66% of continuous cruisers travel less than 12 miles.

[pearley]

Just out of interest, we've been logged three times that I know of in the past four weeks. By a CRT man at Batchworth with a data logger in the front basket of his bike. By the same man at Marsworth 10 days ago and again at Marsworth (14 day moorings) by a volunteer who just wrote our number on his pad. He reckoned to cover his stretch from Leighton Buzzard to Marsworth once a week.

 

I won't be requesting what records CRT have on us unless they tell me we've been overstaying. I guess every request costs them money.

[Gordias]

 

I disagree. In fact they seem to be skewing their 'measurements' by concentrating their boat spotting on busy/problem areas which makes it MORE likely that the conclusions they are drawing are wrong.

 

Think about the boater who is sometimes in the 'problem' area where he gets recorded a few times and sometimes he is away from this area where he is not spotted at all - this is all because CaRT are concentrating their enforcement on problem areas remember - then when the stats are looked at he appears to have kept within the problem area and gets counted as moving <12miles but in fact this is not true.

 

We've even had a poster or two on here with this problem

 

Dont make excuses for them Gordias - they make stuff up as they go along as it suits them.

 

This is just a technical matter, concerning the conclusions CaRT published (or made available to a select audience and will publish tomorrow - I'm not sure which).

 

Concentrating their measurements on places with a high density of boats doesn't necessarily decrease the accuracy of the measurements. If they contain a high proportion of CCers it would be more likely to improve the accuracy. Either way, since CaRT knows how each "recordable" boat is licensed, they can easily adjust for the mix of CCers/others. Of course biased data collection is theoretically possible - for example if CaRT only recorded the location of boats in Marinas their CC data might be suspect.

 

There will be measurement exceptions of course, but they only matter of they are skewed. For example, there's a reverse case to a "500 miles plus" CCer passing through an urban area and being recorded there, but not recorded again for the rest of the year: a boat only has to be recorded once outside a 12 mile radius to be left out of the statistics, even if it was recorded during a rare trip to or from a boatyard more than 12 miles from it's normal area. Absent any known mechanism for biased measurement errors, normal practice is to assume they balance out, and reflect their existence in the parameters of the confidence interval.

 

 

Of course I'm aware that CaRT have an agenda, and that their choice of the "66% - 12 miles" statement probably reflects their agenda. But that has no effect whatsoever on the accuracy of what they said.

 

I don't discuss the merits of CCing in any of its forms because these discussions seem highly unlikely to affect CaRT's agenda. I'm interested in predicting their behavior of course, but it's turned out that the best way to do that is to read the announcements on their web site.

[cuthound]

Could you explain that in language I can understand please

I think that Dave means if the boat is not where it was when next checked, then it must be located somewhere else.

[mayalld]

Could you explain that in language I can understand please

 

I can try.

 

Let us assume that there is a stretch of canal which CRT feel is a hotspot of people to mill around in a short stretch, and that there are actually 8 locations within that stretch where a boat might be moored. Let us call them A - H.

 

Outside that area, there are other locations, let us call them I-Z

 

The sightings log for a boat says;

 

03/01/2015 A

10/01/2015 B

17/01/2015 C

24/01/2015 E

31/01/2015 G

14/02/2015 H

14/03/2015 G

21/03/2015 E

28/03/2015 B

 

 

The boat has never been sighted other than in the hotspot area. On the face of it, he never goes anywhere else.

 

However, if we combine the boat sightings with the dates when boats were recorded in the hotspot area, we see;

 

 

03/01/2015 A

10/01/2015 B

17/01/2015 C

24/01/2015 E

31/01/2015 G

07/02/2015

14/02/2015 H

21/02/2015

28/02/2015

07/03/2015

14/03/2015 G

21/03/2015 E

28/03/2015 B

 

 

Three weeks where there were observations, but the boat wasn't observed.

 

Perhaps he was further afield where boats are checked every 2 months, and wasn't recorded as being there.

 

It matters not, because the data shows that on 21/2 he was NOT in the hotspot area

Edited February 13, 2015 by mayalld

[LoneWolf]

 

OK, from a data analysis point of view, that has some merit, but as ever it depends on how you analyse the data.

 

Looking ONLY at the data for a single boat, then yes we can say that because the places out in the sticks are rarely monitored it won't be detected when away from the hotspot range.

 

However, if the hotspot range is recorded each week, then notwithstanding that the boat isn't recorded elsewhere, the fact that it hasn't been recorded in the area of interest is available.

 

yes, it does. however CaRT are not letting us see the raw data.

They do give a clue to how they analyse it in that link on the FOI request - it was something like "if we've seen them 3 times then we'll count them" ie regardless of if we didnt see them for a month so they may have gone further away

 

Typical CaRT makin stuff up cos it suits them

 

 

ETA; yes, like you've explained in the post above this one - except CaRT don't do the further analysis where they acknowledge that they haven't seen the boat for some of the checks. They only use sightings to do their analysis. I'll see if i can find the bit that refers to this in the FOI answer

Edited February 13, 2015 by LoneWolf

[Alf Roberts]

 

I disagree. In fact they seem to be skewing their 'measurements' by concentrating their boat spotting on busy/problem areas which makes it MORE likely that the conclusions they are drawing are wrong.

 

Think about the boater who is sometimes in the 'problem' area where he gets recorded a few times and sometimes he is away from this area where he is not spotted at all - this is all because CaRT are concentrating their enforcement on problem areas remember - then when the stats are looked at he appears to have kept within the problem area and gets counted as moving <12miles but in fact this is not true.

 

We've even had a poster or two on here with this problem

 

Dont make excuses for them Gordias - they make stuff up as they go along as it suits them.

a real world example : a coal boat, range exactly 29 miles received a letter telling him he hadn't moved far enough. he asked for, and received his sightings. they were all for one spot; the place he filled up once a week was on the same day as the boat check for that place.

 

so this coal boat is one of the '66%'

 

I know of a fair few others who are in the process of challenging the data.

 

I would assume CRT have removed them from their statistics until these issues are resolved ( yeah right)

 

the only comment I have about the statistical validity of CRT's figures is that they contain 1. no controls and 2. no adjustment for error due to sampling frequency and consistency.

[David Mack]

Regarding bridge hoppers and CM'ers... Or is the resentment that they don't pay for a mooring the real issue here?

It certainly was for a couple of boaters at the CRT open meeting I attended last year. They had CRT online home moorings and strongly objected to CRT 'allowing' another boat to tie up to the towpath at the same spot for months on end without paying anything. Their suggestion was that CRT should raise the licence cost for CCers by an amount equivalent to the cost of a typical mooring, to i) remove the financial incentive to CC and ii) increase CRTs revenue.

[Sabcat]

 

I can try.

 

Let us assume that there is a stretch of canal which CRT feel is a hotspot of people to mill around in a short stretch, and that there are actually 8 locations within that stretch where a boat might be moored. Let us call them A - H.

 

Outside that area, there are other locations, let us call them I-Z

 

The sightings log for a boat says;

 

03/01/2015 A

10/01/2015 B

17/01/2015 C

24/01/2015 E

31/01/2015 G

14/02/2015 H

14/03/2015 G

21/03/2015 E

28/03/2015 B

 

 

The boat has never been sighted other than in the hotspot area. On the face of it, he never goes anywhere else.

 

However, if we combine the boat sightings with the dates when boats were recorded in the hotspot area, we see;

 

 

03/01/2015 A

10/01/2015 B

17/01/2015 C

24/01/2015 E

31/01/2015 G

07/02/2015

14/02/2015 H

21/02/2015

28/02/2015

07/03/2015

14/03/2015 G

21/03/2015 E

28/03/2015 B

 

 

Three weeks where there were observations, but the boat wasn't observed.

 

Perhaps he was further afield where boats are checked every 2 months, and wasn't recorded as being there.

 

It matters not, because the data shows that on 21/2 he was NOT in the hotspot area

 

As I understand it this is one of the reasons for the CRT software upgrade. They currently can't pull the data (which they almost certainly have except perhaps if no boats were recorded in a location and no database entry for "no boats logged" is made) easily to allow them to use it effectively. All they appear to be able to use for a boat is sightings made. The data is probably good, their use and perhaps understanding of it is piss poor.

[GoodGurl]

It certainly was for a couple of boaters at the CRT open meeting I attended last year. They had CRT online home moorings and strongly objected to CRT 'allowing' another boat to tie up to the towpath at the same spot for months on end without paying anything. Their suggestion was that CRT should raise the licence cost for CCers by an amount equivalent to the cost of a typical mooring, to i) remove the financial incentive to CC and ii) increase CRTs revenue.

by doing that surely CC'rs won't have to move at all because in theory they have a home mooring.

[Naughty Cal]

Odd, we have actually met three of the contributors who have asked for, and received statistics on their own boats (Naughty Cal-Linton Lock, Cotwoldman-Castleford and Alan Fincher- Wigan Flight).

 

Is anyone able to tell me the correct protocol in making such a request and to whom should it be addressed?

We were in discussion with CRT on a separate matter, they had taken our licence fee twice!

 

I simply tagged onto an email that I was interested in where our boat had been logged and they sent a copy of the spreadsheet. The same day from memory.

[Looby Loo]

Speaking as someone who will soon be leaving a home mooring to become a continuous cruiser it sounds to me as if I would be wise to keep a log and photographic record of my cruising. Not sure if I have got the right end of the stick but the simplistic impression I have gained from reading this thread is that CRT could easily make the assumption that if you were sighted at point A twice over the course of a year and not anywhere else you had stayed in the environs of point A the whole time and you could find yourself having to prove your case. What a pita! It's a sad day when you can't just go out and enjoy your boating without having to document your movements in case of challenge.

[LoneWolf]

Speaking as someone who will soon be leaving a home mooring to become a continuous cruiser it sounds to me as if I would be wise to keep a log and photographic record of my cruising. Not sure if I have got the right end of the stick but the simplistic impression I have gained from reading this thread is that CRT could easily make the assumption that if you were sighted at point A twice over the course of a year and not anywhere else you had stayed in the environs of point A the whole time and you could find yourself having to prove your case. What a pita! It's a sad day when you can't just go out and enjoy your boating without having to document your movements in case of challenge.

 

yes, i'd keep a log with the odd photo.

They'll pick off all the folk that move less than 5km (according to their system) first though

[jenlyn]

yes, i'd keep a log with the odd photo.

They'll pick off all the folk that move less than 5km (according to their system) first though

So they say ;-)

[bassplayer]

Still waiting for a reference to the raw data which justifies the title of this thread....

[LoneWolf]

So they say ;-)

 

yeah, in them emails in the FOI answer

Still waiting for a reference to the raw data which justifies the title of this thread....

 

blimey....don't hold your breath

[bassplayer]

blimey....don't hold your breath

I'm not, but I do know that money is behind suppressing social media....

[bassplayer]

It certainly was for a couple of boaters at the CRT open meeting I attended last year. They had CRT online home moorings and strongly objected to CRT 'allowing' another boat to tie up to the towpath at the same spot for months on end without paying anything. Their suggestion was that CRT should raise the licence cost for CCers by an amount equivalent to the cost of a typical mooring, to i) remove the financial incentive to CC and ii) increase CRTs revenue.

I like this post because it's honest....

[LoneWolf]

I'm not, but I do know that money is behind suppressing social media....

 

humm ...i know what each of the individual words mean but i'm not sure what you're saying overall

[GoodGurl]

i really don't think CRT bother too much with exact figures, to my mind they are published to get a reaction and in most cases it works, scare mongering is good for them because it keeps us on our toes.

[Sabcat]

I don't think it is good for them. Sure it causes stress to some and satisfaction to others but to my mind, and I can't be alone in this, I think they're either swallowing the hype of others or themselves over hyping an extremely limited problem, if indeed it's a problem at all - CMers - and spending time and resources to solve it. They publish numbers that are meaningless without access to the data to identify a problem, come up with a scheme to solve it and then what, next year publish some equally meaningless numbers to demonstrate their successful handling of the situation?

 

I want some transparency. CRT aren't providing it.

[MtB]

Thing is, CRT have to enforce at one level or another.

 

If they didn't, everyone would give up their home moorings and CM. Why on earth not to if they allowed CMing willy nilly?

[Sabcat]

Thing is, CRT have to enforce at one level or another.

 

If they didn't, everyone would give up their home moorings and CM. Why on earth not to if they allowed CMing willy nilly?

 

I mostly agree, I'm not questioning CRTs duty to enforce or the rules they're enforcing. I'm questioning the number of boaters that currently flout the rules and the motivations for CRTs present policy of making a big deal of it. The data isn't even slightly transparent.

 

The only thing I disagree with is that everyone would give up their home mooring, I for one wouldn't. I like my water, electric, BT phone line, locked car park, people around me. If I could move across the cut and moor towpath side for free with no harassment from CRT, I wouldn't. Maybe if I could keep the wifi router connected over here I would

[Paul C]

 

I mostly agree, I'm not questioning CRTs duty to enforce or the rules they're enforcing. I'm questioning the number of boaters that currently flout the rules and the motivations for CRTs present policy of making a big deal of it. The data isn't even slightly transparent.

 

The only thing I disagree with is that everyone would give up their home mooring, I for one wouldn't. I like my water, electric, BT phone line, locked car park, people around me. If I could move across the cut and moor towpath side for free with no harassment from CRT, I wouldn't. Maybe if I could keep the wifi router connected over here I would

 

I bet a not insignificant number of people would give up their mooring if the CCing rules/enforcement were officially relaxed to the extent suggested.

[Sabcat]

 

I bet a not insignificant number of people would give up their mooring if the CCing rules/enforcement were officially relaxed to the extent suggested.

 

It depends who's suggestion for relaxing the rules/enforcement you're talking about. I'm not suggesting anything like that, with the data currently presented (and my inherent distrust of any organisation that publishes data that isn't transparent) I can't suggest anything at all. All we've got to go on is anecdotes from some who say the network is being ruined by CMers, others who say there's no problem at all, more in between and CRTs data that's impenetrable.

[Paul C]

Ok I was following the strand of conversation which started at Mike's post #146 - the "no enforcement" scenario.