[Sulmac]

Here it is, folks!

Says the official planner will be launched on the 27th.

[Dravokivich]

Hmm, would be a lot better if there was a fare calculator for using public transport when displaying the options for journeys.

[devnull]

A few things I noticed
1) The layout/Interface is a bit chaotic and needs work.
2) There are intermediate times for EVERY bus stop on Dublin Bus on PDF's
2) Some of the logic is crazy, EG, I typed Dublin Airport to Dalkey in and it told me to get Aircoach to Dun Lagohaire, then change for a train. Why not stay on the bus at get off in Dalkey?
3) It's good to see that there are private operators now listed on the service, finally an integrated journey planner listing ALL operators.
4) Some of the descriptions in the "Find Timetable PDF" are weird
5) Some of the PDF headers are strange, even if the timetables are right.
6) The Location Dublin City seems to be defined as Busaras.
7) The Journey planner always seems to list the next departure to get to a possible place, even if it involves several changes, despite the fact 10 minutes later there would be a direct bus/train that arrives at the destination before the one leaving earlier There should be some weighting to list the most direct route, or at least an option to set the journey planner to do this.

It's a good first step, but nowhere near ready to go live.

[lil5]

A first step in the right direction, but 'beta' is the right word for it. Certainly not ready for release.

Awful design.

[Dónal]

That's horrible.

[dowlingm]

"this site will be officially launched on June 27th, 2012"

Shows you how much feedback on the beta is valued... that much time might fix a typo or two and little else.

[bk]

Wow this is horrible.

Could they not have just hired the people behind hittheroad.ie and getthere.ie

Vastly superior interfaces, much easier to use.

Or could they have not just made the raw data available in the now standard GTFS format to Google Maps and let them handle it properly!!

This service makes some crazy suggestions, for one route I regularly take it first suggests:

Walk for 25 minutes, wait for and get a bus for one minute (all of about an additional 100 meters!), get a DART.

The second option is impossible, as it suggests walking along a route that is across a private apartment block, which a gated path, that can only be accessed by residents!!

The route I normally take, is walk for 7 minutes to Drumcondra road, take any number of bus routes into town from there, walk to Tara from town and get the DART. Non of it's options included this. hittheroad.ie correctly gives multiple versions of this route.

Great to see the private operator included. Funny, choosing Dublin to Cork, it only gives Aircoach and Irish Rail, no BE!!

Also disappointing that it gives you a taxi as an option, but no option for a car, but more importantly no walking or cycling options!!

So in summary, the raw data is good, but the interface is horrible. Please make the raw data available to all and let others come up with much better interfaces.

[Aard]

It's very slow, and difficult to make sense of the steps they say to take.

[devnull]

Getthere.ie was good at one point for intercity journeys but now it's pretty poor and I don't even bothering using it as many of the journeys featured on there have no basis on reality as they're quoting timetables which have since changed and it also seems to have little information in the database from within Dublin, you constantly get "No routes were found between x and y" HitTheRoad.ie only contains state operators.

Whilst the new journey planner on the NTA site is not perfect, for planning bus journeys it's 100x better than the Dublin Bus one, it even has stop specific times and a FULL LIST OF STOPS on the PDF's. Some of the logic is messed up I agree, but it's very complicated. You've got a huge amount of detail in the database, so much more than the third party sites which barely have anything in comparison, both of the ones you mentioned have fatal failures. There's about 50-60 operators in the NTA one and that is always going to be more difficult than implementing a 3 operator service (Hit the Road) or a regional service (GetThere).

The fact it doesn't mention BE on Dublin to Cork is no doubt the fact that Bus Eireann leave at the same time as Aircoach direct services, and it's rather sensibly recommending the fastest service which is what it should do, although there is scope to show the BE service as well, as long as the best service for the user is always made more prominent.

I agree it's not perfect. But to say the third party sites are better is silly - they're more limited in many ways.

[Dravokivich]

Originally Posted by devnull

The fact it doesn't mention BE on Dublin to Cork is no doubt the fact that Bus Eireann leave at the same time as Aircoach direct services, and it's rather sensibly recommending the fastest service which is what it should do, although there is scope to show the BE service as well, as long as the best service for the user is always made more prominent.

Just a comment on this, pricing can also be a factor for a consumer as well as the time.

Although an addition for that can increase the complexity you referenced in other parts of your post.

[devnull]

Don't think there are fares in the system at the moment, that would be quite hard I would say to implement as well, especially when some operators have online prices, on the day prices, prices if booked in advance by a certain number of days etc.

But if it is possible, which would be a lot of work I would suspect, then a check box in the options to select cheapest route rather than quickest is an idea.

[Polar101]

Well, it gets my daily commute right (which is two trips on Dublin Bus) with times from the timetable. That's more than I got off the Dublin Bus planner. Doesn't really have enough addresses - for example there's four roads in my estate but only one of them is listed. And the business address I work at is missing.

Maybe I'll try this the next time I'm going somewhere.

[bk]

Originally Posted by devnull

I agree it's not perfect. But to say the third party sites are better is silly - they're more limited in many ways.

Not perfect!! It is horrendously ugly!

The private sites interface is a 100 times better then this.

When you consider that the private sites are created by just one or two people, who aren't getting paid and don't have access to all the great data the NTA have, instead relying on scraping sites, unofficial Apis and people and companies telling them of schedule changes. Under those circumstances I think they have done an extraordinary job.

They have created sites that are far more attractive and easy to use and yes in the case of hittheroad.ie more accurate and sensible results IMO.

I'll certainly continue to use hittheroad.ie over this new site.

How many thousands did it cost to build this? It looks like your typical 10 years old, government website, with no use of modern web design.

Fine so now they have one bad site. But hopefully the NTA will now open up all this valuable data via standard GTFS format and license it appropriately so that Google and these other developers can create much more attractive and useful sites and apps on top of it.

[devnull]

Originally Posted by bk

They have created sites that are far more attractive and easy to use and yes in the case of hittheroad.ie more accurate and sensible results IMO.

It's easy to create a nice interface when you have to get it to display only a few types of data all from the same operator. It's much more work when you have lots of different operators, and changes from one operator to another, some who may have bus numbers, some of who may not and complexities.

If it is so easy how come any of the sites you mention don't show many more operators, and don't have anywhere near the feature set that the NTA site has? The reason why is because to implement everything that the NTA has done is nowhere near as straightforward as the implementations they have already.

I'll certainly continue to use hittheroad.ie over this new site.

Good for you. However the problem with HitTheRoad.ie is it only covers Dublin, it only covers state companies and therefore it is not a full journey planer as to be so it needs to include Aircoach, UrBus, Flybus and all of the other private operators and even then it's limited to just Dublin. Thus you have the stupidity of the planner telling you to go all the way from Blanchardstown, all the way to the city centre, all the way to Dublin Airport, when you could just get the Direct urbus. So yeah, on that basis, the new journey planner is crap, I mean who on earth would want to go the fastest way when you could travel all the way from North West Dublin, all the way to the city centre and back out to North East Dublin.

GetThere.ie is completely pointless for a journey within Dublin as it seems not to support them at all, and the team of people behind them seem not to bother updating timetables anymore, and also it appears not to support having to make changes, so again that has it's problems and is extremely limited in that regards.

Fine so now they have one bad site. But hopefully the NTA will now open up all this valuable data via standard GTFS format and license it appropriately so that Google and these other developers can create much more attractive and useful sites and apps on top of it.

It's so bad? I don't think so, it needs improvement for sure, but it supports all of the following
- Changes between transport providers
- All Private operators in the country
- PDF's for EVERY service in the state in one place
- It covers all journeys country wide, both within cities and regional services
- PDF's with stop specific departures for all Dublin Bus Routes

None of the third party systems support any of that. The NTA Journey Planner is designed to give information on ALL operators, for ALL of Ireland, for ALL people who want to travel in ALL areas of the country on ALL services. When the third party sites can manage to integrate all services, for all of the country, then you can come back and say that they are better, until then they are suitable for some people, but not for all.

[noelfirl]

One of the problems I see with the data handling on it is that,with the complete list of stop specific timetables (which should definitely be made available on the DB website!), the information for Dublin Bus services is operating off the timetables, and at that, the timetables aren't being interpreted correctly, e.g. earlier on on a few occasions it was declaring two of the same bus routes calling at a stop near me approximately 2 minutes apart. If the real time information is there, it really should operate with that as best as possible.

I think it also suffers from the horrible way that stops are managed by the transport authorities and operators - e.g., the UCD Belfield problem, where dropping a pin on different parts of the campus will get you a myriad of different options to get there.

Just there a moment ago I tried getting from my home to 'Swords', and it had me going by Dualway to the airport and onwards to Swords by another private operator, and earlier on the same request had me out to North Wall Quay and onto the Swords Express, doesn't seem to know about Dublin Bus services, again it was just 'Swords' I selected, so it may not be dealing with the stop selection that well.

It's good that it knows about private operators, and interfaces are something that can be changed quite quickly where necessary. It was also clever enough earlier on in that instead of sending me into town to get to Sligo, it suggested catching the train in Maynooth after getting a bus out, but it didn't leave a lot of time making the transfer.

Nonetheless, wouldn't say its really worthy of being only a couple of days away from launch.