Planning to create a new railway enquires engine

[Nick W]

I'm planning a new project involving the creation of a new railway enquires engine, featuring the following:

- Routing initially, eg finding routes between points, both valid and invalid
- Fares lookup, including splitting and "buying shorter/further"
- Timetable lookup, with the choice of risky connections and extra connection time, and better look-up

Everything would be coded such that it works with a database compatible with the information that ATOC produce for such purposes, for possible eventual integration with data supplied by ATOC.

Obviously such big a project will need lots of people, however, I'm sure a forum as big as this has the man-power and people with the right expertise, so I'm asking if anyone on this forum would be willing to assist with the following:

- Programming the actual application
- Testing
- Data entry
- Web design and possible graphics
- Coming up with various "use cases" eg situations in which a person would want to use such an application
- Researching information about taking this further
- The legal stuff
- Publicity and PR

Could anyone who is interested in perhaps being part of this reply here, and does anyone have any suggestions, tips or comments?

Cheers,

Nick

 

[rail-britain]

- Researching information about taking this further
- The legal stuff

Before you spend time and money on development, apply to ATOC first
The application form is quite simple, but it will need a good business plan as ATOC have some pretty strict guidelines (which includes not promoting split ticketing in a single transaction)

 

[Nick W]

Before you spend time and money on development, apply to ATOC first
The application form is quite simple, but it will need a good business plan as ATOC have some pretty strict guidelines (which includes not promoting split ticketing in a single transaction)

Cheers for the advice, unfortunately that would be a crucial element of the business case. Would one be able to appeal to ORR, or is information about our highly-subsidised railways a commercial secret held by a corporate monopoly?

 

[b0b]

Nick;

I started working on something like this a while ago but its incredibly complicated, especially if you're going to work without a RJIS feed.

I got to the point where you can put in 2 stations and it will work out which maps are valid and suggest where to cross between maps without doubling back.

That is able to pull from the PDFs of Sections B & C of the national routeing guide.

I also started working on doing some intra-map routing, but that is much more complicated. I started working on parsing some maps into nodes + vertexes but kind of got stopped when I discovered there were over 100 maps to process and it seemed like some of the maps needed local knowledge as the route drawn was not particularly clear in places.

I also discovered a way to parse the NRT for figuring out distances and direct train services but did not get further than that.

I've also discovered a way to ask the NFM software for fares without using the Avantix Traveller GUI, the first and most obvious application is to find appropriate routeing points for stations based on the fare check rule, but has other apparent uses for things like finding split fares, or cheap tickets with incredible validities.

But at the end of the day, nothing beats the local knowledge of a human as I've seen here.

Also all of the data you need to determine valid routes is not in the public domain, particularly the stations passed by fast train services...

Are you interested in paying for a one off RJIS data extract? If we could pool enough people to share the cost, it could really open up an immense amount of data to mine....

http://www.atoc.org/about-atoc/rail-settlement-plan/data-feeds/try-it-out

 

[rail-britain]

Cheers for the advice, unfortunately that would be a crucial element of the business case. Would one be able to appeal to ORR, or is information about our highly-subsidised railways a commercial secret held by a corporate monopoly?

Sadly it is a commercial agreement
Promoting this may result in the termination of your agreement

Not sure why you are referring to the ORR
The licence to sell train tickets is issued by ATOC :
http://www.atoctravelagents.org/licensing/howsell

Your application costs £300 ex VAT
If refused it is not refunded
You then have to purchase a ticket issuing system

As above, applications are generall refused when marketing includes offering split ticketing, however you could promote "tickets that allow greater customer flexibility"

 

[ralphchadkirk]

I can help partly with 1) (Depends what language) 4) and probably 6).

 

[b0b]

rail-britain: that seems to be a process to be a licensed ticket agent, perhaps Nick W is planning to come up with the product that charges for figuring out the best tickets to buy but not necessarily sell those tickets.

 

[rail-britain]

Yes, but you will still legally need to apply if you simply want to use the planning software
Presumably the customer then proceeds to a purchase from there

Working without the licence and collecting revenue may result in legal action

 

[Zoe]

Unfortunately we have the EU database right, unlike the US it's not the presenation of the information that is protected but actually the information itself so it seems you'd need permission from ATOC even if you researched and manually entered all the data yourself.

 

[ChrisTheRef]

I'll happily do testing and publicity, but obviously that's a long way off.

Good luck with it

 

[b0b]

Unfortunately we have the EU database right, unlike the US it's not the presenation of the information that is protected but actually the information itself so it seems you'd need permission from ATOC even if you researched and manually entered all the data yourself.

So the projectmapping guys have a license from ATOC?

 

[Zoe]

So the projectmapping guys have a license from ATOC?

Seeing as it says "As seen on the National Rail website" I would expect they have permission. I also note that their claim to show every passenger line in the UK is wrong as Northern Ireland is not shown.

 

[b0b]

The location of rail stations is provided freely by the Government here:

http://data.gov.uk/node/8473

 

[yorkie]

Before you spend time and money on development, apply to ATOC first
The application form is quite simple, but it will need a good business plan as ATOC have some pretty strict guidelines (which includes not promoting split ticketing in a single transaction)

Are you sure?

I know the rules of 'impartial' retailing do not allow it, but ticket selling does not have to be impartial (there are rules such as, at least a certain proportion of ticket windows must be impartial at stations...) and the guy who runs Chester-le-Street station (and the Chester-le-Track website) advertises the fact he will offer split tickets, so how can you explain that?

 

[b0b]

Nick W: so far everything I did was in java, though the Avantix interface part was being played around in C# (urgh)

 

[Zoe]

Nick W: so far everything I did was in java, though the Avantix interface part was being played around in C# (urgh)

When I find my code in tons of trouble, Friends and colleagues come to me, Speaking words of wisdom: Write in C.

 

[Nick W]

Dear all,

Thank you for the many helpful replies.

It looks like the first problem to overcome is that of ATOC. Is it definitely the case that they will forbid any usage involving splitting fares? I mentioned the ORR as, from what I gather, they are the competition commission of UK's railways, and would hopefully be able to overturn a rejection from ATOC to allow access to such data on grounds of anti-competitive practice and consumer welfare.

The long term aim would definitely be to obtain an RJIS feed, however if it appears that ATOC would never allow such data, I would like to move towards creating a desktop application for the purpose, using what data is available. It sounds like the best starting point would be taking off from where bob got to.

As for the programming language, I guess if we go down the web system route, we'd go for a php front-end with the back-end coded in D or C++ *shudders*. Otherwise a desktop app would probably be written in java.

Thank you to everyone has replied so far with ideas, or willing to help out. I look forward to receiving many more suggestions.

 

[John @ home]

from what I gather, they are the competition commission of UK's railways, and would hopefully be able to overturn a rejection from ATOC to allow access to such data on grounds of anti-competitive practice and consumer welfare.

Not necessarily. Some of the regulatory functions moved from the Rail Regulator to the Strategic Rail Authority on its creation and then to DfT on the abolition of SRA.

If such a body did exist that was able to allow access to such data on grounds of anti-competitive practice and consumer welfare, it is not at all obvious to me that it would be in the railway industry. Perhaps the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) or even a local authority's Trading Standards Department (TSD).

For example, the attached document shows changes to the National Rail Conditions of Carriage that ATOC was forced to make in 2005 following intervention by OFT and the London Borough of Camden's TSD.

I would start the project by getting good legal advice.

 

[yorkie]

It looks like the first problem to overcome is that of ATOC. Is it definitely the case that they will forbid any usage involving splitting fares?.

http://www.chester-le-track.co.uk/htm/booking.htm

i[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]t’s much easier to chat on the phone and quickly establish answers to questions that help us to drill down from the 56 million permutations of tickets to find the one which is right for you![/FONT]

I'm pretty sure they offer split ticketing...

Give them a ring or send Alex Nelson an email.