Routeing guide update 9 Oct 2013

[deltic]

They are not showing the same fare though, and that's the clincher...

SWT's own site reports 'no fares available' with a Southampton Central via point...

oops missed that rather important point

 

[zoneking]

Is the 3 mile rule still valid?
The instructions document does not mention the 3 mile rule, but the "The National Routeing Guide in Detail (Section F)" document (dated 2010) does mention the 3 mile rule.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

This one is even more annoying than I thought as Birmingham to Paisley or Troon group is valid via the ECML yet Worcester to Paisley or Troon group is not. All permitted routes from Worcester Group pass THROUGH Birmingham, so where is the logic in that?

Presumably if one wishes to travel from Worcester to a member of these groups via the ECML they must now purchase two seperate tickets - a return to Birmingham and then a return from Birmingham to the intended destination (Bromsgrove is also valid via the ECML, so I guess you could split there too).

Utter madness.

You can avoid Birmingham on LM by changing at Smethwick GB and then down the WCML.
Maybe that's why Worcester is treated differently to Cheltenham/Bromsgrove?

 

[Goatboy]

You can avoid Birmingham on LM by changing at Smethwick GB and then down the WCML.
Maybe that's why Worcester is treated differently to Cheltenham/Bromsgrove?

That would be a highly bizarre thing to do on a journey to Scotland from Worcester, surely?

I don't think that explains it as you can go via Birmingham, too.

 

[maniacmartin]

Is the 3 mile rule still valid?
The instructions document does not mention the 3 mile rule, but the "The National Routeing Guide in Detail (Section F)" document (dated 2010) does mention the 3 mile rule.

It's still mentioned on the first page F1 of Section F

 

[hick]

This is rather disappointing! My go to fare for travel London to the North West using a ticket from FGW land is now a little suspect. Still fine in the paper guide, but wasn't valid via London in NRES. I can however get it appear for one train that has an enormous wait at night. How can an anytime ticket only appear at certain points of the day???

 

[soil]

They have invalided numerous perfectly reasonable, logical tickets.

For example, Southampton - Ascot was valid via Clapham Junction - no longer.

 

[hairyhandedfool]

Is the 3 mile rule still valid?
The instructions document does not mention the 3 mile rule, but the "The National Routeing Guide in Detail (Section F)" document (dated 2010) does mention the 3 mile rule.

It's only ever been in Section F, even in the 1996 paper NRG, it's one of the many 'rules' that have only appeared in that section. Some people have chosen to believe that you don't have to consult the NRG to find the rule that is only found in Section F of the NRG, and therefore none of the limiting factors of the NRG apply. Given the way the rule is interpreted by some anyway, I don't think ATOC will keep it any longer than they have to, it's simply a case of re-writing Section F (which is long overdue anyway) to get rid of it.

 

[tractakid]

Well, using the old routeing guide I was surprised to hear that Blackpool-Liverpool South Parkway via Thatto Heath was only a valid route on the direct trains. It's now a mapped route on XV. I found a sensible change! Woohoo!

 

[b0b]

"This National Routeing Guide may be used to identify permitted routes. Please note, however, that to be valid, any journey not undertaken on a through train or the shortest route MUST be checked using the Journey Planner at www.nationalrail.co.uk, inputting the relevant interchange and via points. "

goodness me .... is that legally enforceable? That would seem to kill all of us that were working with ATOC data, since now we effectively have no access to routeing guide data.

 

[furlong]

goodness me .... is that legally enforceable? That would seem to kill all of us that were working with ATOC data, since now we effectively have no access to routeing guide data.

Write to your M.P.?

 

[tractakid]

I would be more happy to use an official online tool to work out routes if:

I could set as many via points as I like
Timing wasn't an integral part of the process.

I have a feeling that there are lots of routes that are intended to be legitimate, that train companies wouldn't have a problem with people using, that it is simply impossible to get the journey planner to show due to the journey planner wanting to find the fastest route.

I've been trying to find a journey planner entry for a particular via point with a severely limited service that is on a mapped route. NRE isn't giving me an itinerary that's valid with a single ticket, although London Midland's website is showing me an itinerary with the specified via point that isn't any of the mapped routes! (though would work with an illegal mish mash of the 3 mapped route options presented.)

 

[Goatboy]

The NRE website isn't intended to be or designed to be a tool for checking route validity - it's a basic enquiry engine for showing basic connection information and prices for simple point to point journeys.

Presumably much of this rubbish will never be fixed, who at ATOC is going to notice, let alone care, that they omitted the ECML from the permitted routes from Worcester Group to Troon Group, obviously erroneously given it's still on every other permitted route from that area to Scotland?

 

[RJ]

There is now a tool on NRE which you can enter your ticket details into and supposedly it tells you what the permitted routes are. It doesn't work - the results keep drawing a blank. I've tried it in IE, Opera, Firefox and Chrome - all of them come up with the same thing - nothing.

NRE has no working tool which allows the validity of a ticket to be checked. Until such a time that it is fixed, I'm sceptical as to whether the requirement for passengers to check NRE for permitted routes is legally enforceable.

Although this has been a long time coming and it isn't as if we weren't warned, it does appear that ATOC has rushed something out that is not quite ready for the public to work with. That said, I've gotten to work on the new NRG and it does indeed appear to work with the anomalies that lie within the maps, which should be good to keep those into creative ticketing busy for some time.

 

[soil]

There is now a tool on NRE which you can enter your ticket details into and supposedly it tells you what the permitted routes are.

I don't think they have written the code yet.

Just looked at the HTML for it:

												<dl>
													<dt>From</dt>
													<dd>Woking [WOK]</dd>
													<dt>To</dt>
													<dd>Staines  [SNS]</dd>
													<dt>When</dt>
													<dd>
														Thursday 10 October 2013
													</dd>
												</dl>
												<ul>
		
													
													
												</ul>

UL is a list, so there should be a bunch of <LI> list items inside it. The fact that there aren't suggests that they haven't coded that bit yet.

They are hacking stuff onto the live system without any testing.

 

[Muzer]

The tool is only currently useful for determining which stations are in London Terminals (try searching for an XYZ to London ticket)

 

[Solent&Wessex]

I would be more happy to use an official online tool to work out routes if:

I could set as many via points as I like
Timing wasn't an integral part of the process.

I have a feeling that there are lots of routes that are intended to be legitimate, that train companies wouldn't have a problem with people using, that it is simply impossible to get the journey planner to show due to the journey planner wanting to find the fastest route.

I've been trying to find a journey planner entry for a particular via point with a severely limited service that is on a mapped route. NRE isn't giving me an itinerary that's valid with a single ticket, although London Midland's website is showing me an itinerary with the specified via point that isn't any of the mapped routes! (though would work with an illegal mish mash of the 3 mapped route options presented.)

There is now a tool on NRE which you can enter your ticket details into and supposedly it tells you what the permitted routes are. It doesn't work - the results keep drawing a blank. I've tried it in IE, Opera, Firefox and Chrome - all of them come up with the same thing - nothing.

NRE has no working tool which allows the validity of a ticket to be checked. Until such a time that it is fixed, I'm sceptical as to whether the requirement for passengers to check NRE for permitted routes is legally enforceable.

Although this has been a long time coming and it isn't as if we weren't warned, it does appear that ATOC has rushed something out that is not quite ready for the public to work with. That said, I've gotten to work on the new NRG and it does indeed appear to work with the anomalies that lie within the maps, which should be good to keep those into creative ticketing busy for some time.

I believe that the ability to just check routes is coming to NRES. It was originally intended to appear earlier in the year but is running very late as there were lots and lots and lots of errors and the new maps simply didn't work. I'm told that a lot of tidying up has been done since then and they are better but still not ready. I'm reliably informed that the opportunity is being taken to remove some anomalies, but of course new ones keep appearing. This release of the routeing guide is a precursor to the new maps as they take their data from the routeing guide data used by NRES. I suspect by releasing this version of the routeing guide it will not come as so much of a shock when the new maps appear - as they, in theory, use the same data. Whether the 'paper' guide will then dissappear I do not know.

 

[maniacmartin]

This release of the routeing guide is a precursor to the new maps as they take their data from the routeing guide data used by NRES

I too believe that that is the end goal. However the latest maps released were still made in Powerpoint (2007 edition in this case), printed to PDF. Presumably in the future they will not be edited by hand in the same way

 

[kkong]

I am at a loss as to how the routes on maps FK and GA bear any relation to their titles.

Map FK: Aberdeen to Kilmarnock and Carstairs via Edinburgh and Glasgow
Only shows routes as far south as Edinburgh and as far west as Falkirk.

Map GA: Stirling and Inverkeithing to Inverness and Aberdeen via Invergowrie
No sign of Inverkeithing or Inverness anywhere on the map.

 

[CNash]

UL is a list, so there should be a bunch of <LI> list items inside it. The fact that there aren't suggests that they haven't coded that bit yet.

They are hacking stuff onto the live system without any testing.

Speaking as a professional software tester, that's horrifying. Most websites use a local backend testing environment, mirroring the live site, to run any changes through and make sure they're complete and won't break anything. If the folks behind NRE aren't doing that, then I have to question their practices. This website is too important to mess up or to have incomplete features scattered around it.

 

[tsr]

When I accessed the season ticket pricing tool on NRE earlier today, I noticed it was set by default to search for seasons from Fareham to Basingstoke.

I thought this was a bit mysterious - I have had no need to look up a fare for this flow at any recent point and certainly cannot remember doing so since early August, and I've used the season ticket tools & journey planner a decent number of times since then.

 

[IanD]

Speaking as a professional software tester, that's horrifying. Most websites use a local backend testing environment, mirroring the live site, to run any changes through and make sure they're complete and won't break anything. If the folks behind NRE aren't doing that, then I have to question their practices. This website is too important to mess up or to have incomplete features scattered around it.

It wouldn't even be the first time this year that their website was a pile of untested ****e. I'm not sure they've even caught up with the fixes from the last time.

 

[mullin]

They haven't. ... and I tried to plan a journey earlier and when clicked on the number of changes to see the details, it kept taking me to a page not found file.

 

[Starmill]

"This National Routeing Guide may be used to identify permitted routes. Please note, however, that to be valid, any journey not undertaken on a through train or the shortest route MUST be checked using the Journey Planner at www.nationalrail.co.uk, inputting the relevant interchange and via points. "

I guess I'm not the only one reading this with a sort of dazed and faintly insulted sense of outrage then???

 

[furlong]

They are hacking stuff onto the live system without any testing.

I sincerely hope not, given the new status they appear to be wishing upon this system...

Defence: I checked the Journey Planner, as required by the contract, and it confirmed my proposed journey was valid.

Prosecution: I performed the same query and it is definitely not valid.

Defence: How were you able to do that for a date in the past? I stand by what I say the system told me. Has any of the data or software changed since I used it? Who had access to the computers since then? Precisely what did they change, when and why? How do you know they didn't change anything that affected what it told you now about this journey? How do you know the software has no bugs in it? My experts need to examine everything....

 

[bb21]

I guess I'm not the only one reading this with a sort of dazed and faintly insulted sense of outrage then???

Yes. This has been covered multiple times in previous discussion.

 

[Starmill]

Yes. This has been covered multiple times in previous discussion.

Teensy bit of irony in that... no need to patronise...

Though I admit I thought they were exclamation marks.

 

[bb21]

Teensy bit of irony in that... no need to patronise...

Though I admit I thought they were exclamation marks.

Oh, I apologise. No offence intended.

 

[redbutton]

The change to Shortlands removes my previously-allowed reasonable route where I could take a fast train from London to Bromley South (via Catford) then double back via SRT to Beckenham Junction.

I think I'm going to file a FOI request about it, even though I know nothing will change, just to make them do the work.

 

[bb21]

I think I'm going to file a FOI request about it, even though I know nothing will change, just to make them do the work.

Who do you mean? The DfT? Passenger Focus?

None of the rail companies is subject to FoI, except East Coast, and neither is ATOC.