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In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at
12:25:23 on Mon, 11 Sep 2006, Sam Wilson remarked:
The planner only recognises places served by trains (including LUL) and
long distance coaches, and mainly suggests travel only by these modes.

Not quite - if you travel from Edinburgh it starts at the bus station
even when the whole of the journey is by train.

Is the bus station (and hence Edinburgh) served by long distance
coaches? If so it meets my description.

Yes, but that's not the point.

Although most towns I looked at had a *choice* of Bus or Train station
(where both existed).

If you just give "edinburgh" as a starting point it chooses the bus
station. I gave it a trip to Stevenage this coming Friday, arriving at
20:00. It offered two journeys by train and two (really one) by air.
In all cases the journeys started with a walk from the bus station to
Waverley station or to Waverley Bridge where the airport buses run from
(no, they don't run from the bus station!).

Sam

ANNOUNCE: PlanAJourney - The BEST UK Journey Planner
 

In message , at
15:36:22 on Mon, 11 Sep 2006, Sam Wilson remarked:

The planner only recognises places served by trains (including LUL) and
long distance coaches, and mainly suggests travel only by these modes.

Not quite - if you travel from Edinburgh it starts at the bus station
even when the whole of the journey is by train.

Is the bus station (and hence Edinburgh) served by long distance
coaches? If so it meets my description.

Yes, but that's not the point.

Although most towns I looked at had a *choice* of Bus or Train station
(where both existed).

If you just give "edinburgh" as a starting point it chooses the bus
station.

Not really. It gives you a pick list of many places in Edinburgh, but
the bus station is just the first on the list.

This is the same as my #4 complaint: "Entering London gives London
Bridge (and a drop-down list of other places in London)". What it really
needs is the most generic "middle of $city" at the top of the pick list.

In all cases the journeys started with a walk from the bus station to
Waverley station or to Waverley Bridge where the airport buses run from
(no, they don't run from the bus station!).

It's expecting you to use the drop-down list for those starting points.
--
Roland Perry

ANNOUNCE: PlanAJourney - The BEST UK Journey Planner
 

In article ,
Roland Perry wrote:

It's expecting you to use the drop-down list for those starting points.

Ah - I see now. From the front page it's pretty obvious when the
display changes to offer you the drop down lists. I used the "show me
how to use this" button where the geometry changes much less when you
hit the search button and I was confused because there's no highlighting
of the button so I just thought I'd mi**** it. So I pressed it again
and it gave me routes from the bus station.

I guess my complaint has transmogrified into "insufficient attention to
HCI principles in user interface". :-)

Sam

ANNOUNCE: PlanAJourney - The BEST UK Journey Planner
 

In my haste to post details of the latest Journey Planner I made some
mistakes which I must put right. I should have given first priority to
clearing the text of my posting with Journeyplan, and must point out that the
comparison with 'Transport Direct' was my personal opinion, and not that of
Journeyplan Ltd. To clarify: my position with Journeyplan Ltd. is not as an
employee, but as a technical consultant.

Please accept my apologies for any misunderstanding.

On the technical side, and in response to some of your comments, please note
the following:

1. The planner does not contain details of local buses in England and Wales
and can only be used in its full multi-modal capacity for journeys wholly
within or between Scotland, Northern Ireland, Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle
of Man. For both timetable and fares information we can only display the
information that we can source.

2. In addition to National Express and Rail services, data for England and
Wales includes some airport coach connections in order to properly integrate
air and rail services.

3. The rail portion of the planner uses nationally standardised connectional
information.

Journeyplan always welcomes feedback and constructive criticism that helps to
improve the planner and urges users to continue to provide feedback via their
website http://www.planajourney.co.uk. They will investigate and respond to
each data issue that has been raised.

Thank you for your responses.

All the best,

Iain

Worth a visit: http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ 'Free Our Data Campaign'

--
Iain Logan, Langholm, Dumfriesshire
Home: http://homepages.enterprise.net/iainlogan/
Work: http://www.planajourney.co.uk/
Mail:

ANNOUNCE: PlanAJourney - The BEST UK Journey Planner
 

In message , at 17:05:35 on Mon, 11
Sep 2006, Iain Wilkie Logan remarked:
3. The rail portion of the planner uses nationally standardised connectional
information.

But not the routing guide, it seems.

Journeyplan always welcomes feedback and constructive criticism that helps to
improve the planner and urges users to continue to provide feedback via their
website http://www.planajourney.co.uk. They will investigate and respond to
each data issue that has been raised.

Do we need to re-submit our findings, or will you send them in for us?
--
Roland Perry

ANNOUNCE: PlanAJourney - The BEST UK Journey Planner
 

On Mon, 11 Sep 2006 11:09:18 +0100, Nick Pedley wrote:

In the meantime, please go to our site and try out our planner for
yourself.

I just did. It crashes IE6 when you try to go back a page. It crashes IE6
when you try to plan a journey. That is crap. Back to the drawing board for
you.

Or for Microsoft. In theory, a web page shouldn't be able to crash a
browser...

ANNOUNCE: PlanAJourney - The BEST UK Journey Planner
 

Iain Wilkie Logan wrote:
1. The planner does not contain details of local buses in England and Wales
and can only be used in its full multi-modal capacity for journeys wholly
within or between Scotland, Northern Ireland, Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle
of Man. For both timetable and fares information we can only display the
information that we can source.

If you're feeling adventurous, you could source local bus information
by downloading timetable PDFs off (say) Arriva/Stagecoach/First's
website, and scraping them to extract the times.

[...]
Worth a visit: http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ 'Free Our Data Campaign'

Yes, it's depressing that the PT industry treats its
timetable/availability data as a marketable asset, rather than a
publically available dataset which would encourage more people to
travel by bus or train.

Richard

ANNOUNCE: PlanAJourney - The BEST UK Journey Planner
 

In uk.railway Steve Firth wrote:
A cross London trip from Waterloo to St Pancras results in a recommendation
to change trains four times.

Waterloo(trains)-Waterloo(LU)-Euston(LU)-Kings Cross(LU)-St Pancras
(trains)

That's not four changes. It's saying:
Walk from Waterloo concourse to Waterloo tube
Catch a train to Euston (tube)
Change to a train to King's Cross (tube)
Walk to St Pancras concourse

It's only flagged as one change: but it explicitly tells you of sections
where you'd need to walk, such as where the tube station is distinct from
the concourse. These are generally obvious and humans would do it without
thinking. But it's useful to have it outlined how long the walk is if you
don't have local knowledge - is it 5 mins or half an hour?

Theo
(who has been using www.9292ov.nl recently and find it quite a good planner
if you've never even set foot in the country concerned so have no local
knowledge whatever. Once you've figured out what the Dutch words mean :)

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On 12 Sep 2006 12:22:50 +0100 (BST), Theo Markettos
wrote:

In uk.railway Steve Firth wrote:
A cross London trip from Waterloo to St Pancras results in a recommendation
to change trains four times.

Waterloo(trains)-Waterloo(LU)-Euston(LU)-Kings Cross(LU)-St Pancras
(trains)

That's not four changes. It's saying:
Walk from Waterloo concourse to Waterloo tube
Catch a train to Euston (tube)
Change to a train to King's Cross (tube)
Walk to St Pancras concourse

It's also bloody stupid because who would want to change at Euston? It
must jointly win the prize (along with Embankment) as the station with
the most people standing looking lost at every line diagram or sign
pointing to a platform or line.

Far more convenient to take the Bakerloo Line to Oxford Circus and make
a cross platform, level interchange to the Victoria Line to Kings Cross.

The Jubilee Line to Green Park and then Victoria Line is not ideal but
it's probably less confusing, as a second choice, than going via Euston.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!

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"Paul Corfield" wrote

It's also bloody stupid because who would want to change at Euston? It
must jointly win the prize (along with Embankment) as the station with
the most people standing looking lost at every line diagram or sign
pointing to a platform or line.

Far more convenient to take the Bakerloo Line to Oxford Circus and make
a cross platform, level interchange to the Victoria Line to Kings Cross.

The Jubilee Line to Green Park and then Victoria Line is not ideal but
it's probably less confusing, as a second choice, than going via Euston.

Or Northern/Piccadilly via Leicester Sq., which is the way I did it in
pre-Victoria Line days.