Fermiboson
Member
The routing guide is quite a complicated document, and something of a pain to look up. It also seems to be subject to constant manual adjustment and errors, as we’ve seen from cases where routes that should/should not be valid were raised on the forum and corrected shortly afterwards. Even journey planners, delay repay calculations, etc. constantly get confused by the complexity.
Is there a reason why this cannot be simplified into a uniform rule by building in the existing easements? For example:
- For a given ticket and restriction code, calculate the shortest rail journey by track miles available with the relevant time/TOC restrictions (i.e. the shortest route easement already defined in the guide).
- Any journey complying with the relevant time/TOC restrictions, which has a track mileage not more than, say, 15% higher than that of the shortest route, is valid (with some exceptions made possibly for more peculiar flows, or a lower limit for commuter flows).
- Any direct service between the origin and destination is valid, subject again to time/TOC restrictions, regardless of the track mileage.
A mathematical rule of this sort would eliminate a lot of the ambiguity and confusion around the guide, or at least it seems that way to me.
Is there a reason why this cannot be simplified into a uniform rule by building in the existing easements? For example:
- For a given ticket and restriction code, calculate the shortest rail journey by track miles available with the relevant time/TOC restrictions (i.e. the shortest route easement already defined in the guide).
- Any journey complying with the relevant time/TOC restrictions, which has a track mileage not more than, say, 15% higher than that of the shortest route, is valid (with some exceptions made possibly for more peculiar flows, or a lower limit for commuter flows).
- Any direct service between the origin and destination is valid, subject again to time/TOC restrictions, regardless of the track mileage.
A mathematical rule of this sort would eliminate a lot of the ambiguity and confusion around the guide, or at least it seems that way to me.