'The NTA Journey Planner is a complete mess'

Norrie Thomas

The dodgy 160 BÉ route with those ghost stops in Belfast is still on the Journey Planner at the time of writing. One wonders what sort of quality control is in place at the NTA.

devnull

Norrie Thomas wrote: »

The dodgy 160 BÉ route with those ghost stops in Belfast is still on the Journey Planner at the time of writing. One wonders what sort of quality control is in place at the NTA.

Maybe you should email then and let them know?

Besides, it's possible that they are waiting for Bus Eireann to send them a correct data file to upload to the system with everything specified correctly in.

Banjoxed

devnull wrote: »

Maybe you should email then and let them know?

Besides, it's possible that they are waiting for Bus Eireann to send them a correct data file to upload to the system with everything specified correctly in.

NTA have no responsibility for inaccurate data? There should be a disclaimer visble to all users.

Banjoxed

devnull wrote: »

Maybe you should email then and let them know?

Besides, it's possible that they are waiting for Bus Eireann to send them a correct data file to upload to the system with everything specified correctly in.

I emailed the NTA in March 2014 about the errors in its Donegal data. Never corrected.

devnull

Banjoxed wrote: »

NTA have no responsibility for inaccurate data? There should be a disclaimer visble to all users.

It's not some simple to make spreadsheet that you change a couple of lines in and everything works out of the box, it's a much more sophisticated system where a software package will output a file in a format that Google Transit and the Journey Planner can understand which essentially is a glorified batch of text files all cross referencing each other which in turn build the data for the journey planner and also Google Transit.

For example, the Bus Eireann data alone in GTFS format is well over 100MB and the largest file has approx 900,000 lines in it and that is before you even start including the other half a dozen files that also have massive amounts of entries, are you really going to expect someone to go over and review that line by line manually from the raw data?

Far more sensible to tell the provider to go into their software package and make an edit that will take a few minutes in the softwares interface do a fresh export and send it to the NTA than get someone searching through text files which have well over a million lines in them, all with confusing references because they're generated in a way to suit things like Google Transit and Mentz who produce the journey planner not to be looked at in raw form by human eyes.,

Here's the raw data:
https://www.transportforireland.ie/transitData/PT_Data.html

Download the Bus Eireann files and see if you can spot where it's coming from, from the raw data. I wish you the very best of luck.

Norrie Thomas

devnull wrote: »

It's not some simple to make spreadsheet that you change a couple of lines in and everything works out of the box, it's a much more sophisticated system where a software package will output a file in a format that Google Transit and the Journey Planner can understand which essentially is a glorified batch of text files all cross referencing each other which in turn build the data for the journey planner and also Google Transit.

For example, the Bus Eireann data alone in GTFS format is well over 100MB and the largest file has approx 900,000 lines in it and that is before you even start including the other half a dozen files that also have massive amounts of entries, are you really going to expect someone to go over and review that line by line manually from the raw data?

Far more sensible to tell the provider to go into their software package and make an edit that will take a few minutes in the softwares interface do a fresh export and send it to the NTA than get someone searching through text files which have well over a million lines in them, all with confusing references because they're generated in a way to suit things like Google Transit and Mentz who produce the journey planner not to be looked at in raw form by human eyes.,

Here's the raw data:
https://www.transportforireland.ie/transitData/PT_Data.html

Download the Bus Eireann files and see if you can spot where it's coming from, from the raw data. I wish you the very best of luck.

This is really useful stuff so thank you Devnull.

The three Belfast stops that should not be associated with the 160 route are;

1:Cloverhill Park
2: Cullingtree Road
3: Workman Avenue

Will have a delve into the data and see if I can find them.

devnull

Norrie Thomas wrote: »

This is really useful stuff so thank you Devnull.

The three Belfast stops that should not be associated with the 160 route are;

1:Cloverhill Park
2: Cullingtree Road
3: Workman Avenue

Will have a delve into the data and see if I can find them.

The same issue is also shown here:
https://bustimes.org.uk/services/buseireann-10-303-e16

Note that bustimes.org.uk says on it's data sources pages that Irish data is sourced from the files located on the page that I gave you, so the incorrect information has to be in those files somewhere.

Norrie Thomas

devnull wrote: »

The same issue is also shown here:
https://bustimes.org.uk/services/buseireann-10-303-e16

Note that bustimes.org.uk says on it's data sources pages that Irish data is sourced from the files located on the page that I gave you, so the incorrect information has to be in those files somewhere.

I did have a delve into the data in so far as I could access it. The bus Éireann bus stops data doesn't seem to have the three bus stops in it but I was using excel and notepad in my lunch break to review it today so didn't spend a whole lot of time on it. I can't access data other than CSV or XML so was restricted to that.

devnull

Has to be in there somewhere since Bustimes.org.uk is using that as a source and it has the same problem, I couldn't find anything in the MDV files either for it, I didn't even bother looking at the GTFS because some of those text files for BE have close to a million lines in.

Victor

Route 160 and the Dublin-Belfast trip have been fixed.

Norrie Thomas

Victor wrote: »

Route 160 and the Dublin-Belfast trip have been fixed.

Thank you Victor. I notice though that the walking journey to Connolly from the GPO is longer than it should be. I realise this is driven by Google Maps. Google Maps places the marker for Connolly Station up by the Dart platforms rather than the Amiens Street station entrance facing onto Talbot Street. I estimate this pads out the walking time to Connolly by at least seven or eight minutes. An Intercity traveller is more likely to access Connolly from the Luas ramp or the Amiens St front entrance.

devnull

Looks like Bus Eireann supplied updated data to fix the issues.

There is a newer version of the Bus Eireann GTFS data on the TFI download page with a filestamp as of the 14th September.

Victor

Norrie Thomas wrote: »

Thank you Victor. I notice though that the walking journey to Connolly from the GPO is longer than it should be. I realise this is driven by Google Maps. Google Maps places the marker for Connolly Station up by the Dart platforms rather than the Amiens Street station entrance facing onto Talbot Street. I estimate this pads out the walking time to Connolly by at least seven or eight minutes. An Intercity traveller is more likely to access Connolly from the Luas ramp or the Amiens St front entrance.

I'm not sure this is a problem. Google do have several markers for Connolly Station, but the walk times seem to be about right. Note that for any journey, you did need to allow some leeway - while a journey planner will include transfer times at stops, users need to allow this at either end of the journey. If I am leaving the Spire 12 minutes before my train leaves Connolly, I would be pushing things.

Marking any station that combines through and terminal platforms will be a problem for any journey planner.