Journey planners and the demise of RailPlanner

One operator that I normally respect, Transport for Wales, currently has no timetables on its website. When I asked management why this was, I was told that they changed too often.

This is a pathetic excuse. Many other operators change their services quite frequently, but current timetables are always available on their websites. Shame on TfW for failing to give its users what they need.

TfW said people should use its journey planner instead. Has it no appreciation of the difference between a journey planner and a timetable?

A journey planner can be very useful for multiple-leg journeys, not least where there are many possible routes. But for basic journeys a timetable is vastly superior, as the brain can assimilate from one page a huge amount of information at a glance: patterns, frequency, connections and so on.

It is rather ironic that operators are always initially so keen to point users in the direction of their journey planners, even when they do have timetables on their sites, because a decent journey planner is something the industry as a whole simply does not provide.

Literally all operators make the mistake of inextricably linking journey planning with fares. The tail wags the dog… and the outcome is a mess.

There are two ways to plan journeys to match users’ priorities. Either allow people to plan just a journey, select an option that suits them, and then give them the fares for that journey, or let people see all possible fares and have a planner find the journeys that match those chosen.

The current National Rail journey planner is appalling for trying to combine these functions. The result is not only frequently erroneous, but also very complicated. Most operators’ planners are little better.

Only two really good third-party planners exist: www.fastjp.com and RailPlanner.

The former is excellent, if a little constrained in its rather cramped layout. The latter runs off-line and is superb (being, in fact, the original British Rail planner developed by Network SouthEast and InterCity).

Both allow multiple vias, ‘don’t change at X’ options, and choices of operator.

Sadly, RailPlanner’s owner, Scandex, made a big mistake some years ago in dropping private subscribers in favour of only dealing with corporate groups.

I always said it would end in tears, and the very disappointing news is that RailPlanner is shutting down in mid-May.

I have been in contact but, frankly, they seem to lack interest. I am hoping someone might be willing to take it over, rather than let it die, and can let anyone tech-minded have details.