For those of you reading this in Dorset or elsewhere in that general area, Traveline South West’s changed. An equally smart front page cannot hide some behind the scenes alterations that seem a little odd.
Gone, for instance, are those useful, zoomable maps introduced in April 2009 that once showed stop by stop detail so helpful for visitors or those unfamiliar with an area. They tended to offer something far more detailed that any operator could provide.
What appears to have happened is that Travelinesw has finally migrated from Trapeze (before 2006, Action Information Management) to Mentz Datebverarbeitung GmbH (MDV). Neighbouring Traveline South East also uses MDV, as does East Anglia, East Midlands & London.
This, MDV announced in June. The recent transition doesn’t appear altogether complete. Here’s an example. Service 175/6 is a Wilts & Dorset route from Ringwood (Hampshire) to Christchurch (Dorset). W&D shows both routes together on a handy single PDF, the way you might expect it.
How does Travelinesw compare?
Traveline South West recognises both services when you use “Timetable Lookup”. Though I feel that PDFs have limitations, I have to acknowledge that the resultant Adobe file option is a useful addition. It also estimates times for intermediate stops, rather like the journey planning software itself. But both the 175 and 176 timetables display separately. They force themselves into another browser window and, curiously, a second timetable once opened overwrites the first, and the third overwrites the second, and so on. This could be a pain if you want to display both at once (as would logically be the case for the 175 and 176).
The results are broadly accurate, though there is some confusion about schooldays. According to W&D, the 0710 from Ringwood operates on Hampshire schooldays only. Traveline SW acknowledges this too (without referring to the county) but adds a second 0710 that, according to Code 1, operates in four day blocks at “only 22.9.10 to 24.9., 28.9. to 1.10., 5.10. to 8.10., 12.10. to 15.10., 19.10. to 22.10., 26.10. to 29.10., 2.11. to 5.11., 9.11. to 12.11., 16.11. to 19.11., 23.11. to 26.11., 30.11. to 3.12., 7.12. to 10.12., 14.12. to 17.12., 21.12. to 24.12., 28.12. to 31.12.”.
Hmmm. Confused? There are also two “1” codes with different meanings.
Should Hampshire be in Traveline SW or SE? A moot point, as their respective maps both steak a claim, though Traveline SE does not explain why Hampshire is cross-hatched rather than coloured solid. The casual visitor might not understand, therefore, why neither the 175 nor 176 appear on Traveline SE’s MDV-driven “Find a Timetable” database. If they did appear, there’d be a map option. Plug Ringwood and Christchurch into the “From” and “To” elements of the SE journey planner and the result is a bizarre journey taking you by National Express, Underground, First Capital Connect and finally Embling’s Buses in a 6hr 23m marathon.
Returning to Traveline South West, there appear other quirks relating to schooldays and school holidays. Take W&D’s 183 (Blandford to Weymouth). There’s a Traveline SW 1527 journey from Blandford that operates schooldays only but no mention of the parallel Saturdays and school holidays journey. All very odd. Beforehand, you could pretty much rely on Travelinesw. Does that still remain the case, now?
It would be nice if you could enter your planned journey origin and destination from the front page, too.
Thursday, 14 October 2010
What’s Happened to Traveline?
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15 comments:
Mentioning traveline, the Welsh version is a bit of a potch job. It simply doesn't work on most mobile browsers, meaning if you're out and want to check up on a bus time, you can't. Instead you have to phone up a premium rate number. There is another part of traveline called nextbuses or something, but that isn't much use without knowing the code for a stop.
The Scottish traveline works perfectly on all browsers I've used, strangely enough.
Another thing with using mobiles for timetables, most phones (apart from smartphones and a few selected others) don't open pdfs, yet nearly every major operators' websites use pdfs, apart from First, who have an option of generating a pdf to save.
The Change to MDV has not gone well, there is a lot of missing data and even the trained call centre staff are struggling to get any sense from the system
The north west version looks a lot prettier these days - they may even have sorted out all the duff data!
If you select Christchurch (Dorset) and not Christchurch (Cambs) on the South East site you will get perfectly acceptable journeys on 175/6 or on X3/X1 via Littledown as options.
The duplicate journeys on 175/176 refer to the monday and non monday options for the Christchurch terminus when the street market is on. The service restriction dates are either Mondays, or 4-date Tuesday to Friday dates.
There are issues with schoolday/non schoolday journeys that MDV are addressing.
Ken Aveyard
Dorset Traveline data co-ordinator
Funny the Wilts & District#s 175 is mentioned. Somehow T'line has made too many service SDO.
One feature I liked, which I think is gone, is the map allowing one to locate an address within a post code.
It had uses beyond its intention.
I Think traveline south west need some table tablers to work alongside their computer operators.it really is a hot potch.lists of dates when a W for weds would do etc .duplicated columns just to shew a change of bus stand!!what a waste of time and effort.hopefully they will improve i do really feel there is not enough input from bus people which would help them get it right.
Rather, I think more people from the bus industry need to get involved with the software developers so they can provide a system that portrays what buses actually do.
Having worked with the Trapeze/AIM system and knowing about how buses work, you have to adopt a completely different mindset to get a timetable to be accepted by the logic based computer system.
For example, guaranteed connections (as operated by services on the Gower peninsula) cannot be demonstrated by these journey planners, so every possible journey connection has to be input as a separate journey, so that someone from Llangenith can see in the journey planner that they do actually have a way of getting to Swansea in under an hour.
School Term codes are another pain, as each county's variations had to be entered manually.
If we asked Trapeze/AIM to improve on something, the request would be fulfilled but with a rather large price tag attached.
I think things would be improved if all the regions worked together to pick a software developer that would provide a suitable system from the off, that could handle real-time changes and was value for money. That's just a dream though.
Thank you for your comments about the Traveline Wales / Cymru service.
Traveline Cymru are currently in the process of improving the 'back end' of our service to improve the information available to our customers.
We are also developing a 'mobile skin' for our site so that customers are more able to find the information on the move.
To use the NextBuses.mobi service you do not need to know the code for your bus stop, simply the area you are in (or postcode, street name or stop code if you know it). Once you enter that, you will be given a selection of stops to choose from. From there you will be able to see the departure from those stops.
Hope that helps!
Best wishes,
Traveline Cymru
Personally I much prefer the new site even without maps (which I'm sure must be coming!) The old Traveline SW website was a dog's breakfast. In my job as a transport consultant I need to know bus routes from individual stops which the old system could not provide. Now at last I can do that. If the SW system eventually shapes up like the other MDV ones - and eventually integrates - then that is a major step forward. What price West Midlands (awful!) or North West stepping up to the plate now?
Eric mentioned NextBuses on mobiles needing to know the code for a stop. This is no longer the case - you just enter the street name and town (or postcode) and it brings up a map of the area and you select the stop you want.
From my experience it works pretty well - and seems to get some good reviews.
You can try it at http://www.nextbuses.mobi/
Functionality coming soon from Traveline South West includes pocket timetables, full route maps, fares, RTI integration and the ability e-mail your journey to your chosen device.
We are currently having fun integrating the batch upload of data that we had in the Trapeze system. The school dates did not come into the system correctly, either because of the export content from the Trapeze system, or the import by MDV; water under the bridge now and we're working to re-input these dates, as well as some TT start and end dates that have been lost in the translation.
Compostite timetables will be implemented shortly and we'll tidy up the pdf format.
The move from Trapeze has gone well. The handover from Trapeze was smooth and well handled, and mdv has hit the ground running.
Web customers views are 50/50 on whether ot not they like the new site, as we anticipated.
We have had no complaints from call centre customers and the service is running smoothly. Fortunately our call centre agents are familiar with the mdv software as it is used on the the other call contracts that they operate on behlaf of travleines SE, EA, and EM.
Julie Williams
traveline South West
If one already happens to know what the information should be, and therefore knows when it is wrong, pity the poor car driver trying to plan a bus trip in their attempt to become green.How many readers of this blog would have 100% confidence in planning a journey outside their local areas using such sources ? Quite often the operators themselves don't seem to know what they are running... eg call centres often remote from the local area with poorly trained staff. No information is better than wrong information. One bad experience, and new bus users will get a taxi next time.
Even with existing printed transport material,we know the public often have problems understanding even simple and correct information. If one needs a degree or expert knowledge to trust these new gee-whizz websites, the battle is already lost.Perhaps we need a National Bus Enquiries operation set-up similar to the rail version..or don't we trust that either ?
I hope that Traveline Yorkshire switches soon. I don't really care what to. Carrier pigeon would be better than the pile of horse droppings they use at the moment. Every incarnation of the site has made it significantly worse.
Timetable search rarely works, just returns an error. When it does work, it's cumbersome to use and asks you the wrong questions in the wrong order.
The route finder is OK as long as you are going to/from a town/village centre or known postcode, because the place finder is completely chuggered. It simply starts at the nearest entry in its database alphabetically and then lists the next 49 entries in alphabetical order. No hints of fuzzy logic or trying to find a match elsewhere in the data string - if you don't get the first few letters exactly the same as they are stored in the database, you will never find what you're looking for.
But once you've got your timetable or route, if you want to look at a different time, you have to page through, 4 journeys at a time (which on a frequent service takes a long time) or go back and start again - and if you want to look on a different day, you have to start again.
The maps are useful but flaky - only showing a very small map area at a time, riddled with bugs, and with many bus routes simply drawing a straight line between stops rather than following the route - trains are worse, it just draws a straight line between the start station and the end station.
And then you have the quality of data, which is decidedly iffy, particularly around the issue of schooldays, school holidays, limited day services, bank holidays, revised timetables, etc etc.
As an aside, that 175/176 PDF from the W&D website may be handy, but unfortunately it ain't the current timetable! I suspect the same to be true of their 183 PDF and several others. (Perhaps W&D could do an audit.)
Resolving these sort of discrepancies is one area where Traveline SW has really scored in the past (and hopefully will do so again), since AIUI the data is compiled directly from VOSA service registrations. I rarely trust a W&D or Damory timetable without cross-checking against Traveline.
Where Traveline SW has an error, they will welcome notification and fix it.
All credit to Ms Williams for taking the trouble to post the inside story above. I'll wait until the schoolday problem is fixed before deciding which side of the 50/50 I fall into!
Don't bus operators pay a contribution to the Traveline set-up ? In these hard times, perhaps they may wish they got better value for money,or put the cash into improving their own information sources.
In the retail world which bus travel is now considerd a part,how many bus company websites cut the mustard compared to say, Tesco's ?
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