Dave Arquati wrote:
snip
Now let me make some observations.

Firstly, it seems to be unfashionable in the media to support the
WLT in any way. The article makes a great deal of the fact that
TfL claim the consultation result was "skewed" in favour of the
opponents. Is it just me, or doesn't that seem pretty logical?
After all, who can bothered to respond to a consultation by
saying "OK"?

People whose daily journeys by bus or other means are slow/crowded or
otherwise unpleasant, and who would welcome something better. If there
aren't many people who care enough to say so, the case for the tram is
not proved.

Secondly, the article says that the survey company carried out
interviews in 6 LBs as well as South Bucks - but the sample size
was too small to be worthwhile statistically in South Bucks,
Kensington & Chelsea, Brent and Hounslow.

It strikes me as somewhat obvious that those four areas are all
outside the area the tram travels through, and therefore it
wouldn't make sense to survey a large number of people in those
areas because they're not as affected as much as people in the
three other boroughs, which I presume are Hillingdon, Ealing
and Hammersmith & Fulham.

There is certainly a lot of concern in areas away from the Uxbridge Road
about diverting general traffic on to unsuitable residential roads or on
to other main roads which are already congested. In L.B. Hounslow, for
example, Chiswick would be affected in that way; wesxtbound traffic on
Acton Vale would be diverted down Askew Road, Goldhawk Road, Chiswick
High Road, Chiswick Lane to the A4. There's no point in surveying that
area so thinly that the sample size doesn't allow valid conclusions to
be drawn.

Let's do a little maths. We'll call those voters in the boroughs
where small samples were taken, "bad" voters. Let the voters in
the 3 remaining boroughs be called "good" voters. There are 631
"good" voters and 186 "bad" voters.

The quoted support for the tram was 75%, which is probably
rounded, but we'll take the figure. Of the total 871 voters,
there are 653 "for" the tram and 218 "against".

Let's introduce a worst-case scenario. Those naughty "bad" voters
all vote "for" the tram, skewing the poll in favour of it, when
their votes statistically don't count. By means of punishment and
correction, we can remove those 186 "bad" voters from the total
count and also from the "for" group. That leaves 467 voters "for"
the tram, out of 685 "good" voters.

What figure does that leave? About 68% in favour, and that's a
*minimum* support for the tram in the remaining boroughs - I'm
sure some people in the outer boroughs voted against it.

And your point is? You seem to be trying to argue something from
considering only part of this small and unrepresentative survey of West
London.
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)