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Getting better but still with room for improvement

In Observations, Suggestions, Timetables, Trains on January 22, 2010 at 7:04 am

After a look at the National Rail Enquiries website, I have noted the appearance of a departure board form on the main page during the recent arctic spell and it’s still there after the restoration of full service. There is one annoyance that has just come to my attention, though. It’s that you cannot plan day return trips without some adjustments because the default behaviour is that the earliest return date is the day after the day of outward travel even if you specify the return date correctly. This is a situation that does annoy me and I hope that they get to removing that restriction. All in all, the new website feels rough underneath its shiny surface. Did they rush things in place of delivering a more polished item?

Doing something sensible

In Buses, Happenings, News, Timetables on January 7, 2010 at 8:45 pm

After its nearly grinding to a halt over the last few Arriva finally changed its website to deliver at a glance service running information in a format that is more server friendly. From the performance point of view, that seems to have done the trick and gives you a sense of what is happening very quickly.

What this reveals is that what is needed is a central repository of general bus running information for challenging weather conditions like those that we are having now. Currently, it’s mainly a case of going to each operator and seeing what they tell you. For Britain, Traveline would be ideal for this role but it now depends on where you are. Scotland, Wales and the North East of England (includes Cumbria for some reason) do well but the English North West and West Midlands are not set up for this at all.

Maybe, it’s something on which they need to work. If they don’t fancy doing all the technical work, then further feeding their Twitter presence might be in order. Bowers/Centrebus are an excellent example of what can be done as is what National Rail Enquiries is doing. Then, there’s Northern Rail and Arriva Trains Wales (perhaps ironic given the experience of the U.K. bus side of the business) too and there may be more out there on the real-time web than this so it’s well worth a look. Short, pithy updates will do so long as we know what’s happening.

Bikes on buses

In Buses, Coaches, Observations, Trains on November 4, 2009 at 12:12 pm

I remember making a return journey between Charleville and Cork in Ireland when a passenger just popped a bicycle into one of the coach’s side lockers and it was carried without further ado. When I had the idea of doing the same on an outing from Edinburgh to Fort William, I was thwarted because carriage of bicycles on buses and coaches is not the norm. The phrase that lingers in my memory, regardless of whether it actually was said that way or not was “This is not a train”. Undeterred, I secured my bicycle and left it after me to enjoy a wonderful day out. The change of plan was no spoiler though the it did alter how I spent the day.

There are some who might say that the above contrast between Irish easygoing helpfulness, the same type that allows the carriage of forgotten luggage on a service coach from Galway to Dublin without charge or facilitating the retrieval of a case left on Dublin’s LUAS tram system by myself and I half-asleep after an early morning flight from Manchester, and British adherence to process and procedure. While I cannot doubt Irish helpfulness, I am more inclined to attribute the differences in outcome to differences in legal systems.

Whatever the cause, non-carriage of bikes by buses and the paucity of accommodation for them on trains (a story for another time) has fostered the growth of my interest in hillwalking at the expense of cycling. Ironically, it is in the types of places where I go walking that there have been innovations when it comes to carriage of bicycles by buses. In the Yorkshire Dales, trailers have been attached to Dennis Darts for the purpose. In other places, you see the use of racks mounted on the back for the same purpose and the X94 that goes between Chester/Wrexham and Barmouth comes to mind but there are others. Having bicycle pens within the buses themselves is another way of achieving the same and I have vague recollections of this being done in Snowdonia and the northwest of Scotland. On the subject of vague recollections, I have another one of seeing a photo in Buses magazine where seats have been replaced by a place to put bikes on what appeared to be a double-decker.

Though none of those ways to carry bikes on buses are widely available, there is an argument in favour of making that happen. After all, having a bicycle in a wheelchair or buggy space on a low floor bus is likely to cause a nuisance and you couldn’t even get one on the older step entrance vehicles. Then, there’s the prospect of breaking up a bike to carry it on a National Express coach service and that sounds like something that you would do if you were carrying one on an airplane. Of course, there are those folding bikes that people sneak onto commuter trains at peak times as luggage but is that really ideal for that day out in the countryside exploring its quieter roads? All in all, it’s a state of affairs that encourages car use but remains a tough nut to crack whichever way you go about it.

Not taking no for an answer

In Observations, Timetables, Trains on October 14, 2009 at 11:45 am

With a fine weekend in prospect, the mind turns to getting out and enjoying what’s on offer. In that vein, I tried looking up train times for a return journey between Macclesfield and Harlech, all on the same day with one change in Wolverhampton and maybe another in Machynlleth, only for the National Rail Enquiries website to tell me that it was impossible. The workaround was to look for a single outbound journey and a single return journey, not ideal but I got the information that I needed. While this was a case of curiosity more than anything else, I might be nonplussed if I was after a bargain fare in preference to the standard Off-Peak Return; knowing that such a search would prove fruitless anyway would have meant sticking with a walk on fare so I wasn’t bothered.

While it has come a way since its original incarnation, the episode illustrates that creases still need to be knocked of the National Rail Enquiries journey planning algorithm. When the website first came on the scene, I was left wondering why they couldn’t have used the excellent engine that Network Rail had inherited from Railtrack; it was one of the few things that they got right. It was all the more puzzling when the new planning engine was nowhere near as good as its predecessor. Glitches like not being told about journey options via Wilmslow when engineering work disrupted the normal Sunday services between Macclesfield and Manchester was but one of the inconsistencies.

Of course, any system is only ever as good as the data supplied to it. A striking example of that was the carrot of having an early Sunday morning rail replacement coach to Wilmslow for a day out in Wales. The advised coach service turned out to be a work of fiction so my travel arrangements had to change as did any plans that I had. A good day was enjoyed but not in the way in which I had envisaged it. The same sort of thing may explain the lack of available fares sometimes when there is engineering work ongoing and that between Lockerbie and Edinburgh earlier this year comes to mind.

While I can deal with this and find my way around the rail network anyway or even turn to other journey planning services, what must it all seem to someone who isn’t so savvy? I can see it looking very offputting and that’s a pity because public transport needs all the support that it can get in these leaner times. Taking this further, public transport needs to sell itself better and easier journey planning is part of this. Websites that don’t deliver may not cause someone to pick up a phone or visit their nearest staffed train station but set them to choose to drive or even fly instead, hardly the type of thing that should be happening. The National Rail Enquiries website may have won awards and offer the option to sort out accommodation along with your train ticket but what use is all of this if the journey finding algorithm or the information supplied to it aren’t up to scratch? After all, that’s why people go to the website so both of those need to take precedence over any other fancy features that some might care to add.

A proper bus company?

In Buses, Observations, Timetables on October 11, 2009 at 8:19 pm

Most bus companies offer collections of timetables on their websites but Veolia Transport doesn’t bother, merely telling everyone to go Traveline instead. When the rest of your competition offers the more complete service, this looks lazy and makes your bus enterprise look like an afterthought bolted on to your environmental services, water and energy divisions. Going further, it gives the impression that the organisation is a jobsworth utility company, surely not what it wants to do at all. It wouldn’t be such a problem if all of the areas where Veolia operates took up the baton and compensated accordingly but that in’t always the case. Until recently, Powys was such an example but a new website seems to address this so it is a case of giving credit where it is due. Veolia probably still needs to make more of an effort though, even if it makes a good job of providing the actual services. For example, it operates LUAS, Dublin’s tram service, very well and I can vouch for the quality of the provided customer service but that needs to make its way onto the web for all to see.

A weekly ticket goes roaming

In Buses, Ticketing on August 4, 2009 at 8:45 am

My weekend Welsh wander afforded me the opportunity to try out something. Though Arriva’s bus operations in Wales and in the north west of England have been separated for better working with the Welsh Assembly Government, the £15 weekly ticket still applies across both areas. The result was that I gave it a go in order to get between Machynlleth and Minfford for my walking around Cadair Idris and it was accepted without a bother even though it was bought in Cheshire (rather than causing trouble on a bus, I would have paid if it wasn’t and maybe gone and popped a question of Arriva’s customer services afterwards). As far as I am aware, the same does not apply to day tickets so an all areas ticket is needed, costing more than the £4 tariff of the north west day ticket. With the weekly ticket, the added value for money is appreciated.

Why reserve a seat if unsure of your time of travel?

In Booking, Coaches, Ticketing, Trains on May 5, 2009 at 4:14 pm

Sadly, those insulting thetrainline.com ads have reappeared. Personally, I like the flexibility of just turning up at a train station, buying a ticket for my journey and going on my way. In fact, I like that idea so much that I am willing to pay for it most of the time (saying that, when the cost passes £60, savings are often sought). Being called an idiot for wanting to things in this way is certainly not something that I appreciate and I can next to guarantee that the said company will not be getting my custom, at least not directly.

Apart from those appalling posters, another thing that brings the whole matter of Internet bookings to mind is my travelling on a train south from Aviemore a few weeks back. Many seats were reserved but most of these weren’t occupied. That may have been just as well for sake of travelling comfort but it prompted the thought in my mind as to whether those reservations were a “just in case” measure. The next step in musings has me wondering if a world where there was more more frugality in the booking of seats might be a better one. However, there is also the possibility that a decline in seat booking would result in less frequent services and shorter trains, something that could increase seat reservations and pop things back where they were before anyway. It all makes a seat reservation less useful than it ought to be. In reality, it is probably no bad thing to sit in such a spot until disturbed by the rightful occupant. After all, you only need to move away when asked. It may not make things user friendly for those reserving seats or be the sort of practice that is encouraged but it might be a minor irritation in the broad scheme of things.

While the railways still cut some slack and that is good when it comes to convenience, other modes of travel are far from being like this and I hope that the railways don’t follow suit. For one thing, they already compensate for a less than comprehensive express coach network in England that makes seat bookings a necessity. Wales now has its Trawscambria long distance bus network with Ireland and Scotland having none too shabby networks provided by Citylink, Ulsterbus and Bus Éireann. Airlines are run on a far tighter footing and you only need to note Ryanair’s closure of airport check in desks in favour of the online option and Aer Lingus’ passenger operated baggage check in facilities to see what I mean. They also overbook their aircraft which is not so nice but the expectation is that not everyone will make a flight. If the same sort of thinking started to pervade the railways, then that would be a very disappointing development.

Saying all of that, I don’t object to there being a need for bookings on services running at busy times. In fact, if you are tied to a train by an advance purchase ticket, then reserving a seat makes sense. For more flexible tickets (Off Peak and Anytime returns come to mind), the logic of that argument may not be so strong, hence my appeal to only reserve your place when you are absolutely certain of travelling. Yes, I realise that stuff happens but there’s no need to devalue the seat booking by not turning up because it was only done just in case.

Economic realities

In Buses, Coaches, News, Trains on December 19, 2008 at 1:54 pm

Ireland’s CIE has ended with a €39m loss for the year and is talking of service reductions with its subsidiaries Bus Éireann and Dublin Bus garnering a mention. National Express is laying off 300 back office staff. Stagecoach’s Brian Souter is talking of hard times ahead and there is softening of demand on commuter routes with more people being out of work. All of this is hardly optimistic but it is a reminder that the transport industry is not immune to the economic pressures that we face. Let’s hope that we pull through what lies ahead of us without too many cuts to services.

Events dear boy, events

In Buses, Incidents on November 23, 2008 at 12:46 pm

I was out for a walk in the Lake District yesterday and I stumbled on a heaving Ambleside. The reason for all the people being there was the turning on of the Christmas lights, an annual tradition. There are various pieces but the one that gets it a mention on this blog is that there is a parade in the late afternoon that puts a stop to the progress of any buses. I was not the only the only one that stumbled on this unawares because it was the cause of a disgruntled “Where the hell is the 555?” from a waiting passenger in Windermere.

The result was that quite a number of us were stood outside in the freezing cold waiting far longer than we ought to have done, not that I am decrying the fun that was in train since it is something that is much needed in the current economic climate. The 555 that was to take me from Ambleside to Windermere was stopped in its tracks while all was going on and the 599 that I eventually used was itself held up. It just goes to show how a traditional event can really impact bus services, particularly when there’s no alternative route for buses to follow. That police didn’t seem to be prioritising the passage of buses didn’t help either.

However, I cannot say that all smaller places where big events are ongoing do see their bus services disrupted. For instance, Dolgellau’s Eldon Square can be closed for such things but with diversions in place, a much better way of doing it. It still does not alleviate accommodation shortages due to the annual Cadair Idris hill race on the Saturday of the second bank holiday weekend in May but buses continue run as planned, a much better outcome.