Why can't the TFL journey planner handle addresses better?

infobleep · 24 Nov 2014

Why is the TFL journey planner so bad at searching?

I typed in Guildford rail station and 222 Upper Street, London. I had to let it know Guildford was outside London which it was happy with.

After doing that it did the searching and then wanted to send me to Toxteth, Lorton Street. I assume it decided both locations were outside London. If I type in such 222 Upper Street it just wants to take me to Upper North Street. It only works if I type in Upper Street, after searching through all the different Upper Streets across London but it's not the exact location I'm after.

I eventually got it to work when the location was set to 222 Upper Street, Hackney (London). Surely TFL should be able to handle partial addresses better.

No that didn't work. Although the to part is 222 Upper Street, Hackney (London), all the final destination is Hackney Central / Mare Street in all cases and the street I want is closer to Highbury and Islington station I believe.

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Wolfie · 24 Nov 2014

infobleep said:
Why is the TFL journey planner so bad at searching?

I typed in Guildford rail station and 222 Upper Street, London. I had to let it know Guildford was outside London which it was happy with.

After doing that it did the searching and then wanted to send me to Toxteth, Lorton Street. I assume it decided both locations were outside London. If I type in such 222 Upper Street it just wants to take me to Upper North Street. It only works if I type in Upper Street, after searching through all the different Upper Streets across London but it's not the exact location I'm after.

I eventually got it to work when the location was set to 222 Upper Street, Hackney (London). Surely TFL should be able to handle partial addresses better.

No that didn't work. Although the to part is 222 Upper Street, Hackney (London), all the final destination is Hackney Central / Mare Street in all cases and the street I want is closer to Highbury and Islington station I believe.

I have no idea about what is causing the issue you highlight, although I agree the journey planner is less than robust in initial identification of locations - often best to try using post-code I find. I can, however, confirm that Islington Council's customer centre is literally about two minutes walk from Highbury and Islington (H&I) station. It obviously depends on what time of day you are travelling but if I was you I would change at Clapham Junction onto a Waterloo train stopping at Vauxhall and then take the Victoria line from there directly to H&I.

Alternatives are changing at Clapham Junction for a Victoria service and getting the Victoria line there (although Victoria line access at Victoria can be fraight to put it politely in the peak) or go to Waterloo on your original train, take the Bakerloo to Oxford Circus and change cross platform onto the Victoria line there.

infobleep · 24 Nov 2014

Fortunately I don't need to be there until 10am so I can get the 8.31 from Guildford. Any earlier than it would have been annoying.

Interestingly if you put in Upper Street it wants you to use Angle but in my case Highbury and Islington is closer, despite being on the same road.

Wolfie · 25 Nov 2014

infobleep said:
Fortunately I don't need to be there until 10am so I can get the 8.31 from Guildford. Any earlier than it would have been annoying.

Interestingly if you put in Upper Street it wants you to use Angle but in my case Highbury and Islington is closer, despite being on the same road.

Upper Street runs for about 1.5 miles pretty much from Angel to H&I. That is one of the reasons I suggested use of post codes. There are several that apply to buildings in the vacinity of Upper Street...

infobleep · 25 Nov 2014

Wolfie said:
Upper Street runs for about 1.5 miles pretty much from Angel to H&I. That is one of the reasons I suggested use of post codes. There are several that apply to buildings in the vacinity of Upper Street...

At the time I hadn't been given a full post code so I felt well any major organisation who is any good would offer partial address searching. It's not difficult if you know what your doing and besides TFL updated their Web Site to be modern and work on any device so things like this should really be part of that.

In practice it's not that simple as a different department might handle address searching and they may still be in the process of updating their address search functionality.

Wolfie · 25 Nov 2014

infobleep said:
At the time I hadn't been given a full post code so I felt well any major organisation who is any good would offer partial address searching. It's not difficult if you know what your doing and besides TFL updated their Web Site to be modern and work on any device so things like this should really be part of that.

In practice it's not that simple as a different department might handle address searching and they may still be in the process of updating their address search functionality.

No worries.... three guesses where I live lol

Hophead · 28 Nov 2014

What I'd like is the ability to use a map to search - like Google, but with proper 24-hour times. I'm convinced that the old TfL website allowed this (but can't be absolutely certain).

WhiteJoker · 29 Nov 2014

infobleep said:
At the time I hadn't been given a full post code so I felt well any major organisation who is any good would offer partial address searching. It's not difficult if you know what your doing and besides TFL updated their Web Site to be modern and work on any device so things like this should really be part of that.

In practice it's not that simple as a different department might handle address searching and they may still be in the process of updating their address search functionality.

Well from a developer perspective it's not quite as simple. Say for instance you entered 20 High Street, London. I'd imagine there would be quite some hits. You'd need something specific for it to match to the correct position. That could be a borough or a postcode.

I do agree with you though that they should allow selection based on a map.

infobleep · 29 Nov 2014

WhiteJoker said:
Well from a developer perspective it's not quite as simple. Say for instance you entered 20 High Street, London. I'd imagine there would be quite some hits. You'd need something specific for it to match to the correct position. That could be a borough or a postcode.

I do agree with you though that they should allow selection based on a map.

I agree with what your saying that it isn't simple but it's not impossible. I work in the geographic information systems - maps and databases.

The words I entered did return results but not the right ones so clearly the back end system is doing something, just not the right thing.

I once looked at regular expressions which are very difficult to get ones head around. However once someone knows this stuff it should be possible.

After all look at all the modern Thai no that are being put in for the numbers using the underground. Then there is 24 hour operations coming. All these requires more technology and can't be easy to implement. I'd expect some of this to be much harder to do than a location based search on a Web Site.

bravot · 29 Nov 2014

The old journey planner is still available at http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/.

At one point they were using Google's Place Autocomplete which was vastly superior but probably a tad expensive for the volume of traffic they handle...

WhiteJoker · 30 Nov 2014

infobleep said:
I agree with what your saying that it isn't simple but it's not impossible. I work in the geographic information systems - maps and databases.

The words I entered did return results but not the right ones so clearly the back end system is doing something, just not the right thing.

I once looked at regular expressions which are very difficult to get ones head around. However once someone knows this stuff it should be possible.

After all look at all the modern Thai no that are being put in for the numbers using the underground. Then there is 24 hour operations coming. All these requires more technology and can't be easy to implement. I'd expect some of this to be much harder to do than a location based search on a Web Site.

I agree that it's not impossible, I know Google has excellent results with their geocoder. Even OpenStreetMaps have similar results with open maps, so they actually can use a lot of expertise from outside sources. Especially when you combine that with the knowledge TfL has of London.

From what I see they don't actually geocode street names. If I type in High Street, London, I get results which include stops and point of interests (2 actually) and not the actual lists of High Streets in the Greater London area. So they need to include street names and areas into their results as well.

Wolfie · 2 Dec 2014

infobleep said:
At the time I hadn't been given a full post code so I felt well any major organisation who is any good would offer partial address searching. It's not difficult if you know what your doing and besides TFL updated their Web Site to be modern and work on any device so things like this should really be part of that.

In practice it's not that simple as a different department might handle address searching and they may still be in the process of updating their address search functionality.

I agree your point but it took me 10 seconds to google 222 Upper Street Islington and get a full post code. The planner worked fine with that as the destination. As a practical workaround to the planner's current deficiencies I've yet to see anything better.

infobleep · 2 Dec 2014

Wolfie said:
I agree your point but it took me 10 seconds to google 222 Upper Street Islington and get a full post code. The planner worked fine with that as the destination. As a practical workaround to the planner's current deficiencies I've yet to see anything better.

I actually didn't think to do that. Perhaps TFL should recommend that work around on their Web Site. That would never happen of course. Or perhaps TFL could use Google to provide the planner services.

If they don't want to get Google to do it, might as well upgrade the planner themselves. It was made to look nice and modern when they redesigned the Web Site but it was all cosmetic.

Hyphen · 11 Dec 2014

infobleep said:
Or perhaps TFL could use Google to provide the planner services.

These days, Google charges for what they consider "excessive" loads to their mapping service - set at >25,000 queries per day. Finding out costings from Google is difficult - they only publish charges for non-licensed "excess" map loads, at US$0.50 per 1,000 loads.

According to this FOI request, TfL's Journey Planner site in Jan 2012 saw 40,101,231 page views, over 5,688,834 visits - an average of 183,511 visits per day (rounded up). We could assume a map would only need to be loaded once per visit (and not once per page). Subtracting the free queries limit, then dividing by 1000, we see that the site will attract Google's excess fee 159 times every day, at a cost of US$79.50/day, $2,464.50/month or $29,574/year. At the current exchange rate, that's £18,866/year.

If TfL were paying that sum each year to Google, it would no doubt spark off arguments from the public about money being wasted, how it could be saving staff/ticket offices, or about Google paying no tax but still taking taxpayers' money.

A licensed API key would probably cost significantly less per day than the above, however.

infobleep · 11 Dec 2014

Hyphen said:
These days, Google charges for what they consider "excessive" loads to their mapping service - set at >25,000 queries per day. Finding out costings from Google is difficult - they only publish charges for non-licensed "excess" map loads, at US$0.50 per 1,000 loads.

According to this FOI request, TfL's Journey Planner site in Jan 2012 saw 40,101,231 page views, over 5,688,834 visits - an average of 183,511 visits per day (rounded up). We could assume a map would only need to be loaded once per visit (and not once per page). Subtracting the free queries limit, then dividing by 1000, we see that the site will attract Google's excess fee 159 times every day, at a cost of US$79.50/day, $2,464.50/month or $29,574/year. At the current exchange rate, that's £18,866/year.

If TfL were paying that sum each year to Google, it would no doubt spark off arguments from the public about money being wasted, how it could be saving staff/ticket offices, or about Google paying no tax but still taking taxpayers' money.

A licensed API key would probably cost significantly less per day than the above, however.

Thanks for that.

Why can't the TFL journey planner handle addresses better?

infobleep

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