Using data to identify the impact of Southern Rail industrial action
I, like many others, have been affected by the ongoing industrial dispute over Driver Only Operation (DOO) on Southern Railways. On some days this amounts to delayed or cancelled trains with extended journey times and the inconvenience of standing all the way into London and on others, like today, strikes leave no viable way of getting to work in London at all. There have been many attempts to measure and demonstrate the impact of the industrial action such as the use of the #todayimissed hashtag on Twitter/X (see below), a recent passenger survey conducted by The Association of British Commuters and even a tongue-in-cheek video game. Whilst certainly compelling, these have all largely been qualitative rather than quantitative. I have heard tales of people losing or missing out on jobs due to continued lateness or based on where they live and, more recently, quite a lot of people moving job or house so they avoid Southern Rail for their commute to/from work. This got me thinking and I started to wonder whether there was any correlation between the industrial action and property prices in the affected areas. ...