I notice that the Journey Planner now works in no fewer than 18 other
languages -- a rare example of international language support in a
British site. Was this a deliberate TfL investment, or is it just a
feature of the third party planning engine the site uses?

"Recliner" wrote:
I notice that the Journey Planner now works in no fewer than 18 other
languages -- a rare example of international language support in a British
site. Was this a deliberate TfL investment, or is it just a feature of the
third party planning engine the site uses?

More the latter I suspect - the TfL Journey Planner is/runs on a software
engine produced by the German company, Mentz Datenverarbeitung or "mdv" -
though the TfL implementation appears to be the largest one it has done:

http://www.mentzdv.de/englisch/company/about-us/

Whilst I'd expect there to be something of a symbiotic relationship between
mdv and their clients given the dynamic nature of the product they offer,
perhaps this is especially so with TfL given the scale of the application
for London (so in the case of multiple language support, I dare say TfL may
have been supportive and shown willing for such a thing.