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Journey planner allowing user to specify a maximum leg time

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AnkleBoots

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Is there a journey planner that allows the user to specify a maximum leg time?

eg. passenger wants to spend less than one hour at a time on a train, so a journey query for Manchester to Birmingham would return a change at Stoke, for example.

The reason could be toilet breaks, anxiety, or COVID fears.
 
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SickyNicky

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I don't believe so. It sounds very niche, to be honest.

You may be better working out in advance what stops to use (so you know you have the facilities you need at each station) and then using a planner that allows you to put in multiple via points - like ours :)
 

AnkleBoots

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Thank you.

Dr Shengjie Lai of University of Southampton was studying transmission of COVID on trains and found that:

"a safe social distance of more than one metre is required for one hour spent travelling together. After two hours of contact...less than 2.5 metres may be insufficient to prevent transmission.
 

Adam Williams

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It's an open access paper: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1057/5877944

Looks like it's using historical data:

using data from 2,334 index patients and 72,093 close contacts who had co-travel times of 0–8 hours from 19 December 2019 through 6 March 2020 in China

It's unclear to me how widespread face coverings would have been at that time in China.

Edit:
As most index patients and close contacts (97.3%) travelled before 25 January when interventions had not been widely implemented across China, the attack rate estimated is more likely to reflect the setting of no/limited face covering and temperature screening at stations.
 

alistairlees

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Do you think that 2 hours train travel, divided into two 1-hour journeys, with a break (30 mins?) in between will be significantly safer than a 2-hour train journey with no breaks?
 

Adam Williams

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Do you think that 2 hours train travel, divided into two 1-hour journeys, with a break (30 mins?) in between will be significantly safer than a 2-hour train journey with no breaks?
I suppose that depends on your definition of "significantly" (and I suspect the risk would be dampened by the now-enforced use of face coverings - it's clear we need to do more research here) but my reading of the study suggests you're looking at an increase from a 3.5% attack rate to 6.1% after 2 hours of travel if you're unlucky enough to sit next to someone who is infectious (and from 0.32% to 0.62% after 2 hours if you're in the same carriage but not the same row as the infectious patient). That's a doubling of the risk, so yeah - I'd consider breaking up the journey if I had to travel.

The other benefit is that you get another roll of the dice - it's less likely you'll end up sitting next to someone infectious on both legs just due to how conditional probability works!

I guess it depends on how busy the interchange station is

Mmm, this also needs to be a consideration - but even so, it's probably going to be possible to wait outside on the platform and that's likely better than being stuck in a carriage with recirculated air.
 

mmh

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Thank you.

Dr Shengjie Lai of University of Southampton was studying transmission of COVID on trains and found that:

"a safe social distance of more than one metre is required for one hour spent travelling together. After two hours of contact...less than 2.5 metres may be insufficient to prevent transmission.

Why are people so willing to give credence to nonsense like this?
 

Adam Williams

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Why are people so willing to give credence to nonsense like this?
Uhhh... it's been published in a peer-reviewed journal with an impact factor of 9.117. That's a decent indication to me that the study isn't fundamentally flawed.

You'll need to do a bit more than call it "nonsense" if you want to dispute its findings.
 

martino

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I think an important point is being missed - the discussion is only considering what happens when you sit next to one infectious person for either 1 hour or 2 hours. By changing trains and sitting next to 2 people, you double the chance that one of them is infectious.

If we take the probability that a random person in the UK is infectious as 1 in 1000 (not far off the ONS estimates), and you sit next to 1 unknown person for 2 hours, then using this paper's figures your chance of infection is 1/1000 x 6.1% = 0.0061% (if I got the right number of zeroes). If you sit next to 2 unknown people for 1 hour each, then your chance of infection is 2/1000 x 7% = 0.007%, that is, slightly higher.

Regardless of whether this paper's exact figures apply in this situation or not, this is roughly the outcome I would expect. If you sit next to someone for 1 hour, and don't get infected, then the reason why you didn't get infected - they are not infectious, or they are breathing out of the other side of their face, or they have an effective face covering or whatever, has a good chance of continuing so your chance of being infected in a second hour with the same person is slightly less. On the other hand, if you do get infected in the first hour, then you can't get infected again in the second hour.
 

yorkie

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Is there a journey planner that allows the user to specify a maximum leg time?

eg. passenger wants to spend less than one hour at a time on a train, so a journey query for Manchester to Birmingham would return a change at Stoke, for example.
What you need to do is use a journey planner that allows a 'changing at' feature; you can then specify where you want to change and how much extra time you want to spend there.
 

Ianno87

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Do you think that 2 hours train travel, divided into two 1-hour journeys, with a break (30 mins?) in between will be significantly safer than a 2-hour train journey with no breaks?

Presumably getting on two seperate trains puts you in close contact with more people overall during the course of the journey?
 

Haywain

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I suppose that depends on your definition of "significantly" (and I suspect the risk would be dampened by the now-enforced use of face coverings - it's clear we need to do more research here) but my reading of the study suggests you're looking at an increase from a 3.5% attack rate to 6.1% after 2 hours of travel if you're unlucky enough to sit next to someone who is infectious (and from 0.32% to 0.62% after 2 hours if you're in the same carriage but not the same row as the infectious patient). That's a doubling of the risk, so yeah - I'd consider breaking up the journey if I had to travel.

The other benefit is that you get another roll of the dice - it's less likely you'll end up sitting next to someone infectious on both legs just due to how conditional probability works!



Mmm, this also needs to be a consideration - but even so, it's probably going to be possible to wait outside on the platform and that's likely better than being stuck in a carriage with recirculated air.
With current social distancing measures, why would you be sitting next to an infected person? Unless they are part of your household or ‘bubble’ in which case changing trains isn’t likely to help much.
 

Adam Williams

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With current social distancing measures, why would you be sitting next to an infected person? Unless they are part of your household or ‘bubble’ in which case changing trains isn’t likely to help much.
You're right, you should be avoiding sitting next to anyone. Whether that will remain possible as time goes on and services get busier remains to be seen, I guess.

The paper also discusses the risk of sitting in an adjacent row which does seem a bit more conceivable to me (and again, the risk increases a reasonable amount with time) - even with folks trying their best to spread out within the carriage.
 

yorkie

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@AnkleBoots do you require further information regarding forcing changes? It's possible to request changes at up to 3 stations, with additional wait times of up to 99 minutes; it's also possible to specify to avoid changing at up to three stations too.

If you require advice regarding a specific journey e.g. which trains may be less busy, please do create a thread in the Trip Planning section :)
 

AnkleBoots

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@AnkleBoots do you require further information regarding forcing changes? It's possible to request changes at up to 3 stations, with additional wait times of up to 99 minutes; it's also possible to specify to avoid changing at up to three stations too.
Thank you, not yet but I might do in future.
 
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