DfT to close Transportdirect.info

bb21 · 14 Sep 2014

Traveline is useless for multi-modal journeys across different regions. Transport direct is fantastic and over the years it has helped me plan countless journeys, often presenting me with new ideas and options which I never knew about.

Shame on the government.

RailUK Forums

Carlisle · 14 Sep 2014

bb21 said:
Traveline is useless for multi-modal journeys across different regions. Transport direct is fantastic and over the years it has helped me plan countless journeys, often presenting me with new ideas and options which I never knew about.

Shame on the government.

Ok so why is it rather than Traveline being abolished then ?

atraindriver · 14 Sep 2014

Carlisle said:
Ok so why is it rather than Traveline being abolished then ?

Traveline is at least partly funded by the operators. It all comes down to money...

For anyone who's interested, Traveline East Midlands claims to have all national bus routes as well as all national rail & coach routes, which means it should be pretty much a replacement for Transport Direct (and, unlike TD, you can choose bus or coach for connections, which means you can get rid of National Express or their ilk if they show up).
It does still have the standard Traveline fault of wanting you to change buses/trains/mode if the change will get you there a minute earlier, though.

Traveline North East & Cumbria is handy for quick rail searches as it shows headcodes and [WTT] platforming details. It too has its moments; it doesn't understand that Retford HL and Retford LL are bits of the same station, for example. Oh, and for some reason this weekend York didn't exist according to T-NE (it did, I was there!)

Paul Kelly · 15 Sep 2014

www.travelinesoutheast.org.uk advertises itself (in the small print on the right hand side, not across the top of the site!) as offering door-to-door journey planning across all of England, Scotland and Wales. It has always worked fine for me. I'd never used transportdirect.info before but just tried it there now and found it really clunky, slow and inaccurate. Traveline Southeast is very clear and has good maps.

http://www.travelinesoutheast.org.uk/ said:
Anywhere in Britain
Our journey planner can now plan door-to-door journeys across the whole of England, Scotland and Wales thanks to data imported from other traveline regions. Why not add this page to your Favourites now!

atraindriver · 15 Sep 2014

Indigo2 said:
www.travelinesoutheast.org.uk advertises itself (in the small print on the right hand side, not across the top of the site!) as offering door-to-door journey planning across all of England, Scotland and Wales.

I believe that South East, South West and East Midlands are all actually the same beast under different names. West Midlands is, I think, the same but with a different (and to me less user-friendly) interface.

I tend to use East Midlands, but I'll switch to South West or South East as appropriate if for some reason I want to specify a bus operator. For some reason the operator lists are region-specific.

starrymarkb · 15 Sep 2014

I believe Traveline is going to be merging to 3 regions - England (All regions), Scotland and Wales from next year.

atraindriver · 15 Sep 2014

starrymarkb said:
I believe Traveline is going to be merging to 3 regions - England (All regions), Scotland and Wales from next year.

Interesting.
I wonder who's got the contract? I find T-Cymru & T-Scotland (along with T-North West and T-Yorkshire) to be less user friendly than the "southern English" bits of Traveline, so for purely selfish reasons I hope the combined English contract doesn't go to whoever currently has T-North West or T-Yorkshire.

telstarbox · 15 Sep 2014

I find the public transport function on Google Maps much quicker and easier to use than Traveline or Transport Direct, especially as it now has national coverage.

pemma · 15 Sep 2014

telstarbox said:
I find the public transport function on Google Maps much quicker and easier to use than Traveline or Transport Direct, especially as it now has national coverage.

I observed a Twitter conversation where someone had used Google Maps to plan a journey between Levenshulme and Leeds and it advised a 6 minute connection time at Piccadilly and as you can imagine the Levenshulme train was late and they complained that they missed their connection. Northern advised insufficient connection time has been left but the passenger refused to listen to any argument about connection times because they'd followed an itinerary that they'd been given.

DeeGee · 15 Sep 2014

I use this quite a bit, and I haven't found an alternative that's acceptable to me, yet.

It's not ideal having to go from NRE to get the train, to then try to identify the traveline "region" that you're travelling to, and you're not necessarily going to know the bus operator at the other end to use their site instead.

I even use it for local journeys as the Stagecoach website requires me to scroll down their entire list of operation areas to choose the most relevant (thankfully only beginning G or L) before lettimg me select a timetable.

Be3G · 15 Sep 2014

Indigo2 said:
I'd never used transportdirect.info before but just tried it there now and found it really clunky, slow and inaccurate. Traveline Southeast is very clear and has good maps.

I agree that is isn't the most streamlined of websites, but I don't mind that because of the plethora of features it offers it does so much more (e.g. has many more options) than your average journey-planning website. In my experience it's no less or more accurate than other websites; after all, they all use the same data I expect.

slipdigby · 15 Sep 2014

The GTFS feed into googlemaps from Transport Direct/Traveline is all over the place of late. For example, it managed to completely ignore the London Bridge works of a few weeks ago, being adamant that trains were still running direct to Brighton. And at one point, there was apparently a 30 minute interval service on the 516 bus from Ambleside to the Old Dungeon Ghyll. There are update issues either in terms of frequency or accuracy at some point in the chain, I've nearly been caught out a number of times...

With best regards

atraindriver · 16 Sep 2014

DeeGee said:
It's not ideal having to go from NRE to get the train, to then try to identify the traveline "region" that you're travelling to, and you're not necessarily going to know the bus operator at the other end to use their site instead.

All Traveline sites have all National Rail times in, so I'm not certain why you need to use NRE first?

DeeGee said:
I even use it for local journeys as the Stagecoach website requires me to scroll down their entire list of operation areas to choose the most relevant (thankfully only beginning G or L) before lettimg me select a timetable.

You can type the first letters of your area into the box and it'll then offer you just those places. Found that by trial and error.
Same with the service number box, once you've chosen your area you can put the first characters and it'll offer only those - handy for X services which are always at the bottom of any list.
It's a clunky interface though.

DeeGee · 18 Sep 2014

Thanks for that ATD. Useful to know.

I had a little try last night to see if a journey was feasible by public transport or not.

Aylesford Village to Beachy Head for the marathon. It's about a mile from my parents' house to Aylesford station.

T-D.i allows me to walk that mile, so gives me the first train out of Aylesford in the morning. I still couldn't make the start, though, so car it is.

traveline SE made me wait for the first bus from the village to a train station, so I'd not only have arrived late, I'd have arrived in the afternoon.

I can't remember if I set any preferences regarding how far I'm happy walking on t-d.i, but I know that there is that functionality available. I assume it's there on traveline as well?

telstarbox · 18 Sep 2014

Google Maps gives this:

DeeGee · 18 Sep 2014

Same as I get with Transport Direct, then. Thanks.

Actually, I've stumbled upon a timeline view there which looks very nice...

atraindriver · 19 Sep 2014

DeeGee said:
I can't remember if I set any preferences regarding how far I'm happy walking on t-d.i, but I know that there is that functionality available. I assume it's there on traveline as well?

On Traveline East Mids, if you click the options button at the bottom of the "data entry" screen you can alter the time you're willing to walk and the assumed walking speed (slow, medium or fast).
The default is 20 minutes maximum walk at a medium speed, which is probably less than a mile; you can change it to anything from 0 to 60 minutes.

I'd guess that Traveline SE would have the same function available.

MKB · 24 Oct 2014

I've just been caught out by this. I had no idea TransportDirect was closing.

The page now states:

The Department for Transport (DfT) has reviewed Transport Direct and found that equivalent travel information services are now widely available online from several other sources.

This is a load of rubbish isn't it? I don't know of any other site that offers the same functionality. The one I used most often was to be able to find at-your-own-risk connection possibilities by ignoring the minimum connection time. It was also good for showing routes that were quicker but required two tickets to be bought.

Are the DfT right that there are other sites that offer this functionality? I've emailed them to ask them which sites they found during their review, but I expect I'll get more useful answers on here.

Be3G · 24 Oct 2014

Yep, as you say Transport Direct had lots more features than (to my knowledge) exist on any similar website currently. I suppose the reality is though that some of those features were probably extremely niche and used by very few people; it was never the most heavily promoted of websites.

infobleep · 25 Oct 2014

Well if that is the case just say other sites are not as good but so few people were using the better features of this, we felt the need to close it on cost grounds.

Now that data is more freely available perhaps someone will design something that is better. At least I believe it's more freely available.

Mark62 · 25 Oct 2014

The android app moovit is superb

higthomas · 26 Oct 2014

I'm still pretty impressed by google maps public transport options, I don't know how good the data is, but it is much more user friendly than some other websites.

DfT to close Transportdirect.info

Emeritus Moderator

RailUK Forums

Established Member

Member

Verified Rep - BR Fares

Member

Established Member

Member

Established Member

Veteran Member

Member

Established Member

Member

Member

Member

Established Member

Member

Member

Member

Established Member

Veteran Member

Member

Member