please empty your brain below
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There a very nice Day Return fare from Brum to most Cambrian stations. Not used it to Criccieth but have done to Harlech and Aberdovey.
Iain | 02.07.19 - 7:22 a.m. | #
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I'd rather tfl spent time and money improving the London journey search. The 'travel via' option rarely works
IslandDweller | 02.07.19 - 7:50 a.m. | #
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At least Queen's Park (Glasgow) is obviously different enough from the one in Brent, or some people could end up on quite length journeys.
Are there any other London stations which share a name with not-London ones which could send unsuspecting passengers the wrong way?
martin | 02.07.19 - 7:52 a.m. | #
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There's quite a few hoops to jump through before you're allowed to release your own national rail journey planner.
I'm wondering if either national rail couldn't be bothered to come up with a London-centric set of reduced tests, or that tfl found that in getting their planner ready to be signed off they'd inadvertantly made something that was ready to use in Scotland too.
Steve Y | 02.07.19 - 7:54 a.m. | #
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TfL buy in their planner software from a company called Mentz who supply this to multiple operators including many Traveline sites.
Most of the Traveline sites (of which I guess TfL may be technically one?) offer out of region connections between key places so this will be just part of the software.
What Wick has done wrong though, who knows.
Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 02.07.19 - 7:58 a.m. | #
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It intrigues me that we didn't used to have the Criccieth option, but now we do.
I'm not quite sure when things changed, but somebody consciously added the rest of the country in.
diamond geezer | Homepage | 02.07.19 - 8:00 a.m. | #
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Martin: Charing Cross in Glasgow, Waterloo in Liverpool and St James's Park in Exeter come to mind.
Odd that the Journey Planner sent you from Bow Road to Euston via Monument, when it is, surely, quicker to go direct to Euston Square.
Timbo | 02.07.19 - 8:04 a.m. | #
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Euston to Liverpool Lime Street changing at both Warrington and Newton le Willows is an interesting approach to that part of the Brighton to New Brighton route. Their optimisation engine doesn't seem very optimal.
marek | 02.07.19 - 8:07 a.m. | #
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I was surprised that you were given 3 trains for the London -Liverpool Lime Street leg, but perhaps there was no Virgin through train at the time you happened to enquire.
Strange about Wick, too.
Petras409 | 02.07.19 - 8:07 a.m. | #
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diamond geezer - someone might want to travel there though!
Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 02.07.19 - 8:10 a.m. | #
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An intriguing thing about software. Sometimes more functionality is cheaper. When something changed and Criccieth became accessible, it may not have been an addition. More likely the feature which restricted users to journeys in or near London was removed - perhaps because it wasn't working properly.
Malcolm | 02.07.19 - 8:14 a.m. | #
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‘Twas Criccieth/and the slithy toves....
David | 02.07.19 - 8:28 a.m. | #
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I wish they would just concentrate on sorting out planning journeys within London. On Sunday I was trying to find out the time for a simple journey - Balckhorse Road to Heathrow 123 arriving 7am Monday morning. It insisted I use the bus and left at about 4am. Yet BHR to Finsbury Park and separately to 123 showed it could be done departing 527am, arriving 646am. Why it couldn't show that as a single journey is a mystery.
And the buses are no better. It refuses to acknowledge that the 158 from the end of my road will connect to other services at either Crooked Billet or Lea Bridge Road instead suggesting travelling via Walthamstow Central or doing a lot of walking at the start.
Perhaps I should ask for journeys to far-flung destinations just to get a decent suggestion for the local legs.
E17Ian | 02.07.19 - 8:43 a.m. | #
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Talking of Wick, I see Queen's Park (Glasgow - NR QPK) is in the same black hole...
On the subject of stations where the unsuspecting may end up far from where they intend I suspect that the likes of Acton Bridge, Sutton Parkway and Cambridge Heath are perhaps more dangerous than the likes of those which - like Charing Cross (Glasgow) - have the county or city name appended. There's nothing to tell you that they're nowhere near the Acton, Sutton or Cambridge you might think.
A more general comment about TfL (and other journey planners) is how well they do (or don't) cope with 'vague' journeys, from one locality to another. At least the NR one has the excuse that it's only from one station to another.
Jeremy | 02.07.19 - 9:22 a.m. | #
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TFL should try out that excellent system whereby all tube lines and connections plus Overground lines are depicted with a diagram of London’s road system upon which all the bus routes are shown. With this, you get an automatic optimal route whenever you plan your journey. On folded paper it’s very convenient and fun to use. I can’t believe that they haven’t thought of this.
Herbof | 02.07.19 - 9:23 a.m. | #
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The best site for train routes is from the Deutsche Bahn.
It can do cross border. Also good for cheap fares.
Tim Binsted | 02.07.19 - 9:45 a.m. | #
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St Margarets can confuse. Both are on Oyster, neither is on the Tube Map, but only one is in Greater London
Stratford has been known to confuse tourists. Then there are those who think appendages like "Circus", "Square" "Street" and "Road" are superfluous/too much trouble and get directions to Oxford, Leicester, Liverpool, Gloucester, or Edgware. But I digress.
timbo | 02.07.19 - 10:08 a.m. | #
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I wish the TfL planner had an "avoid Zone 1" option, as that would be far more useful than many of the other options it has. Or a "cheapest fare" option, which again would be helpful if TfL are genuinely trying to help their "customers", instead of giving bizarre suggestions like taking a National Express A6 airport coach to get from Finchley Road to Baker Street!
I was intrigued by the next option on your search, the bus stop "Cricket Ground" which turned out to be between Buckhurst Hill and Loughton! I hope tourists trying to get to Lord's or The Oval don't end up there...
Mikey C | 02.07.19 - 10:37 a.m. | #
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Glad i'm not the only one for whom "via" doesn't work on TfL's journeyplanner. i assumed i must be doing something wrong !
ADS | Homepage | 02.07.19 - 10:41 a.m. | #
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Yes Mikey, the site has become useless for me when going to Heathrow as recently it insisted on routing me via the Heathrow Express at its massive cost. As there is a rail on/off option only, it proved impossible to just remove this premium fare service and just leave national rail. This means that I now have to break down the journey into components.
Ken | 02.07.19 - 10:58 a.m. | #
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Indeed, this morning it was suggesting I pay £28.30 on HEX route from Blackhorse Road to Heathrow 123 rather than the £5.10 charged for the simple 1 change at Finsbury Park route. £23.20 to save 10 minutes.
E17Ian | 02.07.19 - 12:02 p.m. | #
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I'm glad it's not just me.
The TrainSplit / RailEasy website can come up with good options especially on the East Coast route, but in other cases it fails to find very obvious ways of splitting tickets and saving money. As with everything Internet, caveat emptor.
RogerB | 02.07.19 - 1:00 p.m. | #
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Sounds almost as daft as Southeastern's 'The Key'. It's supposed to be limited to Southeastern tickets, yet you can go to exotic places such as Montpelier and Severn Beach. However, Gatwick Airport is a NoNo, as is Greenwich (despite being a Southeastern station served by Southeastern trains).
The newest TfL TVMs will sell you a ticket from any NR station to any other NR station, so perhaps TfL's Journey Planner going national may be related to that in some way.
Gerry | 02.07.19 - 2:10 p.m. | #
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On what powers the search, it says 'powered by Google' at the bottom, but remains steadfastly within UK/NI.
When planning purely TfL-bound rail trips, the delightful Tubermap does the job for me. It still has the odd suggestion that wouldn't to follow (due to preferring some interchanges over others and knowledge of line frequencies), but far fewer than Journey Planner.
I agree that DB is the best for pan-European, and for best-informed working things out further afield, there is the peerless Man in Seat 61
NickW | 02.07.19 - 2:15 p.m. | #
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Here's another oddity - some journeys involve walking for some minutes from the destination station to itself! I've just tried a Canterbury East to Dover Priory (a direct line) route and had this odd result of an extra five minutes after arriving by train. As the map won't go east of Ashford it's not possible to work out why this is.
Also can someone tell TfL what the main station in Edinburgh is called? (Not "Edinburgh Rail Station".)
Tim Roll-Pickering | Homepage | 02.07.19 - 2:29 p.m. | #
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Wick station is in the database as "Wick (Highland), Wick Rail Station".
I think the problem is that there are too many other stations containing "wick" (Hackney / Hampton / Chiswick etc) and it prioritises the ones nearest London so doesn't give the Scottish one as an option if you just enter "Wick".
greatkingrat | 02.07.19 - 4:31 p.m. | #
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I reckon they're using the Google Places API. When you enter a search term, something has to give you suggestions based on that search term. Google has something that does that. Also there's a big "Powered by Google" logo...
But that's probably what's going on. And one of the Google service features is a location bias that allows you to prioritise results based on a location. And obviously TfL would prioritise London over Scotland.
Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 02.07.19 - 4:44 p.m. | #
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Fine, but pulling a list of locations from Google doesn't automatically plan a route for you, that's completely separate... and intentional.
diamond geezer | Homepage | 02.07.19 - 4:46 p.m. | #
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Yep. That's this ->
www.mentz.net/...efa-journey-planner
Indeed, on that webpage:
"While searching for routes, EFA no longer uses the data of only one city or region. The performance of the computational core has been improved to integrate the data of multiple countries and calculate cross-border journey planning e.g. from Dublin Airport to Belfast, Northern Ireland in less than a second."
Can't persuade the TfL site to give me info for travel to Dublin though!
Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 02.07.19 - 4:55 p.m. | #
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At least for the longer National Rail journeys it gives up on the unrequested "Bus only" route it insists on showing for every journey in London. 5+ hours Bow Road to Amersham is a particular gem.
The drop-down lists behave weirdly. I'm baffled by an algorithm that for "Ham" suggests "West Ham" and "Balham" but only thinks of "Hampstead" when the p is added.
Andrew S | 02.07.19 - 5:37 p.m. | #
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Another foible is treating all NR services (even TfL's own, such as Overground and TfL Rail) as equal - they are not: especially if you have a Freedom Pass and it's before 0930, or need to avoid a particular TOC on a strike day, (or, as others have mentioned, your route goes near Heathrow Express or HS1)
timbo | 02.07.19 - 6:27 p.m. | #
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It's absolutely brilliant in some respects, e.g. filters such as Bus Only if you have an ENCTS pass, and it's equally good for people with disabilities, e.g. able to use stairs but not escalators. Those are categories where Google et al are often poor.
But it soon gives up on buses beyond the London suburbs even on well served routes, e.g. from Canterbury and Brighton to their respective universities.
Gerry | 02.07.19 - 8:46 p.m. | #
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What I wish they would add, is clear info about the edge of Oyster / Contactless for each journey - I see lots of Londoners getting penalty fares, when they hadn’t Intended to do anything wrong. It’s only going to get worse as the 2 borders vary in more places, with no clear logic to either.
ML | 04.07.19 - 6:56 a.m. | #
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