The Midlands version in particular is all but identical to the now closed South East version. There are minor differences on the front page - a reference to Tunbridge Wells is changed to Norwich - but that's about it. The two websites were undoubtedly built by the same developer(s) at the same time, so what has actually been achieved by closing the South East one? The development cost was sunk a decade ago, while the hosting cost is pocket money and will still be incurred anyway. Or asking the same question from the other end, since they contain the same information presented in the same way, why didn't the South East version just redirect to the Midlands version years ago?
In theory, traveline.info presents the same information as regards the Midlands and South of England, together with comparable information for the rest of Great Britain, but in a slightly different way. There's an issue somewhere though, because it claims that some places - Easingwold in North Yorkshire was the example that I stumbled across - have no bus services. Does this imply that Easingwold's bus services, which definitely do exist, are absent from the Traveline National Dataset? If so, who needs to know this so that they can put it right?
I'm not sure of the exact dates, but Traveline South East was the first site developed by MENTZ, and after it was implemented for TSE, at various times Traveline South West, Traveline West Midlands and Traveline East Midlands adopted the same format, with a great deal of co-operation between the separate regions. Since then, I believe Traveline South West has moved to a different developer. So if anything, the question is why didn't the Midlands version just redirect to the South East version in the first place, rather than being a separate site. All the above sites all provide(d) journey planning across the entire country and timetables for bus services within their combined area (basically all of England south of Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Cheshire). That is why there are no timetables for Easingwold on any of them.
Despite what other commenters have said, Traveline South East and Traveline Midlands have been the only sites, as far as I know, which manage the three apparently simple tasks of
a) listing routes in a sensible order (1,1A,2, etc.) - the Traveline national site for example lists in the order 1, 100, 101, 1A, 2 etc.
b) combining related routes on the same table (e.g. 1,1A,1B) - Traveline doesn't combine them at all, and nor does bustimes.org
c) generating sensible PDF outputs. - bustimes.org doesn't provide PDF's at all.
(As an aside, the Arriva website can't manage any of the above)
As a simple example, Traveline West Midlands is now the only way that I can provide a sensible printout for my mother-in-law of her local route (Arriva 8/8A service between Stafford and Parkside) without generating multiple sheets of paper. In contrast, Traveline Midlands manages this very neatly on one side of an A4 sheet.
I agree that the site is now looking rather outdated, but I personally believe it still has many advantages over most of the other options available.
