptan is used to calculate connections from those locations. That means that the locations that count are the entrances to stations rather than the location of the platforms. That allows the calculation of walking times between modes. It is not used for connection times at the same station since it does not know the internal arrangement.

Some of the most loony things arise from the addressing rules which are used to identify bus stops in Traveline. Local councils put in point locations for communitity and bus stops are given names taking the nearest community point as the location. This leads to gross errors since the real world locations are more complex and the road network plays a big part. Another issue is that councils have neglected the location data and new communities are usually not entered on the system which leads to strangers to an area not searching for the correct area names.

 

[norbitonflyer]

There may be exceptions, but I wiuld normally expect a station served by both National Rail services and LUL services to be primarily considered a railway station which has an associated Tube stop, rather than vice versa. (The main line station is the raison d'etre of tube stations like Kings Cross, Euston, Waterloo etc)
There may be marginal cases where the rail service is relatively very sparse compared to the Tube, such as Gunnersbury, Kew Gardens, and between Harrow on the Hill and Amersham, and in central London I think Mooorgate, Old Street, Highbury & islanington, Tottenham Court Road and Bond Street would be primarily thought of as Tube stations.

 

[Somewhere]

No idea what a "Service Owner" is, and no idea what "NOption" is
But, if its 'National Rail' then it's national rail. Anything else is whatever you want to call it. National Rail includes Elizabeth Line and London Overground, for the benefit of anyone who thinks TfL doesn't run any National Rail services. National Rail could be a sub-set of metro

 

[etr221]

Where do I begin?

The starting point is that the companies that built what was to become London Underground - both the 'sub surface' part, so the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways, and the 'tube' part, so City and South London, Central London, etc. - thought of themselves as 'railway' companies. And the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District in particular felt they were part of the national network, interworking with all the other companies. And - to an extent - so did the tube lines. In the days of the LPTB (London Transport 1933-1948), it felt that its railways were part of the network - many lines had both LT and 'main line' trains sharing the same tracks. It was only later that the concept that there was a difference, and that there should be separation, took hold.

So I tend to apply the 'duck test' - if it looks like a train, and runs between what I see as 'stations', it's a railway (serving railway stations)...

Getting to NaPTAN, and looking at the stops in the 9100 and 9400 series ATCOCodes:
The 9100 series are used for 'National Rail' - which, as far as can work out, is everything operated (as station or service (train, etc.)) under an ORR 'railway licence' - this includes not only what might be thought of as 'National Rail' proper - what used to be British Rail - but also various TfL services (London Overground and Elizabeth Line). Also in there are a number of bus stops for bus services included in National Rail's 'offer' (stop type BCQ); and (probably in error, and needing to be removed) stations on the South Tynedale Railway (9100ZZTY~).

The 9400 series - although identified as 'Metro' - covers everything else included in 'ROGS' (Rail and Other Guided Systems), so (one way or another), not worked under an ORR licence, as part of the National Rail system - at varying distances from it. Perhaps the first thing to do is sort out what is included (by type), and so how they should be regarded - it includes:

• London Underground and other (thinking of Tyne and Wear) 'heavy' metros, that would pass my duck test for being a railway, and do interwork with the National system
• 'Lighter' metro systems - think DLR or Glasgow Subway - that are 'railways', but that don't (and can't) interwork with National Rail.
• The various heritage railways - standard and narrow gauge
• Tramways
• Odds and ends, like the London Dangleway (Cable Car)

You may come up with others!

Something else perhaps to sort out on the 9400 series is how to distinguish the different systems - there was (at least seemingly) a standard, but recent additions (Battersea Power Station and Nine Elms tube stations, to name two) have ignored it

As a Londoner, with a tram at the top of my road, the big difference is between what is included in the 'railway' system, with one set of fares in one system (so LU, DLR, EL and the local bits of NR), and those bits - trams and buses - which work differently. So at a basic level I'm not making much of distinction between a 'train' station (9100 series) and an 'Underground' (or DLR) station (9400 series) - they are places where I catch a train, it's just a different network's train - or at some stations I have a choice of different types of train (sometimes from different parts of the station, sometimes different platforms in the same part, sometimes the same platform, sometimes the same platform for the same journey), and if I'm travelling in London I'll have touched in (with Oyster/...) to start my journey (and will touch out to finish it).

For finding places where there are both Rail (NR) and Metro (LU) services at the same stop, where the same platforms might be used I think the easiest way is to go for an explore, and look - or inspect something like the Carto Metro map of London, which shows tracks and stations, and how they are used, colour coded to distinguish Underground, Overground, NR, etc.

And finally - for the benefit of those who don't know - you can find out about NaPTAN (and download its data) at https://beta-naptan.dft.gov.uk/ .

 

[SargeNpton]

Hey Everyone

I am the Service Owner for the NaPTAN data set - that collection of 'what' is 'where' on the public transport network for all of Englad, Scotland and Wales.


Cheers

Dr J

*Insanity - there are five Clapham Junctions in NaPTAN, there are only three Rail Platforms nationally, most of the Metro in London after some time 2015 has only one Metro Platform - these we know - tell me more insane moments you have to code around!

Regarding Clapham Junction, it's a very complex station from a rail-operating point of view, with certain groups of platforms restricted to certain routes. Each of those sub-sets of platforms has its own TIPLOC to identify it for train planning, signalling, etc - but which are all linked to the same retail codes that identify the station as a whole. Sounds to me as if the NaPTANs in your database are linked to those TIPLOCs (in much the same way that some bus stations have different NaPTANs to identify individual bus stands).

 

[Christian Schm]

Well, when it comes to bus stops, NapTAN counts every pole&flag, and every stand in a bus station separately.

So surely, for railway and Metro stations, it should could every platform separately? With the northing/eastings the exact point where passengers would access the platform (e.g. bottom of stairs)?

 

[greenline712]

First of all . . . welcome!! i wish you deep joy in your task! As someone who was about to get involved in NaPTAN over 25 years ago, but who was "gazumped" by a former colleague . . . I thank my lucky stars!!

As a user . . . I would say that passengers really don't want to )or need to) know the exact platform or stand when they're trying to plan a journey. They want to know the overall location . . . so, using (say) Leeds Bus Station as an example . . . they will simply type in (say) Malton Bus Station (which they know, as they live there) and Leeds Bus Station. They won't know the stand number for the bus route . . . in fact, they'd probably type in Leeds, as they may not know it goes to a Bus Station per se.

This is one of the user problems with Traveline especially . . . a modicum of knowledge is necessary before you start. I understand the rationale behind the "Town/Street/Stop" layout of the codes, but perhaps some other way of the lookup method?

There is a danger in drilling down to every lamp-post, or down to northings/eastings . . . they wouldn't help me at all . . . and as for Joe Passenger . . .

 

[etr221]

Something I've noticed on NaPTAN is that it gives grid references (eastings and northings) to the nearest metre - perhaps not unreasonable to locate an individual bus stop pole - with lat and long figures in degrees with (often) 10 or 11 places of decimals - which works out to fractions of a millimetre, and is ridiculously precise (see https://xkcd.com/2170/ for commentary on coordinate precision.

For a person wishing to access 'rail' (or metro) services, the important 'place' is the station (and perhaps its entrances) for which grid refences to the nearest dekametre (10 metres), are normally more than precise enough - once you've got into the station, where you actually board your train is a matter of detail (follow the signs...).

And - as stated above - for (potential) passengers, what is needed is a means of relating PT access points (stops/stations) to locations (of various precision) that are meaningful to them, for their purpose. And ensuring that enquiry systems can match this. It is perhaps worth looking at the 'Legible London' project (see https://www.appliedinformation.group/projects/legible-london or https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/boroughs-and-communities/legible-london for more info) - IIRC, one of their early tasks was to come up with standardised place and locality names that they could use on their signs.

 

[norbitonflyer]

You can get silly results from journey planners if they are related to individual bus stops. TfLs journey planner once gave me a ludicrous and curcuitous route simply because the stop I'd specified as the destination was on the wrong side of the road.

 

[noddingdonkey]

From a passenger perspective, I'm not sure it really matters - a list of locations where public transport is available is probably sufficient for most purposes, with the services available there defining what type of station/stop it is?

 

[etr221]

From a passenger perspective, I'm not sure it really matters - a list of locations where public transport is available is probably sufficient for most purposes, with the services available there defining what type of station/stop it is?

Yes, but (and I think this is where the OP is coming from):

• What sorts of services are there? and so what sorts of stations/stops? One issue is that NaPTAN currently classifies everything covered by ROGS that isn't 'National Rail' as 'Metro' - so, in the London area, the Underground (Tube), DLR, Tramlink, Dangleway (Emirates air line or whatever it is this year), Ruislip Lido Railway, and (going a bit further) the Bluebell Railway (not sure why the Epping Ongar isn't in NaPTAN) are all Metros (of very differing sorts).
• How do you deal with station/stop complexes (single or multimode)? (And what acount to take of individual platforms/stops within them?)