John Rowland wrote:
They've now pretty much disabled walking routes, the *******s. Even
for a route like (St Faiths Road (x) Thurlow Park Road) to
(Lanercost Close (x) Christchurch Road) it says you should do 2
minutes walk, 1 minute on a bus (a single stop, I believe) and then
2 minutes walk at the end, giving a "maximum journey time of 4
minutes". Unless the P13 runs approximately every 30 seconds, I
can't see how the maximum journey time would be 4 minutes.

No, it's not a function of the bus frequency. It says that if you
depart at the stated time (and if the bus runs to time), then the
maximum journey time will be 4 minutes. From the figures you quote,
that ought to be 5. The fundamental problem with the JP is that it
can't suggest the best route statistically for a journey that starts
between, say, 10:00 and 10:15. If the route is walk + bus + walk, it
should be able to quote a maximum time based on just missing a bus at
the end of the initial walk.

Anyway, after various suggestions involving a bus, which would be useful
if you couldn't or didn't want to walk very far, it does, as usual,
offer a walking route, so I'm not sure what your gripe is.

Even if you set the date to Christmas Day, it still suggests using a
(non-existent) bus.

It won't offer me any dates beyond November 2006.

Better still, I know the walk from my house to the nearest train
station takes 12-15 minutes, but the JP suggests a 20 minute walk
to a nondescript point on a hail and ride route which is further
than the station, and then getting the bus back to the train
station.

The default walking limit is 20 minutes at average speed. If it deems
the station is further than this, it may not offer an all-walking route.
If you set the walking speed to Fast, you might get a different result.
There's also a box labelled "I'd rather walk if it makes my journey
quicker", which is unchecked by default, but it doesn't seem to make
much difference in my experience.

And if you tell it to use a route without buses, it says "Journey
Planner cannot find any routes using these settings". *******s. It
could last week.

I've just tried that for the St Faiths Road to Lanercost Close journey.
I unchecked Bus, and it offered me walk+rail+walk routes, or the
7-minute (average speed) walk. When I unchecked all the public
transport options, I just got the 7-minute walk.

Also, the walking routes have had all streets removed from the
maps. Perhaps they were getting fed up with me pointing out errors
in the walking routes generated.

Here again, the "Start map" or "End map" button produced the full street
map as usual.

Perhaps there was something amiss with the system when you tried it.

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)