i Traveline Wales site
We like that the potential traveller is able to access a journey planner directly from the front landing page of the following regional Traveline sites: Northern Ireland, North East, Yorkshire, East Anglian, South East and London. This, after all, is precisely what people want. Full marks.
Not all Traveline sites offer this solution, though. Whereas TfL’s version is clearly laid out and functional, those for the North West and West Midlands are fashionably uncluttered but rather too minimalist: users must click onto a second page for everything.
Scotland’s has recently undergone a makeover. It’s now a pleasant-looking site and the front page is informative, with all sorts of links and tidbits—but no planner immediately visible.
It seems easier to navigate to a local council on the East Midlands site than it is to click a link for a planner.
The best is recently made-over Traveline Wales. Here you will find attractive and well thought out web pages that definitely break the Traveline mould. There are easily identifiable links, Discover and What’s On in Wales pages, and options to receive travel alters via RSS. The photography’s breathtaking and it changes at each page load. The best image is possibly the open top Arriva bus against the backdrop of Snowdonia (above). Mind you, not everyone will warm to the wheeled caricature known as Traveline TIM, the Travel Information Man. And is that really a 1950s Rail Modernisation Plan DMU bottom right? We rather hope it is.
The best feature of all is Link to Us. In four easy steps, you can generate code that will place a Traveline Wales landing page on your own website that can automatically look up travel times. You can make it location specific or set it so both the origin and destination is available to the end user. We hope others will follow in both the design and innovations.
(Notice anything about the origin and destination shown above?)
i Traveline Wales site
6 comments:
Check back on the East Midlands site in March (if things go to plan) - the software and consequentually the site are being changed ;)
Why do we need different sites for different regions, anyway - it seems a bit daft having all these separate and different journey planners when they all serve the same purpose and are under the same brand.
Anyway, last time I checked Yorkshire's, the image was of a mirrored Terrier DAF showing "74 Carterknowle Road" backwards! And that's ingorning that fact that neither Terrier nor the 74 existed an more at the time.
I'm not a fan of the AIM planners. There tend to be a few too many screens to click through, especially if you don't enter quite the right term it expects for your origin or destination. Also that there aren't printable timetables is a pain. Traveline Scotland looks nice too but has the same problems as Wales and Yorkshire.
Thank you for your kind comments about the new Traveline Cymru / Wales site.
We at Traveline Cymru are really pleased with how the new design and layout is being received and please look out for continuing developments.
Thanks again, Traveline Cymru.
The 1950s modernisation plan DMU is on the Cardiff Queen Street-Cardiff Bay shuttle.
I'm amazed that it's still not possible to print or even display a full day or week timetable from many Traveline regions, in fact only Traveline Southeast allows you to print a full PDF timetable. Traveline North East being the worst site with only a journey planner.
I understand that Traveline Scotland are looking into improving printablity and hopefully the other regions will follow but surely this option should have been included in the original contract specs?
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