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Database for transport advice

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GodAtum

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I have been thinking whether an online database could be useful for collating travel advice? It could be very useful for people looking at an unfamiliar area to move to. For example, i could add:

London bus routes 433/64
Morning commute towards East Croydon station, you have to be getting on the first few stops to be able to get a seat. Often the stops after Selsdon you will need to let at least 2-3 buses past as it's often impossible to get on.
Evening commute in reverse, you are unlikely to get on the 1st bus at East Croydon as there is usually a long queue.

London bus route 466
Morning commute towards East Croydon station, bus mostly full of schoolkids.
Evening commute in reverse, always get a seat.
Other times such as late evenings and weekends, I'm often the only person on the bus which is nice as I get chatting to the driver.

Trains East Croydon - London
Morning commute towards Victoria, on 12 coach trains you can get a seat near the back. 1st class often empty. Don't bother if it has 8 coaches.
Morning commute towards London Bridge, very busy (highly unlikely get a get a seat even in front 1st class).
Evening commute from Victoria, easy to get a seat since the train starts there.
 
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nlogax

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I have been thinking whether an online database could be useful for collating travel advice? It could be very useful for people looking at an unfamiliar area to move to

It's a good idea - however, not the sort of thing I see TfL themselves implementing within Journey Planner. One idea would be to crowdsource passenger info like that (think Google Maps' traffic density layers) using it to supplement core data fed from Journey Planner's published API.

Not an idea I've really got time to work on, but someone might, I'm sure! ;)
 

GodAtum

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Thinking about more ideas ... the app could track times between bus stops so it could flag any anomalies (delays).
 

Busaholic

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Really it's a blog, of passing interest to some, but not of major interest as a whole to anyone else, I'd suggest. A bit like a diary - I've never been able to understand why anyone keeps one, although I suppose it provides an aide memoire if you need it. The information you give would , with respect, largely be subjective rather than objective. Someone else's experience of the 466 bus route, for instance, might differ considerably from yours: not saying you're wrong, just we all have different perspectives.
 

PeterC

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I have seen many attempts at crowdsourced sites in other fields. They either fail because nobody thinks them worth using because nobody else has or because people don't maintain their entries so it becomes hopelessly out of date.

Any information site needs to be rigorously curated. For that reason I have always recommended local or regional rather than national coverage.
 

175mph

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I have seen many attempts at crowdsourced sites in other fields. They either fail because nobody thinks them worth using because nobody else has or because people don't maintain their entries so it becomes hopelessly out of date.

Any information site needs to be rigorously curated. For that reason I have always recommended local or regional rather than national coverage.
For regional, do you mean whole counties or just the sub regions like East Yorkshire, North Lincolnshire etc?
 

DynamicSpirit

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I have seen many attempts at crowdsourced sites in other fields. They either fail because nobody thinks them worth using because nobody else has or because people don't maintain their entries so it becomes hopelessly out of date.

Any information site needs to be rigorously curated. For that reason I have always recommended local or regional rather than national coverage.

I rather agree with this. The only way I could see the idea possibly working would be if you had a site that gave comprehensive timetables, route maps and 'official' travel information, but which also had a facility for people to leave comments attached to specific timetables or locations etc. However, you still have the problem of finding a reliable way to filter out the good comments from the bad/inaccurate/out-of-date. And that's a very hard problem to solve because you'd probably need someone with very good local knowledge to check the accuracy of each comment. And short of having literally hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the country, it's never going to be cost-effective to arrange that.
 
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