Covers not just London but the entire country.

http://www.transportdirect.info/

This has actually been around since July 2004. I presume it has not
been that widely publicised to enable early problems to be ironed out,
and to prevent it gaining an unfair reputation for inaccuacy.

See http://www.transportdirect.gov.uk/programme/portal.htm

I used this recently to find out about bus services in Norwich. The
information it gave me was most helpful, and accurate apart from
ommiting to mention that the bus I wanted actually stopped closer to
the station (on the railway station forecourt as opposed to a bit
further out of the station on the main road).

I got the critical info I was after - the bus routes and route
destination so I could ensure I was headed the right way, plus the
frequency of the route and a map with a name of the locale of the stop
where I wanted to get off - which meant I did get off at the right
place and I was able to ask for the right fare (fare info was not on
the website but, for this journey at least, it wasn't important).

"Mizter T" wrote in message
oups.com...
I presume it has not
been that widely publicised to enable early problems to be ironed out,
and to prevent it gaining an unfair reputation for inaccuacy.


It is not bad, but I tried it for a route from Gatwick to Beckenham and it
took me up the Purley Way and right into the heart of Croydon instead of the
much less stressful way via the Caterham Bypass, Hamsey Green, Sanderstead,
Selsdon, Shirley and Elmers End.

Vernon wrote:
"Mizter T" wrote in message
oups.com...

I presume it has not
been that widely publicised to enable early problems to be ironed out,
and to prevent it gaining an unfair reputation for inaccuacy.



It is not bad, but I tried it for a route from Gatwick to Beckenham and it
took me up the Purley Way and right into the heart of Croydon instead of the
much less stressful way via the Caterham Bypass, Hamsey Green, Sanderstead,
Selsdon, Shirley and Elmers End.



I've just tried a route to Peterborough County Court from home. Ghastly.
It has me walking to Finsbury Park (I live almost on top of Manor House
tube) then a WAGN train to Highbury and Islington, change to the
Victoria line and to King's Cross. Total time home to KX 45 minutes.
Even on a very bad day that isn't going to happen.

So, needs quite a bit of work.

Francis

As Vernon had found, the car journeys results can be somewhat odd.

I am not convinced that it should give car journeys at all - there are
after other free services that do this already (the AA, the RAC and
Multimap amongst others offer road directions). I'd have thought it
should be promoting public transport, though I guess that by including
car journeys it can give multi-modal journey results which include
using the car for a portion of the overall journey.

I've often found that online public transport journey planners can be
most useful when you're very specific, and are asking about a short
journey, especially when you use them in conjunction with a street
atlas. Longer journeys can give some pretty odd results, though on some
occasions they can suggest a novel route I haven't though of before.

A couple of other journey planner sites I've heard of follow.

Xephos offers a fee-paying journey planner service that the transport
guru Christian Wolmar reckons is far superior to Transport Direct. I
haven't tried it, but they do offer a 7-day free trial. David McKie,
writing in the Guardian, thinks the government should have just given
the Transport Direct contract straight to Xephos.
http://www.internet.xephos.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...389228,00.html

Traveline Scotland's online journey planner is reputed to be pretty
comprehensive than Transport Direct, according to Michael Cross in
another Guardian article.
http://www.travelinescotland.com/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/sto...270824,00.html

"Mizter T" wrote in message
ups.com...

As Vernon had found, the car journeys results can be somewhat odd.


Yes, I'm not that bothered though. I was just trying it out.

I have a huge collection of maps and atlases and always carefully plan my
own routes. Where I don't have local maps, I can always rely on streetmap,
multimap, or mappy.fr.

In article .com,
Mizter T writes
This has actually been around since July 2004. I presume it has not
been that widely publicised to enable early problems to be ironed out,
and to prevent it gaining an unfair reputation for inaccuacy.

It does seem to have improved a bit. At least, it no longer tells me to
get from King's Cross to Finchley Central by catching a train to New
Barnet, then a bus, then walk to the tube station.

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