On Dec 7, 5:00*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:
On Sun, 7 Dec 2008, MIG wrote:
On Dec 7, 2:46*pm, "Graham Harrison"
wrote:
"MIG" wrote in message

....
On Dec 7, 12:58 pm, Mr Thant
wrote:

On 7 Dec, 12:17, Colin McKenzie wrote:

MIG wrote:
I can think of at least two better options:
1. SLOW or FAST in the abbreviated display
2. Colour code trains that get overtaken

Paddington's summary departure boards have a special column marked
"Fast Reading" where an asterisk appears. I don't know if there's an
equivalent at Reading, or indeed anywhere else in the country.
Paddington also has "Heathrow Airport" and "Heathrow via Hayes &
Harlington" to differentiate fast and slow services, and the same is
done at Heathrow.

I prefer Colin's (not my) option 2 as being generalisable. *If colours
aren't possible, maybe an "OV" or something.

'OV'? Meaning what?

There's a whole load of fake destinations used on the south eastern
where the overtaking tends to involve totally different routes, and the
confusion could be solved by comprehensive use of route codes, instead
of which they are being abolished (but that's several other threads).

My favourite would be consistent and comprehensive use of two-digit
codes for routes and stopping patterns, which for some reason have been
deemed to be unnecessary due to irrelevant "improvements" in PIS.

Codes which would be of absolutely no use to the vast majority of people,
though? Or could they be made generally understood? I was about to mouth
off about how this was pointless elitism, but then i thought about buses,
and how those are identified by numbers, and still manage to be popular
with non-elitists. How do you see this code system working?

That's why I said "comprehensive". As with buses everywhere, many
railways in Europe use codes in timetables and so on, which is
particulary useful when tracking the same train from table to table or
across national boundaries.

Having established that "90" gets you where you are going, and "4"
gets you there via more places, all you need to look out for is "90"
or "4" on the platform and train.

They would need to be used in all timetables, on all platform and
concourse displays and on the trains themselves, as they are with bus
timetables, bus stations and buses.

Your point about buses is very valid. I can't imagine what it is
about trains, whose routes are generally simpler, that makes codes not
possible. It would be interesting to see what the result of removing
route codes from London buses would be, leaving people with only
destinations and scrolling displays.


Would it be enough to establish a controlled vocabulary for describing
kinds of stopping patterns - some or all of 'fast', 'slow', 'local',
'stopping', 'express', 'flyer', 'metro', and whatever else you can think
of - and giving them well-defined meanings which were consistent across
the country and over time (controlled by NR or the DfT rather than the
ToCs, i assume), then applying them everywhere. So in our original
example, when Mr Pedan3 strolled into Reading, he would have seen a sign
saying something like:

1945 Paddington SLOW
Calling at Maidenhead, Taplow, Marlow, Barlow and Farlow, and every other
bloody place between here and Timbuktu
Arrives Paddington 2239 (tomorrow)

Hmm. Not keen on retrospectively giving technical meanings to
everyday words, and consistency would be a nightmare.



And would instantly have known that (a) he could take this train to
Paddington but that (b) he would be wiser not to.

And how about having a stop written in italics, or brackets, or lowercase,
if there's another train (or sensible combination of trains) which will
get you there faster?

I prefer that, but that convention has been used to imply that you
need to change. The context might make it work I spose.


How do Switzerland and Germany approach this problem?

The underlying problem is that the decisions have been made by people
who don't understand the difference between being able to find out where
trains go and being able to quickly identify the right train when you
already know where they go.

I'd say the fundamental problem was the idea that giving a final
destination is enough to identify where a train goes - that's why, in the
non-lying scheme, people get confused between fast and slow trains. The
lying scheme fixes this by lying about the final destination, but isn't
the answer to add the missing information to the description of the train?

But it's slow and takes up a lot of space. At London Bridge, when you
are trying to find your platform, there is a slow, scrolling display
for the first train, and only destination for the second and third.

Given the frequency of services, the second train could be very soon.
So you get "Dartford [expected] 3 mins" or "Ramsgate [expected] 2
mins", but of which are totally useless. Why not "70 Dartford" or "90
Ramsgate" which would mean a helluva lot to regulars and take up very
little space.