Dublin Bus Route Planner now online

KC61

Having just logged on to it I see that the Dublin Bus website has had a makeover and now (at last) includes a route planner with (apparently) cross functionality with LUAS and DART.

Some guidelines are at:
http://www.dublinbus.ie/en/Route-Planner/Route-Planner-Help/

It is a step in the right direction - still no working timetables unfortunately, but there are links to the relevant timetables when you select your route.

foggy_lad

just had a quick look and even with two very minor errors it is so much better that the previous site which was nicely laid out but rarely worked, well done dublin bus the better end of the CIE pantomime horse:)

KC61

And it does suggest using rail or LUAS rather than buses where applicable!

stop

It's a good step. They might want to adjust it though so it takes into account some stops that buses only use at certain times of the day (eg 17) or some stops that are no longer in use (eg 14a)

Also for christs sake. Can they not design something whereby if I use the route number search, and I type in a number (eg 77) and then I press enter, I expect the site to bring me to the timetable of the 77 instead of

Timetable Listing


Sorry, your search came back with no results. Please try again by selecting an option available from your predictive search list.

Why should I have to use this predictive search list? I typed a number, bring me to it's page, it's not that complicated.

markpb

The first (and IMHO fatal) flaw is that it's useless unless you know what road your nearest bus stop is, i.e. it's useless to people with just two addresses. I know there's a bus stop right outside my estate but couldn't find it. It also failed to identify a Luas route from the city centre to Sandyford and suggested the 5 instead.

I also don't understand the point of the initial summary page - it gives you almost no useful information but perhaps it's useful if it can identify multiple route options. And like KC91 said, because DB have no working timetables, it could give very spurious suggestions (like the 5 which isn't the most frequent bus in the world - at least suggest the 46b!).

The whole site (not just the journey planner) also seems very, very slow. The new timetable search isn't working for me, no matter what route number I type in here, it says it can't find any results. When I search by place name, the auto-complete doesn't play well with Chrome and regularly doesn't work and ends up listing every route in the city.

I hope these are just teething difficulties but TBH this is just what I expected. Google already have a reliable route mapping application but DB decided to waste money implementing a less user-friendly version of their own.

murphaph

The site is a heap at the moment but clearly it's heading in the right direction. They have numbered every stop uniquely for a start which in itself is a great sign. Remember when city swift appeared and the same stop on different sides of the road could have different names?

stop

A lot of shelters currently have two numbers on them. How is joe-public to know which one to note?

Cookie_Monster

fail.

cabinteely to cherrywood - can't find any route

Cherrywood stops for the 7, 7b and 46c doesn't seem to exist

only option for Dalkey is the DART station

no bus from loughlinstown hospital to bray


****ING ****E :mad:

And best of all:

Enniskerry to DL DART station is via Pearse Station.

WTF?

richardjjd

Its a good step in the right direction (as is the unique numbering of the stops), but I don't think DB should have published it on their site before they had a working model (unless I'm doing something stupid (not an unknown event in my corner of the universe) - it tells me where to get on the bus and where to get off the bus, and where to get on my next bus, but it doesn't tell me which buses to get ...)

Edit
I am, indeed, stupid. I see now where they name the buses you have to get (though its a bit unwieldy to have to go through a second page to see this information).

2manyconditions

They could do with a little map too or an option for one.

But I'm sure they will get plenty of feedback and hopefully improve the service. Its def a thumbs up from me. Thanks for posting.

KC61

2manyconditions wrote: »

They could do with a little map too or an option for one.

But I'm sure they will get plenty of feedback and hopefully improve the service. Its def a thumbs up from me. Thanks for posting.

There is a map option which I didn't notice earlier.

When you type in your initial location a box comes up to the right listing the routes serving that stop with an option to see that location on a map along with other stops within a certain radius.

You can then change stops if (for example) your initial one was on the wrong side of the road.

KC61

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

fail.

cabinteely to cherrywood - can't find any route

Cherrywood stops for the 7, 7b and 46c doesn't seem to exist

only option for Dalkey is the DART station

no bus from loughlinstown hospital to bray


****ING ****E :mad:

And best of all:

Enniskerry to DL DART station is via Pearse Station.

WTF?

The stops adjacent to Cherrywood Business Park are described as "Wyattville Road".

Loughlinstown Hospital to Castle Street Bray works for me - gives me the 145, 45 and 84.

Dalkey I suspect is down to the stop descriptions on route 8 and 59 - Ulverton Road (Castle Street) appears to be used but it does not include "Dalkey".

Cookie_Monster

KC61 wrote: »

The stops adjacent to Cherrywood Business Park are described as "Wyattville Road".

Loughlinstown Hospital to Castle Street Bray works for me - gives me the 145, 45 and 84.

why?, 7 goes to cherrywood not wyatville road. timetable and destination blinds state as much

i just typed in Bray, didn't care where in bray, obviously it can't cater for that.

its barely a beta version and no where near proper release

That username is already in use.

As a Web Developer myself, I think biznetiis did a fantastic job here.

The design is spot on and the web applications appear to work very well.

They still have a lot of work to do, though. One simple thing I noticed is that when you enter a route number into the Timetables, the Enter key doesn´t trigger - you have to click "Search". Little things like that make all the difference.

I would recommend the Dublin Bus assign someone to interact with threads like these, just like M50 Management. Free advice, testing and support from the likes of us should be used to the maximum.

devnull

Think it's horrendous, really badly designed compared to the one in TFL.

Eg I type a place name and then it gives me a huge list of stops in that place name, with road name, and stop number after it. Whilst it has every stop on the network on there, it's not very user friendly at all, because it is for sure going to overwhelm people with the huge number of choices there is.

It is also not apparent in a lot of locations at first glance exactly what stop is what, for some destinations you have a place name, a comma, and then a stop number and may have about 10-15 different stop numbers for the same area.

Once again Dublin Bus have failed with their passenger information, while the idea is a good one, and including all the bus stops may seem logical, it has just made the whole thing very user unfriendly, and bewildering to many people at first glance no doubt.

All people want to do is to type where they are, and how they can get to a particular place, unfortunately it looks like DB have tried to reinvent the wheel and go into too much detail so much that it is not user friendly.

Carawaystick

still no list of fares if youre in county Dublin north of Lissenhall. You're to ring up and ask, if the office is still open, ffs

devnull

Having played around with it, a little more it really is awful. It fails on the most simplest tests and is of absolutely no help to the people who will need it.

If I type a place name in a from and a to field, I should be able to find a bus route. I shouldn't have to know every little detail on exactly what stop number or road name the stop is called in Dublin Bus' database. If I knew this I would not be using the route planner in the first place would I?

The whole point people are trying to plan a route is to find if they can go to a certain place, they are not going to know exact stops or road names. This route planner only seems to cater for people who know where there stops are, and what they are called the exact kind of people who will not be using the route planner.

For example for my regular route I need to select the exact stop it comes from and the exact stop it stops at to get a route plan. If I select the first entry that comes up onto the list when I type the place or road name in, it tells me no routes serve my area.

EG: If I want to go to Castleknock from Hawkins Street, Hawkins Street isn't even recognized in the system when you type it in. And if I type Castleknock and then press enter it defaults to the first item on the list which isn't even in Castleknock. I should not need to go searching through a long list to find the exact stop, which I do not know anyway.

The end of the day the system tries to be too clever and this where it falls down, now for a proper implementation of a route planner go use this:

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/

Simple, type your place name you want to go from, including road name if you wish, and the place you want to go to, and press enter.

foggy_lad

it seems to work well on mobiles but has the same flaws and bugs with inputting placenames etc

devnull

It's not really a route planner as a route planner plans your route where you know the place you want to go to and from.

It's a stop to stop planner which plans the buses you need to take to go from stop to stop when you know the stops you want to go to.

That's the big failure DB have made, It's the most user unfriendly and complicated system I've sever seen for a public transport operator.

The logic it uses for the Dart when coming from the southside to the City Centre is entertaining also

01 Take DART (Rail [url]www.irishrail.ie):[/url] from Dun Laoghaire DART Station to Connolly DART (and Rail) Station
02 Take DART (Rail [url]www.irishrail.ie):[/url] from Connolly DART (and Rail) Station to Tara Street DART Station

Why not just go straight to Tara Street? Why go to Connolly and then double back and change trains.?

murphaph

devnull wrote: »

Think it's horrendous, really badly designed compared to the one in TFL.

Eg I type a place name and then it gives me a huge list of stops in that place name, with road name, and stop number after it. Whilst it has every stop on the network on there, it's not very user friendly at all, because it is for sure going to overwhelm people with the huge number of choices there is.

It is also not apparent in a lot of locations at first glance exactly what stop is what, for some destinations you have a place name, a comma, and then a stop number and may have about 10-15 different stop numbers for the same area.

Once again Dublin Bus have failed with their passenger information, while the idea is a good one, and including all the bus stops may seem logical, it has just made the whole thing very user unfriendly, and bewildering to many people at first glance no doubt.

All people want to do is to type where they are, and how they can get to a particular place, unfortunately it looks like DB have tried to reinvent the wheel and go into too much detail so much that it is not user friendly.

They are correct to have every single bus stop included and uniquely identified. My gripe is that the method of identification is a bit crap (a number) and that they should uniquely name bus stops (including of course giving this information on the bus stop itself) according to junction. The problem for Dublin bus then starts when we leave the built up areas and start looking at routes which traverse roads with no name (of which there are thousands probably). This is where the L road numbering will come into play IMO. There's no other easy way to do it without naming every street and lane in ireland (as is done in NI).

Dublin Bus appear to be doing what they can here but it takes a proper way to identify a street (which doesn't exist yet everywhere!) before you can easily identify the location of a bus stop on that street (GPS etc. is not suitable IMO for this type of thing as GPS device penetration is not comprehensive enough).

murphaph

devnull wrote: »

If I type a place name in a from and a to field, I should be able to find a bus route. I shouldn't have to know every little detail on exactly what stop number or road name the stop is called in Dublin Bus' database. If I knew this I would not be using the route planner in the first place would I?

That's how the Berlin one works too and I find it fine tbh. (apart from identifying stops with numbers, Berlin uses streets/junctions). I suppose Germans prefer the exactness of that than a general area.

angel01

murphaph wrote: »

That's how the Berlin one works too and I find it fine tbh. (apart from identifying stops with numbers, Berlin uses streets/junctions). I suppose Germans prefer the exactness of that than a general area.

But to be honest, most people just want to know how to get from A to B and the dublin bus planner is useless for that, I tried it, I don't know where exactly the bus stop is, I just want to know general locations like how to get from Drimnagh to Ringsend for example.

I think it is really poor and a very bad effort.

Bazzer2

I think, on the whole, it's a welcome step forward and testing it out on various route options works pretty well.

Further to an earlier post, I found "Hawkins Street" very easily in the predictive lists, but amazingly "O'Connell Street" doesn't appear!

Heart

Further to an earlier post, I found "Hawkins Street" very easily in the predictive lists, but amazingly "O'Connell Street" doesn't appear!

You need an apostrophe... O'Connell Street instead of O Connell Street.

H

markpb

I'm shocked at how people can think it works well or the designers have done their job.

As an example, here's Google Transit in Los Angeles:

- Type in part of the start address, Google fills in the rest
- Type in part of the destination address, Google fills in the rest
- Click on the bus icon
- Google displays a list of options and the full set of directions for each option. It tells you how long it will take, what time each bus/train runs at and how long each stage will take. The fare isn't shown because they have a standard fare including connection for the entire city.

Here's DB:
- Front page fails to load CSS properly so the entire page is displayed wrong
- Reload the front page
- Type in my street name, wait while the page loads the list of suggestions (it breaks if you do anything before this loads.) DB can't find it because there are no bus stops
- Type in the nearest major street - DB lists several bus stops but can't find mine
- Type in the destination (in Sandyford industrial estate), DB can't find it
- Type in another road in Sandyford
- It presents just one option even though I'm travelling across the city. It doesn't show the map until you click another button, it doesn't say what time the buses will run at, how long they'll take or how much each stage will cost. The map is a list of stops which is useful but very hard to read. Take a look at the attached image as an example.

This tool needs an awful lot of work and I don't understand why DB paid someone else to re-design the wheel.

Bazzer2

Heart wrote: »

You need an apostrophe... O'Connell Street instead of O Connell Street.

H

Thanks, I tried it again with an apostrophe. I still don't get a generic O'Connell Street, but the lists contain specific entries for Lower O'Connell Street and Upper O'Connell Street. Suppose I'll just have to get used to it.

KC61

Several posters above made reference to tfl's excellent site and I can honestly say that that planner was far from ideal when initially launched and has taken quite a few versions to get right. It does also benefit from the fact that virtually every area has a rail station of some sort which can be used as a generic location, and indeed they all have a postcode, which are things that Dublin doesn't have.

It's very easy to sit behind a computer and start criticising something like this. Maybe I'm a bit old-fashioned at times, but I'd look at this as a positive step and rather than berating it might suggest that as a group we try to come up with constructive (and practical) criticism that actually improves upon it.

To me it is a starting point that, undoubtedly has quite a few flaws, but I would certainly think that these can be eliminated over several releases. We have never had anything remotely like this in Dublin, and it's a start. Dublin Bus do appear to be making an effort here at improving the information (the network diagram a while back was a start) and I think to just say it's a "FAIL" really is to be honest not very constructive!

I'd ask the question how would you practically deal with using general locations rather than specific ones, given that an area can have a large number of routes that need not necessarily serve the same part of a particular area?

I understand markpb's criticism re times, but again I am looking at this pratically. There is an awful lot happening in that company right now and I very much doubt they have limitless resources to get everything done at once. I'd rather see a step by step approach that builds from the current position (pretty woeful) to one that will deliver a practical working system.

Including the times would require every timetable to be redrawn into a working timetable format (rather than simply using end points as at present) which is a mammoth task. I've no doubt it will happen, but I would think that they need to get over the other hurdles first (network redesign, AVLC and RTPI rollouts etc.)

Cookie_Monster

1 it should have been done 5 years ago
2 why launch when it is clearly not up to pace
3 why launch at a time when every single other major project they are doing is also delayed and/or turned to **** (GPS, bus stop info, new website design, network direct, integrated ticketing, non contact ticketing, removal of buses from the road etc etc)
4 why leave glaring gaps like not simply being able to type in a town or area

markpb

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

4 why leave glaring gaps like not simply being able to type in a town or area

I don't understand why people are using this stick to beat it with. Generally people want to go to a street or location, not an area. Allowing them to enter in something like Glasnevin or Ballsbridge muddies the waters and makes it more likely they'll get the wrong directions. If nothing else, those areas aren't well defined - when someone says Glasnevin, they could mean Finglas, Santry or Ballymun!

KC61

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

1 it should have been done 5 years ago
2 why launch when it is clearly not up to pace
3 why launch at a time when every single other major project they are doing is also delayed and/or turned to **** (GPS, bus stop info, new website design, network direct, integrated ticketing, non contact ticketing, removal of buses from the road etc etc)
4 why leave glaring gaps like not simply being able to type in a town or area

Cookie we could go on and on about why things have not happened before now or why they take so long, but frankly that is not going to change anything.

The fact is that the company is in the middle of an enormous change process. Many of things you listed above are out of their hands (GPS - funding was withheld, integrated ticketing was delayed by DoT, etc) and others are taking longer than any of us would like, but going on and on about it is not going to solve that.

I am suggesting that people try to be somewhat more constructive in their criticisms of this specific project rather than putting kneejerk reactions down. There are a lot of people who post here and use the bus service. Coming up with helpful practical ideas might be a worthwhile exercise rather than just putting everything down as useless.

I asked a simple question - practically what is the best way to deal with generic placenames?

angel01

But looking at the drop down, I do not know the bus stop number so a lot of the drop down list is redundant.. say the road you want to go to does not have a bus stop on it and you are not 100% sure of roads close by, so you want to put the area in.. alas no luck.

Why do they suggest: Try the name of your local area to help with your initial search

What is the point when it doesn't pick it up :rolleyes:

To be honest, I don't know one single person who will know the bus stop number, that is just ridiculous.

Cookie_Monster

KC61 wrote: »

I asked a simple question - practically what is the best way to deal with generic placenames?

allow for example "Bray" to give all stops within the town, and give a further list of options for either routes or streets with stops below it for those who want greater detail. Use placenames that are in use everyday, like cherrywood business park, instead of wyatville road, which used to stop before the flyover.

markpb

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

Use placenames that are in use everyday, like cherrywood business park, instead of wyatville road, which used to stop before the flyover.

I disagree with the rest of your post but this is quite correct and it looks like DB are trying to support it:

You can also type in a place of interest such as a hospital, shopping centre, tourist attraction etc. Type “Mater” for Mater Hospital or “Omni” for Omni Park Shopping Centre. Note if the place of interest matches a bus stop address e.g. “North Circular Road, Mater Hospital, Stop 54” then it will likely result in a more accurate route option.

link

KC61

angel01 wrote: »

To be honest, I don't know one single person who will know the bus stop number, that is just ridiculous.

Going forward with online and mobile real time information we might all become more used to it - there is perhaps a need for customers to think in a different way too.

I'll be honest I don't know my stop numbers either but when online RTPI is available I suspect I will!!

Polar101

Well.. I'm used to something like this:
http://www.reittiopas.fi/en/

It's the route planner for the public transport in the Helsinki area in Finland. Try from "Airport" to "Helsinki" for an example on how it works.

--

In the Dublin bus planner I thought it was pretty easy to find the right stops, but the options it gave me weren't great. And you'd really need timetables integrated for it to be useful.

Edit: Ah, they've spelled "New Ongar Road" as "New Onger Road", which is why my stop options were limited.

Cool Mo D

The biggest problems are needing to know exactly which bus stops you should go to. For example, if you want to go to UCD from Tallaght, it tells you to get the Luas and the 10. No mention of the 46a, or 145 which stop outside, UCD, because that's a different bus stop. And is doesn't mention the option of 17 and 65B, which would be the most direct way, if infrequent.

What it needs are the ability to try all bus stops within say 500m of each stops you've chosen to get the best selection of journeys, and allow you to pick whether you want high frequency routes, or shortest routes, and allow you to try and avoid the city centre.