Baxenden Bank
Established Member
- Joined
- 23 Oct 2013
- Messages
- 4,018
Remember that to have station to station maps would produce over three million maps if my maths is right, which even if they only needed a check would still be a massive task.
It's not about maps - maps are merely the way of displaying the information. It's about valid routes between two fixed points.
Road journey planners would produce a gazillion to the factor of a gazillion maps if they were required to produce a paper map (or an electronic equivalent) for each possible combination. They don't and they work (generally speaking). They even manage to shows routes which match with roads on the ground rather than straight lines across Morecambe Bay, which is strange given that railways lines are tagged on geographic data much like roads are. Someone being lazy there (or not being paid sufficiently to allow the job to be done properly)?
Its about the underlying rules i.e. shortest or quickest route, motorway or non motorway, low bridge or no low bridge. In railway terms the complicating factor is the allocation of revenue, precedence / historic rights and not wishing to upset the status quo (commercial agreements between DFT and TOCS etc).
From a general passenger perspective it is about being allowed to take what appears to be a sensible route - rather than being forced to take a route that a someone has decided you should use purely as a result of revenue allocation mechanisms. At the extreme, the current maps are riddled with anomolies allowing bargain travel (according to examples discussed on other threads), buts that's why maps are the wrong answer to the valid route question. Any map based solution should merely represent the results of the application of the rules not be the rules themselves.