London Banter - View Single Post

[email protected] · July 16th 16, 02:33 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article , (Clive Page)
wrote:

Someone I know wants to go tomorrow (Sunday) from Luton Airport
Parkway station to Deptford. Trains to Deptford go from Cannon
Street calling at London Bridge. So this is a pretty simple journey,
really, and there seem to be three reasonable routes:

(1) LTN to West Hampstead, then Jubilee line to London Bridge.

(2) LTN to St. Pancras, then Northern Line to London Bridge.

(3) LTN to Blackfriars, then Circle/District line to Cannon Street.

Without checking lots of timetables I was not sure which would be
fastest, so I thought I would try the two main online journey
planners.

The National Rail planner suggested (for a return journey) using a
Super-off-peak Zone 1-6 London One-day Travelcard [such a snappy
name] so I selected that. But its suggestions for nearly all
departure times were to go to Blackfriars and then take a 20-minute
*walk* to London Bridge, which is ridiculous, especially for anyone
who might have luggage. For one departure time out of half-a-dozen
it suggested "TRANSFER" to Cannon Street (without actually mentioning
how to do the transfer, i.e. using terms like "tube" or "Circle Line"
or anything). But it helpfully pointed out that most tickets would
include cross-London travel. Two objections here (1) I think *all*
tickets from LTN to Deptford would include cross-London travel, and
(2) I had already selected the use of a Travelcard which indisputably
would include it. I could not find an option that would prompt it to
take me via St.Pancras or West Hampstead and then take a tube. Naive
users might easily conclude that walking along the Thames for 20
minutes was generally the fastest route, which I simply do not
believe. If this had been sensible it would also be useful to
suggest leaving Blackfriars by the southern exits, but it failed to
do that, so naive users might easily cross the river twice.

The TfL journey planner was extremely slow this morning, I have no
idea why. I had made the mistake of entering the starting point as
"London Luton Airport Parkway" which I thought was its not-very
obvious required description. But it said there were several
matching departure points and then listed all of them, though there
turned out only to be one (so why didn't it select it?). So I had to
waste more timing clicking on "London, Luton Airport Parkway". See
the difference there - a comma in an pointless position - such
top-quality programming!

Then its suggestions for all departure times were to change at West
Hampstead and use the Jubilee Line to get to London Bridge. From
detailed study of timetables I think this might sometimes be the
fastest route, but not if you can get an EMT train to St.Pancras
which takes around 20 minutes, when the Northern Line route would be
faster, as the long walk through St.Pancras is not much longer than
the walk at West Hampstead between stations. However for anyone with
luggage or say difficulties with long sets of steps the West
Hampstead transfer, which also involves crossing two main roads,
would be much less pleasant. But I could not find a way to get a
change at St.Pancras or at Blackfriars suggested no matter what the
departure time was or what options I chose.

So for this rather simple cross-London journey both main journey
planners failed badly, in my opinion. None of them gave any
indication of alternative routes that might be nearly as fast, or
that one might take in case of travel disruptions. Long experience
has taught me to make a note of all options, since travel disruptions
are so frequent. And none of the planners gave me any indication of
which section of London Bridge to use, useful information in this
complex station.

I appreciate that journey planning is a complex job, but it seems to
me that the current examples do a rather poor job even in fairly
simple cases. Does anyone know of any better journey planners out
there?

So use a better Journey Planner than the National Rail one! I've not used
that for years. I usually use the East Coast web site but any TOC site using
Webtis would do. That generally offers changes at Blackfriars and Cannon
Street but has a 1 minute faster option via St Pancras and London Bridge.

--
Colin Rosenstiel