On 25 Nov, 16:39, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Sun, 25 Nov 2007 07:23:12 -0800 (PST), Mizter T
wrote:

Prompted by another of today's threads I thought I'd post this.

There is one feature of the TfL Journey Planner I find very useful,
though judging by the reactions from friends and acquaintances when I
point them towards it I don't think it is well known about. It is the
ability to call up a PDF of a bus timetable which appears exactly the
same as those actually displayed at bus stops. (Tram timetables are
available through this facility as well.)

Apologies for raining on your parade but those timetables are not
necessarily the same as appears at local bus stops. It would be good if
they were aligned but they aren't. This aspect of London's information
provision really, really makes me cross.

In addition far too many of the timetables do not show departure times -
they simply say every x-y minutes which in most case cases is downright
misleading. This is because the interval is derived not by a common
sense view of what the actual timetable interval is for the vast
majority of the day but by a computer which goes "what is shortest and
longest intervals between buses between 07.00 and 19.00". Invariably the
answer - due to the way running time is built up or reduced at the peak
shoulders - is something like "7 - 12 minutes". However there may only
be one 7 minute gap in the entire timetable and similarly only one 12
minute gap with 99% of buses actually running at 10 minute intervals.
However the timetable doesn't say this - it gives a load of rubbish
instead.

Here is an example for my local service. I can tell you unreservedly
that the stop info at the stop differs from this. I can also tell you it
is not accurate - the Sunday interval is particularly irksome as it does
not give the minutes past the hour just because there is one 13 minute
interval. The real stop info *does* show the minutes past the hour and
it's essential because who wants to turn up when the bus has just gone
and there's 15 mins to wait? What a mess.

http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/use...__000054bb.pdf

The JP uses per-user dynamic URLs, so that just leads to a 404.

Anyway, thanks for your more detailed critique of the timetables - I
remember you saying similar things in the past but not in such detail.

Out of interest is the timetable displayed at your local bus stop the
old style full timetable - akin to that served up by the
londonbusroutes.net website? Or is it of the new simplified style,
just not as simplified as the timetables as served up by the JP?


I would dearly love the JP timetable section to work as most continental
planners work - i.e. it shows the precise minutes past each hour of the
day that a bus is due at each stop. The system has that information but
it has been decided it won't be displayed. I think that is an error.

I'm afraid I tend to use www.londonbusroutes.net which may be an
"amateur" site but at least gives me real, detailed timetables that I
can print out and carry around with me.

--
Paul C

From what you say there would appear to be a degree of
oversimplification. However I'm not sure if you're advocating putting
up full timetables (in the old style ala londonbusroutes.net) at each
bus stop. If so I'd certainly argue that would be a backwards move as
they are simply far less user friendly than displaying simplified
information.

Also, on frequent routes during much of the day I'm far from convinced
that knowing the exact times a bus is timetabled to be due at the stop
is that useful, because both traffic conditions and the variable
passenger loading levels mean this can hardly be guaranteed. Also -
and here I will sound very ignorant because that's what I am - do the
buses necessarily always follow the timetable, i.e. aren't the TfL
performance targets more about a frequent service being maintained
rather than running to the precise timetable?

I should have added that I find the JP bus timetable lookup facility
most useful for late, early or night bus times when the results given
are specific.