NTA launches beta version of the National Journey Planner

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.

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

devnull wrote: »

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

devnull wrote: »

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

bk wrote: »

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.

devnull

The feature set is excellent, some of the logic is not particularly right though but it's really not that simple to program when you have such huge numbers of services from many different operators and the system needs to choose between them, this is going to need a lot of tweaking to get right with so much data there.

It's relatively simple when you have just Dublin Bus, Irish Rail and LUAS's as generally none of these areas overlap at all, which is why you won't see such problems on third party sites, but with lots of overlapping and competing services it has to make a decision on which to select, and that seems to be the biggest part of the problem.

bk

Yes it really is that bad.

As a software engineer it makes my skin crawl.

It can have all the data in the world, but if it isn't easy to use and if it gives inaccurate and down right impossible routes ( in my case magically walking through a Locked gate!!) then it is useless.

Surely Apple and Google have thought us by now the importance of a simple and easy to use interface. If an interface is difficult to use, then people won't use it and this interface is very ugly, confusing and difficult to use.

Yes it is a pity that hittheroad.ie is only for Dublin, but for Dubliners it is excellent and covers 95% of journeys that Dubliners are likely to make, across Dublin Bus, Dart and Irish Rail with a vastly superior journey planning algorithm and a vastly better interface.

I'm sure that hit the road will add the private operators just as soon as the NTA make the RTPI data and schedule and stop data available to them by APIs. And maybe they will even expand to the rest of the country. God I hope so, we desperately need something better then this site.

I can't believe we waited so long for this site.

devnull

bk wrote: »

Yes it is a pity that hittheroad.ie is only for Dublin, but for Dubliners it is excellent and covers 95% of journeys that Dubliners are likely to make, across Dublin Bus, Dart and Irish Rail with a vastly superior journey planning algorithm and a vastly better interface.

Not really. The journey planning algorithm cannot be judged really. All of the strange journey planning answers on the NTA site tend to involve private operators being used. You know, the same ones that are totally ignored by Hit the Road. So therefore you can't compare them fairly because Hit the Road has a simpler job of working out such routues when it does not have to take so many overlapping routes into account.

I'd also argue it's valid for far less than 95% of the city. For citizens of the city that already know the transport network then for sure, it will be okay for 95% of people. But for people who do not know the city such as tourists, it's poor, because it will end up sending them on Dublin Bus/Irish Rail, when they can take an Aircoach, FlyBus, Urbus or other operators instead which would be much better for them. Therefore it would serve these people very badly.

The NTA site tries to cater for everyone no matter where they are, or who they are and not just the majority. Unfortunately the third party sites do not do that and instead miss out large areas of the country or simply completely miss services by independent operators who play a large part in public transport in this country, and the traveling public should be presented a full picture of their options, not just the ones from the bigger operators.

I'm sure that hit the road will add the private operators just as soon as the NTA make the RTPI data and schedule and stop data available to them by APIs. And maybe they will even expand to the rest of the country.

And that is when we can truly say if Hit the Road is better or not, when it actually does take into account all transport providers, for the whole of the country as it will then be a totally fair comparison. But it will require much more work than it required to create the current version of hit the road as the application will have to make more decisions, as right now pretty much most decisions are obvious as there are few overlapping services across different modes without privates.

bk

devnull wrote: »

.

Not really. The journey planning algorithm cannot be judged really. All of the strange journey planning answers on the NTA site tend to involve private operators being used. You know, the same ones that are totally ignored by Hit the Road. So therefore you can't compare them fairly because Hit the Road has a simpler job of working out such routues when it does not have to take so many overlapping routes into account.

Not true, the weird answers I got all involved only DB and Dart. The exact same as hit the road. In the vast majority of the north side of Dublin insid the M50 only DB and dart exist. No other private operators exist or operate. All the journeys I tried only involved DB, dart and Luas. No private operators were offered as options.

So yes it is a fair direct comparison with hit the road and private operators should therefore have no impact on the quality of the results.

The only place I tested that got private operators was to Cork and Galway and I readily agree it is better then nothing here.

But what I'm saying for the I assume tens of thousands they spent on this, surely they could have put a little more effort into the interface, maybe hire a web designer.

But most importantly I hope they open up this data in GTFS format ASAP.

Victor

I'm one of the testers. Biggest problem has been getting the data from the operators into something meaningful.

It is there to give you options. The journeys it offers are whatever gets you to the destination first, that doesn't necessarily mean the most sensible one will be at the start of the list. It doesn't necessarily know your priorities, so you need to choose from the list.

Note that you can tweak the settings to adjust your preferences.

expectationlost

who making this?

dublinman1990

I am one of the testers as well. I have to say it is truly is an abomination of a website and everything associated with it, including the bus timetables.

I typed in a sample journey from Blackrock to Dundrum. I made a small tweak to the settings as it was a second attempt. And this is what I have shown below.

Route 17 - Blackrock to Rialto (JP version)

And here is the more readable timetable (which isn't on the journey planner)

Route 17 - Blackrock to Rialto (Current Dublin Bus Version)

There is a vast difference in terms of presentation of both timetables.

The Dublin Bus version is colourful and easy on the eye. The Journey planner version is dull and dreary. It does not offer anything in creativity as it looks real lazy in it's effort. I suppose this is going to be the usual standard, God I really hope that is not the case.

I did the same thing the first time. I got unthinkable options of going into the city centre and getting a 15 bus and than an aircoach (oh please).

Another option was to go an aircoach to Bewley's Hotel in Leopardstown from the city and probably take a LUAS or walk it.

It is a shocking and deplorable design. It should not be implemented in the future.

devnull

dublinman1990 wrote: »

I am one of the testers as well. I have to say it is truly is an abomination of a website and everything associated with it, including the bus timetables.

I typed in a sample journey from Blackrock to Dundrum. I made a small tweak to the settings as it was a second attempt. And this is what I have shown below.

Route 17 - Blackrock to Rialto (JP version)

And here is the more readable timetable (which isn't on the journey planner)

Route 17 - Blackrock to Rialto (Current Dublin Bus Version)

There is a vast difference in terms of presentation of both timetables.

The NTA timetable has times at each stop, which people have been crying out for years on Dublin Bus. Sure it could be presented better but at least the details are there so people have a rough idea of when the bus will arrive at every stop, something no Dublin Bus timetable does although RTPI helps.

The PDF's issued by the journey planner are hugely better than the Timetables on the Dublin Bus site as they list every stop, and intermediate times, something that Dublin Bus does not offer and is a basic requirement for an operator who operates a bus service.

For someone who is new to the city and doesn't know what time a bus will reach a stop, compare say your average Dublin Bus Timetable With the NTA one you can actually work out how long it takes to get between any two stops and when exactly a bus will roughly turn up according to the timetable.

http://194.97.141.172/nta/TTB/EFA02__000071d3_TP.pdf
Or
http://www.dublinbus.ie/en/Your-Journey1/Timetables/All-Timetables/7/

I agree it doesn't look that neat to a degree, because of the fact there is such a long list of stops. But that just illustrates what I have been saying for years. There are far too many bus stops that are far too close together. The layout used by the PDF's is one that is used all over Europe with intermediate times, and the reason it looks neater in other countries, is generally there are less stops.

Where there are regular timetables they could do something like "And at these minutes past each hour" like this to make the PDF's not list every service.
http://www.firstgroup.com/ukbus/timetables_xhtml/timetable_pdf.php?source_id=2&service=4/4A&routeid=4562371&operator=24&op_id=24&from_timetable1=1&day=1

Victor

Dravokivich wrote: »

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

I think it would be useful if the operators knew their own fare first. There are hundreds of operators to deal with.

For Dublin Bus, it first needs to work out the stops, then the stages then the fare.

Irish Rail have a fare booklet that runs to more than 50 pages.

Who knows what it is for Bus Éireann who don't even have bus stop poles, never mind having records of where the buses actually do stop.

---

devnull wrote: »

1) The layout/Interface is a bit chaotic and needs work.

Agreed. I think one of the problems is that it is a multi-modal planner and the data is medium quality generally and poor to very poor in places. That is as much a problem with the transport operators as with this project. Comparing it to www.nationalrail.co.uk which I think uses the same engine, they have the advantage of greater investment, a larger but more straightforward operation (no walking, taxis, etc.) and time to resolve the issues.

2) There are intermediate times for EVERY bus stop on Dublin Bus on PDF's

I'm not sure what the basis for these times is. I suspect it is the journey planner engine creating a timetable out of RTPI data.

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?

You may have picked Dalkey station (it seems to default to main stations when you enter a town name, but note you can select locations, points of interest or public transport stops). At the particular time you selected, it may have been quicker to use DART over coach + walk.

3) It's good to see that there are private operators now listed on the service, finally an integrated journey planner listing ALL operators.

Agreed.

4) Some of the descriptions in the "Find Timetable PDF" are weird

Do you mean stop descriptions? That is down to the transport operators supplying dud information, which was often original intended for internal use only, e.g. bus stops named after private houses or lamp posts. Would an example would be Dublin Bus route 4 where it seems to use the stop descriptions (Bus Garage to Fitness Centre) instead of the street (Harristown to Monkstown Avenue)?

5) Some of the PDF headers are strange, even if the timetables are right.

What do you mean by this? Can you give an example, preferably a screenshot?

6) The Location Dublin City seems to be defined as Busaras.

Not unreasonable. It has to use somewhere and in the context of public transport (it is a public transport planner) it isn't unreasonable. O'Connell Street / College Green lacks a single focal point - it is dozens of bus stops.

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.

In 'Advanced settings' You can select "Routes with the fewest changes" or turn off certain modes, e.g. tell it to ignore buses or train.

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

A decision seems to have been made that it is a work in progress.

---

bk wrote: »

Wow this is horrible.

Function and reliability come first over shininess

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

I'm sure they would if those guys had the best bid (money, engine, data).

hittheroad.ie doesn't quite know where Cork is, suggesting various locations in Dublin, while this is what getthere.ie returns:

Vastly superior interfaces, much easier to use.

But sometimes returns useless information, e.g. recommending the bus that only comes 3 times a day instead of a connection.

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!!

The data will be made available. However, the data needs to be right first. I imagine they will use industry standards, not proprietary ones.

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.

It has a public transport bias over other modes. It will deliver the trips that get you there first.

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!!

That is down to the mapping (NavTEQ) being wrong. What is the location and I'll see if it can be fixed. http://www.railusers.ie/forum/showthread.php?p=68089

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.

What happens if you tweak the settings? Is your journey actually the quickest?

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

Because BÉ service is a stopping one and services are typically much slower up to 4h20 compared to 2h30-3h05 for Irish Rail. Dublin-Urlingford is quite different.

Also disappointing that it gives you a taxi as an option, but no option for a car,

It is a public transport planner.

but more importantly no walking or cycling options!!

It does include walking (typically only for walkable journeys).

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.

As above. A nice interface could be done in a week, however, it wouldn't correct data errors.

Victor

devnull wrote: »

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

The Dublin Bus one just doesn't work.

---

devnull wrote: »

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.

Some of the data has been shared, but I think that there is also a certain level of naivety / lack of maturity on the part of HitTheRoad.ie and GetThere.ie in the amount of effort involved.

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,

It is.

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.

Possibly. The more options demanded, the more complicated the engine and slower the service.

---

Polar101 wrote: »

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.

Let me know and I'll see what I can do.

---

bk wrote: »

Not perfect!! It is horrendously ugly!

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

But the private sites don't work.

When you consider that the private sites are created by just one or two people,

Are you sure?

who aren't getting paid

Are you sure? They have ad revenue and more.

and don't have access to all the great data the NTA have,

1. The have access to some of the data.
2. The data is NTA property.
3. The data will be shared.
4. The "great data" isn't all that great in places.

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.

Do you mean reinvent the wheel?

---

noelfirl wrote: »

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.

Because the Dublin Bus services are generally slower to somewhere like Swords.

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.

I think it gives the latest possible connection. I suspect if you increase "Dwell time" in "Advanced settings" it will allow more time.

---

bk wrote: »

It can have all the data in the world, but if it isn't easy to use and if it gives inaccurate and down right impossible routes ( in my case magically walking through a Locked gate!!) then it is useless.

The lady doth protest too much.
For a 'mature' website, it is still driving buses through buildings. While it does seem to provide a variety of routes, it gives little context, e.g. route frequency.



It doesn't have my street in the database and doesn't suggest the options that would get me practically door to door (one change) to my sister's house.

Surely Apple and Google have thought us by now the importance of a simple and easy to use interface. If an interface is difficult to use, then people won't use it and this interface is very ugly, confusing and difficult to use.

Then make some suggestions.

Yes it is a pity that hittheroad.ie is only for Dublin, but for Dubliners it is excellent and covers 95% of journeys that Dubliners are likely to make, across Dublin Bus, Dart and Irish Rail with a vastly superior journey planning algorithm

Are you certain?


I'm sure that hit the road will add the private operators just as soon as the NTA make the RTPI data and schedule and stop data available to them by APIs. And maybe they will even expand to the rest of the country. God I hope so, we desperately need something better then this site.

I can't believe we waited so long for this site.[/QUOTE]

---

expectationlost wrote: »

who making this?

I'm not sure how much I can say, but it seems to be a contractor with separate suppliers for mapping, journey planner engine and customisation, with some NTA and outside input.

---

dublinman1990 wrote: »

I am one of the testers as well. I have to say it is truly is an abomination of a website and everything associated with it, including the bus timetables.

I typed in a sample journey from Blackrock to Dundrum. I made a small tweak to the settings as it was a second attempt. And this is what I have shown below.

Route 17 - Blackrock to Rialto (JP version)

You can't link to specific searches just at the moment

And here is the more readable timetable (which isn't on the journey planner)

Route 17 - Blackrock to Rialto (Current Dublin Bus Version)

More readable, but the DB could do with more information and a bit more standardisation.

The Dublin Bus version is colourful and easy on the eye. The Journey planner version is dull and dreary. It does not offer anything in creativity as it looks real lazy in it's effort.

While I realise that image can be important, function is more important.

I did the same thing the first time. I got unthinkable options of going into the city centre and getting a 15 bus and than an aircoach (oh please).

Another option was to go an aircoach to Bewley's Hotel in Leopardstown from the city and probably take a LUAS or walk it.

If you are travelling at 3am, yes, it will give you such options.

Cookie_Monster

It's failed my simple standard test: Dun Laoghaire to Cherrywood.

Suggests 63 and Luas, 75 and 47 and Luas or taxi. Fails to realise the 7 is the shortest quickest and cheapest route.
Just like the DB one which can't do that journey without going via Tara st.

devnull

I'm not sure what the basis for these times is. I suspect it is the journey planner engine creating a timetable out of RTPI data.

It's welcome however if it can be shown to be reliable. The bus stop names seem to be more friendly than the stop names used by Dublin Bus anyway without doubt so this is good news.

You may have picked Dalkey station (it seems to default to main stations when you enter a town name, but note you can select locations, points of interest or public transport stops). At the particular time you selected, it may have been quicker to use DART over coach + walk.

It actually told me to use Aircoach to Dun Laoghaire, and then DART to Dalkey even though you could have stayed on the coach and it would have been quicker. I fed this back to the team via feedback however and someone at least seems to have fixed the problem which is great news.

Do you mean stop descriptions? That is down to the transport operators supplying dud information, which was often original intended for internal use only, e.g. bus stops named after private houses or lamp posts. Would an example would be Dublin Bus route 4 where it seems to use the stop descriptions (Bus Garage to Fitness Centre) instead of the street (Harristown to Monkstown Avenue)?

No, if you go to Find Timetable on the right, and they go find Timetable PDF book, and type in the search term, the list of timetables in the Dialog box that it finds are not that clear, some of them have strange naming conventions

EG: Bus Ballinteer Dublin Airport Bus Stop Zones Aircoach Greystones (two separate routes) There are other confusing ones, see: http://i47.tinypic.com/35mihcn.gif

What do you mean by this? Can you give an example, preferably a screenshot?

The actual headers at the top of the PDF, which lists the origin and the destination, like how you described in the above point, using stop descriptions instead of streets and places. http://i47.tinypic.com/2a7z8ur.gif

Not unreasonable. It has to use somewhere and in the context of public transport (it is a public transport planner) it isn't unreasonable. O'Connell Street / College Green lacks a single focal point - it is dozens of bus stops.

My point is however, if you arrive to the city centre on a Bus in O'Connell Street, where the bus terminates, it should recognize that you are in the city centre and not ask you to walk all the way to Busaras or get a LUAS. If possible it would be good that the planner defines part of the city, a city centre zone and any transport ending in that zone automatically ends the journey there for route planning to the city centre.

More readable, but the DB could do with more information and a bit more standardisation.

Exactly. The Dublin Bus timetables have very basic information, completely useless for anyone trying to work out how long it takes to get between any two stops and not even a full list of stops on them. The NTA site shows both of these details which is welcome, as I think we're one of the only countrys in Europe that does not show intermediate times, and only shows times the bus left the terminus. Right now you can take one of the long cross city routes, and a tourist has no idea what the times from the terminus translate to actually from their stop.

While I realise that image can be important, function is more important.

And this for me is why I like the NTA planner and why it has a lot of promise. Sure there are many issues that need to be ironed out, but the level of function it has is very strong and the Dublin Bus one has basic information that is lacking in detail. Also the NTA one is designed to provide transport information for the customer and all customers no matter what operator they use and the bigger picture represents everyone, not just the state companies even if the state companies may not like it.

n97 mini

It says Flybus operates from the airport to Maynooth via Leixlip. Is this true? Flybus's own website makes no mention of this route.

bk

Victor I'd like to respond to each of your quotes, but as I'm away for the weekend and only have an iPad which is horrible for multi quoting on, then I will try and respond to everything in one post.

I've been using hittheroad for the past year. Every time someone comes on this forum and asks how do you get from x to y, I check hittheroad and usually I find it gives very good answers that usually match the answers that the human experts here on this site give.

Within the limitations of what it supports, Dublin and CIE/LUAS, I find it does a fantastic job, far better then this new service.

Hittheroad has no ads, so there not making money from there.

You say functionality is more important then shininess. I'm afraid you are falling into the same trap as many engineers here. Yes of course the functionality of the site is vitally important, however user interface design and usability are equally as important.

If the site isn't functional then it is no good, but equally if the site is very ugly and hard to use and understand, then no one will use it. Google and Apple have thought us the importance of taking very advanced, complicated functionality and presenting that functionality in a pleasant, easy to use and understand manner.

This is at the core of all modern user interface design and software engineering and this site as you saw is only doing a passable job at the functionality and failing completely at the design and usability level.

You say it would only take a week to write a nice shinny new site on top of it. Then fine why don't they do that?

Well let me tell you why, it would actually take much longer then a week. Good well designed interfaces with good usability take a long time to develop. They require a great deal of thought and experience to be able to simplify something well. It takes a lot of thought to take things out to make it easier to use while not losing functionality. Also you should be doing a lot of usability testing with general users.

It is clear to me that this site has good software engineers, but no website designers and no usability experts. This is a common failing of many government type websites. Usability and design are last thoughts, while in the commercial world they are the first thing you think of.

Hittheroad while far from perfect, has a very nice, usable interface. They should just copy that.

You say that the NTA will make the data available in "industry standard" formats and not proprietary formats. You seem to be implying that GTFS is proprietary and not industry standards, is that correct?

GTFS is not proprietary, while it was developed by Google, it is now totally open source. Also it is now the industry standard, over three hundred cities around the world now use this format to make their data available. Barcelona, Boston, New York, LA, San Francisco, Madrid, Amsterdam, Manchester, Bergen, Oslo are just some examples of some of the cities I've used this in personally with Google maps and transit (now that is an amazing experience).

Even Microsoft have added GTFS support to their Bing Maps. GTFS is THE industry standard format for transit data, no other standard exists.

I really, really hope they are planning to make the data available via GTFS.

highlydebased

This is far from fantastic I think.

The Limerick City stop names are a bit bizarre (Footpath?!). The only redeeming feature is that it has times for intermediate stops available through they don't appear to be named properly at all (e.g Limerick PNNYW).

The interface is awful.

bk

I've just realised something, this new planner isn't using RTPI !!!

For instance it says go to a particular stop x and the bus y will be there at 12:10. However checking the RTPI bus y isn't currently due until 12:22 !!

Also it ignores other bus routes passing the same stop, which allow for the same journey and are due closer to 12:10 according to RTPI.

I've confirmed this for multiple routes across the city. This planner is definitely not using RTPI, instead it is using schedules and we all know how bad the schedules for DB are.

This is a total fail and makes it pretty much worthless if your journey involved DB.

Hittheroad actually uses RTPI data in its planning and I love the way it shows you the next few arrivals of a particular bus at a particular stop from RTPI. This is very important in choosing which route to take, because you might just miss a bus and then have a massive wait, while if you walked in a different direction you might use a bus stop with much more frequent services.

Also hittheroad shows you multiple bus routes at the same stop if they all go to your same destination. This is very useful, the new planner doesn't do this.

An example of how this means hittheroad is much better, I have two stops near my home, but I always walk to the one that is a minute further away. The reason being the closer bus stop has just one bus route on it, while the further stop has 6 major bus routes on it. I'll end up waiting much less at this stop. This is clear and easy to see on hittheroad, which gives both as options, but it is easy to see which one you will be better off with due to the RTPI data. You can't see this at all on the NTA planner. In fact the NTA planner seems to insist I should take the VERY infrequent 44 bus, instead of the 1, 13, 16 or 41 services all of which stop at the same stop!!!

Victor

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

It's failed my simple standard test: Dun Laoghaire to Cherrywood.

Suggests 63 and Luas, 75 and 47 and Luas or taxi. Fails to realise the 7 is the shortest quickest and cheapest route.
Just like the DB one which can't do that journey without going via Tara st.

I tried that and you were right. Then I tried it again without trains/trams and it was right. I then tried it again with trains/trams and it seems to have fixed itself - most of the suggestions were via route 7.

It will of course depend on where in Dún Laoghaire to Cherrywood you pick.

---

devnull wrote: »

It's welcome however if it can be shown to be reliable. The bus stop names seem to be more friendly than the stop names used by Dublin Bus anyway without doubt so this is good news.

The should be the same. note that Dublin Bus names tend to be in two parts - "address" and "location": http://www.dublinbus.ie/en/RTPI/Sources-of-Real-Time-Information/?searchtype=route&searchquery=9

It actually told me to use Aircoach to Dun Laoghaire, and then DART to Dalkey even though you could have stayed on the coach and it would have been quicker. I fed this back to the team via feedback however and someone at least seems to have fixed the problem which is great news.

Not necessarily if you had to walk up the back end of Dalkey by the train station.

No, if you go to Find Timetable on the right, and they go find Timetable PDF book, and type in the search term, the list of timetables in the Dialog box that it finds are not that clear, some of them have strange naming conventions

EG: Bus Ballinteer Dublin Airport Bus Stop Zones Aircoach Greystones (two separate routes) There are other confusing ones, see: http://i47.tinypic.com/35mihcn.gif

Aircoach routes need to be assigned route numbers, ideally within a national scheme. "Bus Stop Zones" is the stupid name that DAA are insisting on for the stops on their property, instead of "Dublin Airport T1", "Dublin Airport T1" and "Dublin Airport Ground Transportation Centre" (the lesser used bus routes).

The actual headers at the top of the PDF, which lists the origin and the destination, like how you described in the above point, using stop descriptions instead of streets and places. http://i47.tinypic.com/2a7z8ur.gif

Yeah, that is the description part of the stop name, whereas they should use the address part.

My point is however, if you arrive to the city centre on a Bus in O'Connell Street, where the bus terminates, it should recognize that you are in the city centre and not ask you to walk all the way to Busaras or get a LUAS. If possible it would be good that the planner defines part of the city, a city centre zone and any transport ending in that zone automatically ends the journey there for route planning to the city centre.

I understand your point, but I suspect it is difficult to implement. You are going from one point to another - I imagine if you got dumped on Parnell Street when you wanted to go to the Central Bank, you would be slightly disappointed. Also, it is a national planner, not just a Dublin one.

Exactly. The Dublin Bus timetables have very basic information, completely useless for anyone trying to work out how long it takes to get between any two stops and not even a full list of stops on them. The NTA site shows both of these details which is welcome, as I think we're one of the only countrys in Europe that does not show intermediate times, and only shows times the bus left the terminus. Right now you can take one of the long cross city routes, and a tourist has no idea what the times from the terminus translate to actually from their stop.

Not ideal, but many cross-city routes now have city centre times also.

---

n97 mini wrote: »

It says Flybus operates from the airport to Maynooth via Leixlip. Is this true? Flybus's own website makes no mention of this route.

It is possible they have a licence, but he route isn't operating.

---

highlydebased wrote: »

The Limerick City stop names are a bit bizarre (Footpath?!). The only redeeming feature is that it has times for intermediate stops available through they don't appear to be named properly at all (e.g Limerick PNNYW).

The BÉ data is shocking in places, but at least it has gone form nothing to something.

bk

Haha I just tried a journey in Cork. It said to get a bus to x, get off the bus, wait 20 minutes for the next bus of the same bus route going in the same direction and get on it to get to the same destination.

In other words you could just stay on the first bus to bring you to your destination!!

Victor

bk wrote: »

Victor I'd like to respond to each of your quotes, but as I'm away for the weekend and only have an iPad which is horrible for multi quoting on, then I will try and respond to everything in one post.

Not to worry.

I've been using hittheroad for the past year. Every time someone comes on this forum and asks how do you get from x to y, I check hittheroad and usually I find it gives very good answers that usually match the answers that the human experts here on this site give.

Within the limitations of what it supports, Dublin and CIE/LUAS, I find it does a fantastic job, far better then this new service.

It is good at what it does, but what it does is quite limited - it doesn't fully understand what day of the week it is, never mind time of day. If you want to get to the airport for 5am tomorrow, what does it say?

You say functionality is more important then shininess. I'm afraid you are falling into the same trap as many engineers here. Yes of course the functionality of the site is vitally important, however user interface design and usability are equally as important.

If the site isn't functional then it is no good, but equally if the site is very ugly and hard to use and understand, then no one will use it. Google and Apple have thought us the importance of taking very advanced, complicated functionality and presenting that functionality in a pleasant, easy to use and understand manner.

What you say is largely true. This is quite usable http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/ but in achieving that, they have lost a lot of the functionality.

However, there is some difference between "shininess" and "pleasant, easy to use and understand manner". Importantly, you can put a nice facade on a working journey planner, you can't necessarily put a working engine on a nice looking website. Both NIJP and hittheroad use too many different fonts sizes, hittheroad adds too many colours and hittheroad wobbles when you hover the mouse over the results.

Here, the blue markers for the bus stops could easily be mistaken for direction arrows.



I particularly dislike the way Google's 'thumb tacks' distort actual location, sometimes greatly.

You say that the NTA will make the data available in "industry standard" formats and not proprietary formats. You seem to be implying that GTFS is proprietary and not industry standards, is that correct?

GTFS is not proprietary, while it was developed by Google, it is now totally open source. Also it is now the industry standard, over three hundred cities around the world now use this format to make their data available. Barcelona, Boston, New York, LA, San Francisco, Madrid, Amsterdam, Manchester, Bergen, Oslo are just some examples of some of the cities I've used this in personally with Google maps and transit (now that is an amazing experience).

Even Microsoft have added GTFS support to their Bing Maps. GTFS is THE industry standard format for transit data, no other standard exists.

I really, really hope they are planning to make the data available via GTFS.

There is more than one database - I suspect the mapping isn't GTFS. Another name has been mention, but I don't recollect it. It is a standard Google Use, but it isn't Google's standard (to my knowledge).

bk wrote: »

Haha I just tried a journey in Cork. It said to get a bus to x, get off the bus, wait 20 minutes for the next bus of the same bus route going in the same direction and get on it to get to the same destination.

In other words you could just stay on the first bus to bring you to your destination!!

That is the reality of city bus services in Cork, where most of the routes have one-way sections on different roads. Often termini are on loops. Therefore, if you board a route (20)3 at Parklands, Farranree towards the city centre, it then takes you to the Farranree terminus, waits and then brings you to the city. Same happens for the 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 16, 19 and possibly other routes.

Map: http://www.buseireann.ie/pdf/1290178708-Cork-Cityv8.pdf - another tall tale

bk

Victor was it GTFS-realtime perhaps?

GTFS just specifies routes, stops and schedules, while GTFS-realtime is an extension that adds RTPI data, diversions, etc.

If the NTA do use this and license it correctly, then all my complaints go away as you can simply use the superior Google Transit engine in Google maps or other third party services.

As for Cork, it was actually the 203 route I was looking at, but you misunderstand my complaint.

There is a 203 stop right outside the door of my parents home, it takes you directly into town from there with no diversion.

On checking this router, it suggested getting the 203 from outside my parents place, go half the way to the city centre, get off (leaving the 203 you just got off continue into town!!) wait 20 minutes and then get on the next 203 to complete your journey into town!!

No need to do this at all, just stay on the first 203 all the way into town.

n97 mini

Victor wrote: »

It is possible they have a licence, but he route isn't operating.

It has departure times of buses that don't exist!

munchkin_utd

The current version is a beta version so you would expect that they will take on board any user input and make according improvements so the fact that it isn't perfect is no grounds to rubbish the effort as being a waste of time (yet)

For a beta version its not too bad. Any journey i tried out came up with fairly plausable routings. It even has timetables from private operators who don't publish it themselves. And works on the iPad. There's a lot there that is working so I'll give them credit for that.

My major complaint though is that the design is too busy, there's too many options and too much information presented. And for some reason the font is times new roman which is just ugly on a webpage.

Another biggie is that the connection times are far too short for long distance journies. For Cavan cork it suggests changing at the airport which is reasonable enough an idea. Expecting that 5 minutes is enough to allow a change is a little unrealistic and could lead to folks getting stranded at the airport if they miss the last bus of the day!

Victor

devnull wrote: »

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?

Might this have been down to it being an Aircoach that doesn't go via Dalkey?

n97 mini wrote: »

It has departure times of buses that don't exist!

That may be unfair.

munchkin_utd wrote: »

And works on the iPad.

If I'm right, there is an app and a mobile version coming.

My major complaint though is that the design is too busy, there's too many options and too much information presented.

Possibly.

Another biggie is that the connection times are far too short for long distance journies. For Cavan cork it suggests changing at the airport which is reasonable enough an idea. Expecting that 5 minutes is enough to allow a change is a little unrealistic and could lead to folks getting stranded at the airport if they miss the last bus of the day!

It gives the latest possible connection times, but allowing a certain transfer time. Can you try playing about with the "Dwell time" setting in "Advanced Settings"?

Victor

bk wrote: »

Victor was it GTFS-realtime perhaps?

GTFS just specifies routes, stops and schedules, while GTFS-realtime is an extension that adds RTPI data, diversions, etc.

If the NTA do use this and license it correctly, then all my complaints go away as you can simply use the superior Google Transit engine in Google maps or other third party services.

Check out the NaPTAN database on Dublinked.com (lots of data, but the licences vary). I imagine this will be a Public Sector (PSI) Licence - free to use, but you must attribute.

Data will be GTFS but also the richer TransXchange.

As for Cork, it was actually the 203 route I was looking at, but you misunderstand my complaint.

There is a 203 stop right outside the door of my parents home, it takes you directly into town from there with no diversion.

On checking this router, it suggested getting the 203 from outside my parents place, go half the way to the city centre, get off (leaving the 203 you just got off continue into town!!) wait 20 minutes and then get on the next 203 to complete your journey into town!!

No need to do this at all, just stay on the first 203 all the way into town.

Oh, there are some bugs with the 203, it suggests going up Windmill Road and High Street and takes an odd routing at John Street.

BenShermin

Ballyfermot to Liffey Valley is a good one, the planner suggests I walk from Ballyfermot to Chapelizod and get a 25, 66/a/b or 67 to Liffey Valley footbridge. No option given for the 40 or 76/a!!

Although, it gives perfect directions from Ballyfermot to Fairhill in Cork via Iarnród Éireann During the day or via Aircoach at night.

I'd reserve judgment on the planner until after the beta phase, although I would say it needs a lot more time than June 27th to be up to scratch.

BenShermin

Actually just thinking about long distance trips; are internal flights loaded on the system?

I'd look it up but I'm on the mobile phone at the moment.

SandyfordGuy

In the future are the state operators going to be forced to use such planner? I can never see it happening though!

Internal flights wouldn't really work, you couldn't just walk up and use them, unlike train, bus and coach and luas etc.

BenShermin

SandyfordGuy wrote: »

Internal flights wouldn't really work, you couldn't just walk up and use them, unlike train, bus and coach and luas etc.

Well you can walk up, if your willing to pay 30 pieces of gold for the privilege

The point being if you're travelling long distance you'll probably plan the journey a week or two in advance.

Victor

BenShermin wrote: »

Ballyfermot to Liffey Valley is a good one, the planner suggests I walk from Ballyfermot to Chapelizod and get a 25, 66/a/b or 67 to Liffey Valley footbridge. No option given for the 40 or 76/a!!

It appears to be time sensitive. At the time you checked, the 25, 66/a/b or 67 would have been quicker. Note that you may have specified the bus stop on the Lucan Road, so that would affect the results by the amount of walking time to get from the 40 or 76/a bus stops to the 25, 66/a/b or 67 bus stops.

BenShermin wrote: »

Actually just thinking about long distance trips; are internal flights loaded on the system?

No. However, there are very few internal flights left: Dublin-Donegal, Dublin-Kerry, Connemara-Aran Islands and a part-time Donegal-Aran service.

Train
Tram
Bus (local / city buses)
Regional bus (long distance buses, I think they need to change the name)
Ferry
Taxi
Walking

SandyfordGuy wrote: »

In the future are the state operators going to be forced to use such planner? I can never see it happening though!

I imagine they will retain their own journey planners for their own uses, but will refer people to he NTA planner for onward connections.

Internal flights wouldn't really work, you couldn't just walk up and use them, unlike train, bus and coach and luas etc.

But if you were planning for next week or next month, it might be useful.

Victor

If you are encountering a problem, can you specify the exact origin and destination and preferably the date and time of travel that you have selected, and any of the advanced settings that you have changed, e.g. I deselected buses one and wondered why I was only getting train results.

bk wrote: »

Yes it is a pity that hittheroad.ie is only for Dublin, but for Dubliners it is excellent and covers 95% of journeys that Dubliners are likely to make, across Dublin Bus, Dart and Irish Rail with a vastly superior journey planning algorithm and a vastly better interface.

Better than London, 511 in San Francisco, Dubai, Munich and New South Wales?

bk wrote:

GTFS is THE industry standard format for transit data, no other standard exists.

GTFS is not a "standard" - it is a widely used transit data specification for building webservices and apps that have a spatial attribute. However, It is not widely used by PT operators.

The NTA JP was specified to import these following standards and specifications which are used by PT operators
* TransXchange
* VDV452, VDV453, VDV454,
* ATCO CIF
* Railway CIF
* SIRI ET/PT
* NeTEX

The NTA JP was specified to export
* TransXchange (much richer than GTFS)
* GTFS
* SIRI PT
* VDV452
* NeTEX - could be called a "standard"

Fiskar

Navan to Ballybrit racecourse on a saturday. Leave Navan at 9.01am , arrive Ballybrit race course 14.40 pm! Even later times offered.

Says something about transport infrastructure in Ireland

Wonder how long it would take by car:rolleyes:

LXFlyer

And how many people will want to do that specific journey that would justify linking the two directly by public transport?

bk

Victor that is great news on the formats the data will be exported as.

I hope they will also license it appropriately and also submit the GTFS feed to google transit.

But no comment on the planner not using RTPI data for DB, that seems like a real failing to me.

bk

Just been reading up on TransXchange, interesting.

It isn't GTFS, rather it is the UK XML data standard for communicating transit data. Yes it supports richer data then GTFS. Fortunately a TransXchange to GTFS format converter script exists.

Stevek101

bk wrote: »

Victor that is great news on the formats the data will be exported as.

I hope they will also license it appropriately and also submit the GTFS feed to google transit.

But no comment on the planner not using RTPI data for DB, that seems like a real failing to me.

The app is using DB realtime info.

bk

Stevek101 wrote: »

bk wrote: »

Victor that is great news on the formats the data will be exported as.

I hope they will also license it appropriately and also submit the GTFS feed to google transit.

But no comment on the planner not using RTPI data for DB, that seems like a real failing to me.

The app is using DB realtime info.

The new journey planner? No it isn't, certainly doesn't match the RTPI data on the DB iPhone app.