Trainsplit allows you choose not calling at a station of your choice (up to three stations in fact)
Selecting XC only will get nearly all the non-stops to Soton.
Thank you. This will allow me to filter out slow services by adding minor stops on into the selection.
The down stoppers are explicitly looped at Brockenhurst, with a 24 minute stop there. However this would be apparent in any journey planner.
In terms of difficulty of implementation, which is easier to implement?
Only search direct trains over a given period around when you wish to travel (which in most cases is probably only really about two hours), cast your eye over the results of elapsed time for the journey (which in most traveller's cases will be no more than 4-6 trains), and make your choice. Not difficult at all, and no difficulty of implementation because it is available already.
It's a long time since I worked in IT, but put as baldly as this there would be lots of opportunities for users to put in what you and I know are silly requests (show me all the trains from Liverpool Central to Southport that don't stop anywhere else, show me all the trains from Bournemouth to Waterloo with a journey time of under five minutes) and then complain that they got a silly answer. I know, and you know, the old adage about 'garbage in, garbage out' but that wouldn't stop people complaining (the journey planner wouldn't show me any trains to Southport, there's nothing in the timetable from Bournemouth to Waterloo). It might be the case that even if technically feasible it's not a good idea to offer these particular tools!
It would also be obvious from a SWT printed timetable booklet, once the full timetable is back in force. There’s only a few SWR non-stop in the peak flow direction then, and they’re quite obvious in the timetable because they’re portions of the trains that split and join at Southampton.
Depends entirely on the routing algorithm used by the journey-planner. Both would be easy to implement in post-processing, though.
I'm a flexible leisure traveller so the period I want to travel can be as long as the whole morning, and the list of journeys can be a few pages long on a frequent route.
That’s why I thought to explain that in the normal timetable there'd hardly be any at all. Especially not in leisure times.
Even for leisure journeys, you have some idea of when you want to go. There cannot be many people who are flexible over a few hours to travel on a non-stop train, rather than selecting one about the time you want to go and making a judgement call on the journey times of the trains around that time.
For Bournemouth-Poole, searching for journeys which avoid Pokesdown would work, as the web sites don't realise when trains pass through the station. There's no equivalent for Bournemouth-Southampton, however, as they do notice trains which pass through Brockenhurst. Redbridge too, for that matter.
There are already lots of ways to put silly requests into these sites (Bournemouth-Redbridge direct is one of the ones SWR lets you ask for). It helps that they have a telesales line, as frustrated customers can speak to someone who can try to manage their expectations and meet their needs.
This is meaningful as taking the 3 hours train represents a significant time saving. The difference between express (1h50) and semi-fast service (1h58) between Bournemouth and London Waterloo is less than that which already makes me prefer taking the express service if possible if I have some flexibility on my trip times, and if we consider the section between Bournemouth and Southampton only (29 vs 36 minutes), such difference can significantly impact the choice of regular commuters if the workplace allows them to start / end work in a time range, rather than a fixed time. (saving 7 minutes in the commute each way is a significant factor of taking a job or not)
I really doubt that most people would feel that way, but whatever floats your boat!
www.southwesternrailway.com
