Talk:Dorking West railway station

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4th least used station

I live near Dorking West Station, in fact I can see the platforms from my bedroom. the figures quoted for usage are definitly incorrect. On an average weekday I have seen 32 people travelling and 37 on a Saturday and 12 on a Sunday. By my maths this make 8000+ journeys per year. The confusion starts from the fact that you cannot purchase a ticket to Dorking West, or Dorking Deepdeen or Dorking, but the ticket all say Dorking Stations. Thus the number of users at Dorking West is a subjective judement, at best. On one day 12 of the travellers had anual season tickets. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.85.12.211 (talk) 13:23, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that the station is actually the 4th lowest in terms of statistics for ticket sales. The ticket sales statistics, however, only indicate tickets actually sold to "Dorking West", whereas most tickets are sold for going here are technically for "Dorking stations" and can be used for any of the three. Consequently these are not allocated to Dorking West (they may be given to Dorking though).

Of course statistics take on a life of their own in the media, but I'd treat the reports that this is the "4th least used station" in the country with deep scepticism. Timrollpickering 14:32, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The official report accompanying the 2007-08 figures [1] gives an alternative figures of 66,000 entries and exits (see page 15). I have added this figure to the infobox and commented out the figures from previous years, since this estimate seems to be more accurate. Mertbiol (talk) 17:21, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And it's now back to "2nd least used" without any explanatory note. I'm willing to guess the tiny number of "users" are just the West to Deepdene ticket sales. Given how close the stations are and how infrequent the service is, and the difficulty of obtaining a ticket on the route itself, it's possible we just have a couple of dozen rail buffs obtaining rare tickets, and maybe not even in Dorking. Timrollpickering (talk) 15:56, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Beg pardon, but I did give my source. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:23, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Does that article give the context of what the statistics are based on? The accompanying report notes that station group methodology has changed a few times though I suspect in Dorking's case the methodology just can't filter out meaaningful inputs for West. I've certainly seen a number of more mainstream media reports on little used stations that suggest the writer simply doesn't know what they're talking about. (My favourite was one trying to fathom how the listed number of people could have used a long closed station with the track severed!) Timrollpickering (talk) 19:51, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. It's based upon passenger entries and exits between April 2010 and March 2011. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:56, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No it's based on statistics generated by formulas that don't generate meaningful data in particular circumstances. The figure is the number of ticket sales allocated to Dorking West when almost none of the tickets used for it are allocated to the station. Timrollpickering (talk) 21:23, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OK. At the risk of breaking copyright, what the article says is (edited down from 5 column inches):

LONDON Waterloo has once again retained its top position as the busiest station in Great Britain, statistics published by the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) have revealed.
Station usage statistics for April 2010-March 2011 indicate there were an estimated 91,750,382 entries and exits an increase of 6.2% (more than five million more passenger entries and exits) compared with 2009-2010 figures.
[3 paragraphs omitted, these concern other high-usage stations]
The country's five least-used stations are: Teesside Airport (18 entries/exits), Dorking West (22), Coombe (38), Denton (52), followed by both Breich and Reddish South (68).

We have two choices - either we leave it as is, which is verifiable as a one-year figure even if incomparable to previous years - or we remove it, which simply invites somebody to put a figure (any figure) back in based upon their interpretation of the usage stats spreadsheet. Surely it's better to use the interpretation and opinion of a staff writer on a reputable railway journal, than to open it up for any well-intentioned anon to pick and choose any column that they like from the spreadsheet. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:24, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox image

This article deperately needs a better image for the infobox. The current one is very soft and there doesn't appear to be anything better on commons. Murgatroyd49 (talk) 15:10, 5 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]