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G.K. Chesterton must have been using the Government's new journey planner when he went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head
When analysing John Prescott 's July 2000 10 Year Transport Plan, Transport Direct slipped right under my radar. Transport what you ask? Transport Direct (TD), ‘a project to provide a comprehensive national service which would help people plan journeys and compare routes and prices.
‘By 2003' TD was expected to include
*Real time train operating information
*Real time information on may local bus services
*multi-modal travel information on the internet covering road journeys as well as all public transport modes at a single point of contact.
*Bookings of long-distance multi-modal journeys on the internet
*Development of Internet based maps to allow travellers to examine public transport options for visiting a venue and getting around when they arrived.
Phew, and all ‘by 2003' which in my book means by 1 January 2003 as opposed to ‘during 2003' which extends up to 31 December.
Anyway I thought nothing of it, although every now and then someone mentioned the project. At the Stagecoach Winchester conference in May 2003, TD Head Nick Illsley gave an update, admitting that people were cynical because it was not only an Information Technology Project, but a Government IT project and, even worse, a Government IT project on transport.
But, it was happening and the target for the first year – now 2004 – was a million hits, rising to 10 million in 2006. For comparison the National Rail Enguiries web site is running at 50 million hits a year.
In October 2003, a progress report said that the production build of the Portal – DEL5 – would include:
A formal launch was ‘likely' in Spring 2004
In January TD said that a cceptance testing had beens completed successfully in December 2003, with the production build currently undergoing a period of live running. Access was still password protected
Then it all went quiet So I asked one of the Railway Lords to stir things up and in a written answer Lord Davies of Oldham said that the Transport Direct website went online on 12 July 2004 , allowing the public access to the site as a further testing period before an official launch later in the year. Lord Davies added that up to March 2004 the project had cost £16.7 million and the budget for 2004–05 was a further £17 million.
Subsequently, a Department for Transport spokesman told me that because of the amounts of data involved TD is being tested in a "live" environment to get a realistic view of whether the software and the data work when faced with real queries. ‘You don't get this when 10 civil servants are sat in DfT testing it' he explained.
So I logged onto www.transport-direct.info to see what £16.7 million had bought. And it is an absolute hoot – albeit a slow and clunky hoot.
Now I don't have any trick journeys with which to test journey planners. So I fed in a planned trip to Kendal using my post code as the departure point and Kendal (Rail) as the destination. Arrival before 12.00 was specified for 29 September.
After a long wait – it is desperately clunky - I got back two options. One was leaving home by car at 07.15 arriving 12.00 – an average of 53.6 mile/h for the 253.6 miles. This is feasible if you cruise at the 20% over the legal limit the traffic police condone.
The other journey, displayed diagrammatically with little cartoons of a walking man, buses and trains went like this.
Leave home at 14.17 on 26 September, walk to bus stop (3 minutes) catch bus to St Albans St Peters Street , walk for 12 minutes to St Albans St Peters Street , catch bus to Watford Junction.
Take 16.12 Virgin train to Stafford and change to Virgin train to Carlisle , arriving 21.54. Walk to Carlisle Bus station and catch National Express Coach No 336 (helpfully identified as ‘towards Penzance '). Get off at Lancaster coach station at 02.30.
After a tight 15 hour connection the National Express 570 would run to the Stricklandgate PO bus station in Kendal arriving 18.15 after which a 20 min walk would get me to the railway station.
Even for beta test software this was beyond incompetent, so I tried something simpler, my post code to that of a magazine in Sutton, arriving before 09.15 on 30 July. Option 1 went like this, and to appreciate what follows you need to know that I live a 10 min maximum walk from the station.
Leave home at 05.55. Walk away from station for 10 min to bus stop. Catch bus for 2 min ride to bus station followed by 3 min walk to railway station to catch 06.40 train. Change to Underground (line unspecified) at Finsbury Park and travel to Kings Cross for transfer to 07.32 Thameslink service to Sutton arriving 08.16 with a 3 min walk to the destination.
Option 2 had me leaving home at 22.51 on 29 July, arriving at Sutton at 01.12 where, presumably I dossed down until the office opened. When I repeated this enquiry 11 days later I got different answers, leaving home at the same time but arriving at 08.51 and 02.09 respectively
National Rail Enquiries Online gave me the 07.25 off WGC arriving Sutton 09.11.
Undaunted I tried Kendal again, replacing the post code with ‘Welwyn Garden City' and arriving before 13.00 on 29 September. This time I was told to leave home at 14.38 on 26 September walk to the bus station and take a bus to Watford Junction. Then it went Silverlink to Milton Keynes , Virgin to Oxenholme and TransPennine Express to Kendal.
At 6hr 39 this was a big improvement on 28hr 18min but I now arrived at 20.27 on 26 September. As before the car option fulfilled the parameters exactly.
As a double check, I repeated the Journey on Xephos Internet – the private enterprise journey planner (www.internet.xephos.com). It gave me WAGN to Kings Cross, a 7 min bus ride to Euston and Virgin to Oxenholme, arriving at Kendal 12.05.
When I forced TD to emulate NRE Online and work station to station it produced a similar result. But that isn't the point of £16.7million to date.
Since readers with internet access can play with TD themselves I won't bore you with further detailed inquiries. However a true multimodal journey, from Welwyn Garden City to Louth, leaving after 10.00, saw Xephos a clear winner.
Xephos gave me a 10.20 departure going WAGN to Kings Cross, GNER to Doncaster and TransPennine Express to Grimsby Town followed by Road Car 51 to Louth arriving 14.48 a journey time of 4hr 28min including three connections costing 26min.
TD came up with an 11.31 departure to Stevenage , then GNER and TransPennine Express to Grimsby , a walk and a bus ride to the Bus Station for Road Car 51 to Louth arriving 17.16 for an elapsed time of 5hr 53min.
Transport Direct leaves me in two minds. As a techie I understand that it is trying to do something exceptionally difficult by providing facilities – like postcode locations and real time bus information – which are beyond anything attempted elsewhere. And it gives you maps of locations and rail fares.(Gareth - but see e-mail re TfL Journey Planner
But sympathy only goes so far. The search results are so eccentric that they are not even wrong. TD gave me two public transport options to get to Mr Miles post code but in the reverse direction it insisted that Mr Miles went by car.
Yes I know the current Portal describes itself as a trial version, but it is the Del 5 Production build and still is not good enough for beta testing. When I first used it at the end of July it was Version 5.4.6. By 12 August it was up to 5.4.10.
If it takes £16.7million to get this far, and the same again to get 10 million hits in 2006, you have to wonder whether Transport Direct is becoming the PUG2 of transport IT.
From the Transport Direct website 22 Jul 2004 : Column WA78 Transport Direct provides real-time information for all 2,500 stations in Great Britain . Users can access live departure boards, which are provided by National Rail inquiries, through the Transport Direct website. Transport Direct also includes a live travel news service that can inform users of any incidents that may occur including cancellations and service disruption. The journey planner will take into account planned engineering works and provide information on rail replacement services. Transport Direct will provide a live travel information service notifying users of any incidents that may affect their journey, such as road works and accidents. The site also uses historical congestion information to adjust car journey routes. |