| Type | Internal report, unsigned |
|---|---|
| Runs completed | Eleven of a projected thirty |
| Vehicle | One van, hired |
| Annexes referenced | Four |
| Status | Suspended; annexes not attached |
Journey time survey
1. Purpose
1.1 To establish, by driving them, what the figures in the Appendix of intervals correspond to, if anything. The Kilometre reading holds that they are distances along unstated routes. The exercise was to supply the routes by finding them.
1.2 Success was defined at the outset in market terms — that the resulting table should be of a quality that could be sold to a regional authority — and this definition was not revisited when the object of the exercise changed at run four.
2. Means
2.1 One van, hired for six weeks, painted the shade the hire company lists as denim. Two drivers alternating. The second driver, Dollah, kept the running log and is the source for most of what follows.
2.2 Budgeting was done on the Nebula template, carried over from an earlier exercise and not adapted, with the result that fuel was costed per week and consumed per run. The discrepancy was noticed at run six and left standing on the ground that correcting it mid-exercise would make the runs incomparable.
3. Runs
3.1 Runs one to three were direct: shortest available route, no stops, clock started at the boundary sign. Bouliac to Pontorson took eight per cent longer than the published driving time, which is within what the office regards as ordinary.
3.2 At run four the method changed. Dollah observed that a direct route was an assumption and not an instruction, and that nothing in the appendix requires the shortest path. From run four the runs were made by whatever route the driver would have taken had he not been told where he was going.
3.3 This produced the only result the exercise obtained. The run from Schirrhein, where the drive out passes through what the log calls the bled before rejoining the road, returned a figure within two per cent of the appendix. No other run came close, and the office notes that one result in eleven is what chance would supply.
4. Suspension
4.1 The exercise was suspended after run eleven. The reason recorded is the expiry of the van hire. The reason given in conversation by the officer responsible is that the method had become unfalsifiable at run four, since a route defined as the one a driver would have taken cannot be checked against anything.
4.2 The Mantilly cooperative was approached for access to the ledger during the survey and did not reply. Whether a reply would have changed the method is not addressed.
5. Annexes
5.1 Four are referenced in the body: the running log, the fuel reconciliation, the correspondence with the cooperative, and a note on the Schirrhein run.
5.2 None is attached. The office holds that they were attached when the report was circulated, and the two recipients who still have their copies hold that they were not.
6. Recommendation
6.1 That the exercise be resumed with a defined route or not at all.
6.2 No decision has been recorded against this recommendation, and the file was closed.
See also
- Grusson deposit — Appendix of intervals, Kilometre reading, Mantilly cooperative
- Kilometre reading — Appendix of intervals, Kilometre reading
- External ordering — Appendix of intervals, Mantilly cooperative
- Route document — Appendix of intervals, Kilometre reading
- The pairing habit — Mantilly cooperative
- Composite sheet — Appendix of intervals
- Manfred — Mantilly cooperative
- Misdirected enquiries — Kilometre reading