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And that's still the trial version
In the September column I introduced readers to the trial version of Transport Direct (TD), the multi-modal journey planning web portal that had opened to the public on 12 July for a further period of testing before an official launch later in the year. The official line was that only testing in a ‘live' environment would give a realistic view of whether the software and the data worked when faced with real queries.
This ‘trial version' suggested some memorable journeys, including, a 28 hour trip from home to Kendall, including an overnight doss down in Carlisle bus station, and a thrilling blast in a new all terrain hover bus capable of covering the 43 miles in a straight line between Campbelltown in Kintyre and Levan on the Clyde in 20 minutes. Readers sent in many more eccentric trips
In October a notice appeared in red on the TD home page. ‘Final performance testing' had begun, so users might face delays. Bearing in mind that it was already extremely slow and clunky compared with other, cheaper, systems such as Xephos, TfL Journey Planner and National Rail Enguiries on-line, I can't say that I noticed any difference. But by now it had been at Version V 5.4.13 for weeks, having launched on V 5.4.6.
But when I logged on to see what was happening at the end of the month, I found an entirely new home page. At the top the ‘final performance testing' message had been replaced by this
This is the second trial version of Transport Direct. You can now plan the main part of your journey using a 'Quick planner' and then add local journeys using the 'Extend journey' feature.
At the bottom of the page the Version number had changed to V6.2.0. Someone had decided that the fifth iteration couldn't hack it, so Transport Direct has been de-specified to a less demanding functionality.
In Version 5 there were three icons to on the home page. ‘Journey Planner' was central to the original TD vision. It ‘listed journey options from your door to any destination', bringing together all transport modes, including road and air. Next to it was ‘Maps which could ‘find location and traffic maps quickly and easily', while ‘Live Travel' enabled you to get up to date travel information.
In Version 6 – henceforth known as Transport Direct Lite (TDL), there is now a ‘Quick Planners' panel at the top of the page containing four icons – ‘Find a train', ‘Find a flight', ‘Find a coach' and ‘Find a car route'. Below this panel you get the three functions in Version 5 – with some not-so-subtle differences.
‘Journey Planner' has now become ‘Door to door planner' with a new function. It is now meant to ‘c ompare car journeys with national and local public transport (excluding GB internal air)'.
Maps and Live travel appear to remain the same.
So quite clearly, with the launch now running two years late, disaster management mode has kicked in. Multimodal journey planning, which TfL and Xephos seem to be able to provide for £1.5 million max, has proved too difficult for TD after around £25million has been spent.
At which point may I have a smug moment and remind you who warned that TD could be the PUG2 of Transport IT projects? With TDL the match with the West Coast Route Modernisation is almost exact. Except that the despec'ed service is actually running. So I apologise to Virgin and Network Rail for any slur.
Back to TDL, which is still being fine tuned, since it went up to V6.2.1 within a week of going live. Within the quick planners, find a train does nothing that NRE on line doesn't do faster and better.
It also has this intriguing caveat: ‘ Please note: Some of these journey options start in the past'. And indeed, when I tried a Welwyn Garden City to Manchester journey arriving before 10.00, TDL's ‘Find a train' facility offered me a 21.31 departure the previous day, arriving Manchester at 02.40.
Intrigued I fired up NRE Online for the same journey, and tried to provoke it into giving me the same option using the ‘earlier train' button. ‘Don't be silly', it replied, giving me an 05.10 departure but refusing to time travel.
According to the website TDL has ‘ many new features'. When I asked Atos Origin to elucidate they told me that the key new functionality is air travel including information on your nearest airport. And I must confess that ‘Find a flight' is pretty cool.
It has drop down lists of airports. You get then a list of flights with departure times to your destination. All departure times have a built-in one hour check-in allowance.
London-Glasgow, even with Gatwick de-selected, shows the challenge/opportunity facing Virgin West Coast. Fortunately, TDL does not provide links or even web site addresses for the airlines' on-line ticket sales.
Other new features include an improved layout to make it more user friendly and access to information is faster. This looks like Hutber's Law at work: ‘Improvement means deterioration'.
In the interests of completeness I tried the coach planner for a trip between Welwyn Garden City and Rugby . TDL came up with a 12.53 departure to Heathrow Airport , a 67 min connection into a coach to Coventry where after a 1hr 20min wait the last leg of the journey got me to Rugby at 20.05.
As a check I tried Xephos which wouldn't offer me a coach journey. But when I chose the coach plus bus option is came up with a 5hr 37min journey with changes at Hitchin, Bedford and Northampton . But its preference was to take a train
As with the time travel, I get a strong feeling that the Transport Direct team simply doesn't understand the data it is handling and doesn't understand transport or passengers. Because there is no ‘sanity check' it blithely offers you unreasonable journeys for both road and rail.
But who am I to carp, when at the Computing Awards for Excellence 2004 ceremony on 27 October Transport Direct won the Public Sector Project of the Year Award. It was selected as winner from five short-listed entrants by a panel of industry, analyst and media judges.
And it was as if TDL had never happened. Atos Origin, described its baby as ‘a comprehensive online portal that provides access to a journey planner for all forms of transport, maps, real time information and facilitated ticket purchasing'. Well, not any more it doesn't
A ‘delighted' Nick Illsley, Chief Executive - Transport Direct commented ‘It is an extremely complex project involving many parties. Atos Origin has done an exceptional job leading the consortium to deliver and manage the portal, which will significantly improve the transport choices that travellers make'. Has he looked at V6.2.1?
Rob Price account director, Transport Direct, Atos Origin said that the award demonstrated ‘the success of the whole project'. ‘Transport Direct is a world first', he added, ‘there really is nothing else like it'.
Now, it's hard to tell whether Rob's final comment was hubris, hyperbole, ignorance or heavy irony. With UK air travel dropped from the ‘door to door planner' TDL is now a UK fourth behind Xephos, TfL Journey planner plus Travel Line from which its takes much of its data.
CitationThe Public Sector Project of the Year recognises the best IT project delivered by a public sector organisation and rewards projects that deliver public service improvements or allow greater efficiency or cost-effectiveness. The Transport Direct entry demonstrated the best return on investment, innovation, future growth potential, excellence and successful management with the help of Atos Origin. |
Puzzled as to how a second trial version could win a Public Sector IT award I consulted an Informed Source with long experience of the subject. ‘Well', he explained, ‘it did go live (unlike some public sector projects) and it didn't fall over (unlike some public sector projects) and it didn't cost enough more than its budget for the Commons Public Accounts Committee to flay it to within an inch of its life (not yet anyway) and it didn't cause people to go to the media with horror stories of not getting their passports, benefits payments, etc. This is pretty good for a public sector IT project'.
But the really annoying thing is that if it had worked the railways would have been the biggest beneficiary.