Stopping Patterns in Timetables

Stopping patterns in timetables

Pick up and Set Down

(to follow)

Flexible Transport

It is possible to give a partial representation of flexible transport in current journey planners. The most important requirement is that you have in the journey planner a means of indicating that a journey must be booked in advance. This may be as a note to the service, a special version of the operator name, or a special bus stop whose name indicates that services must be booked.

For registration purposes Vosa have identifid three types of flexible service. These should be coded into journey planners as follows:

Many to One services are where the service picks up from several places and takes passengers to one location, possibly a local hospital, or to make a connection with a another bus or train. In this case the arrival time is known.
It is possible to create a series of non stop journeys, one from each place on the route to the destination. The time allowed for each journey should assume that there are the maximum number of bookings on the service and each journey should be marked to show that you must telephone to book the service.
In this way travel from each of the locations can be found in the journey planner and connections made onto a bus or train at the interchange.
One to Many This is the reverse of Many to One and can also be modelled by a series of non stop journeys. This time the departrure time is known and anyone booking may be given an earlier arrival time at their destination than would be shown in the journey planner.
The Many to Many type of service cannot be easily represented in the journey planner, except by routing passengers via a terminal point. This does indicate to the enquirer that at service is available and when they book the exact details offered are likely to be for a shorter direct journey. There may be no fixed timing points and the service operates only when it is booked. In this case services at regular intervals, perhaps hourly or half hourly, can be assumed.

Instead of a series of single non-stop journeys it is also possible to achieve a similar effect by using pick up and set down restrictions if these are available in your journey planner system. Inward journeys will have pick ups only until the terminal point or points, which are set down only. Outward journeys will pick up at the terminal point or points and set down at all the other places.

Because of the extra time allowed inward journeys may seem to leave before the outward journeys have arrived at each point. When passengers phone up, the person alighting will be given an earlier time than given on the journey planner and the passenger boarding a later time. In both cases the time at the point of booking will be derived from the schedule being planned for the vehicle that day.

In the longer term, there are broadly three approaches that could be taken to the integration of flexible transport into a journey planner:

Show that a flexible service is available This could be by means of a label attached to a stop, a map or a journey. The disadvantage of this is that it can raise expectations in a context where the person is enquiring against a specific date and time. If someone calls the drt service and is not able to get a journey anecdotal evidence is they will only do so a couple of times before giving up and telling friends that "you can never get a booking".
Develop a "real time" feed from the flexible transport booking system This approach envisages that regular feedback to the journey planner on the state of bookings could indicate whether (1) a particular journey request is likey to be bookable, because no booking have been taken at that time, (2) there is a strong possibility of a journey being provided because it is already booked to a specific point nearby, or (3) the service is booked to operate elsewhere so cannot fulfil any journeys to meet the particular request. This approach would help get multiple occupancy on flexible services by alerting the journey planner to parts of the operation that have become fixed through the bookings already taken.
Fully integrate the journey planning and flexible transport booking This approach would allow the user to make a booking through the journey planner or call centre. It would fully integrate the systems. The disadvantages are that it would require new and different call centre and internet software and may require the traveline and flexible transport services to be reorganised; the searching process may take longer because it would interrogate another, possibly distant, system; and additional information would be required from the user in order to confirm the booking.

It may be some time before options can be progressed because of the uncertainty over the long term funding of flexible transport and the need to establish whether it has a substantial role in policies to increase accessibility.

Diverts on request to the driver

This type of service is common in rural areas but not really allowed for in the regulations which say that flexible transport must be booked before joining the vehicle. However where this is a historic arrangement in an old bus registration or allowed by the discretion of the Traffic Commissioner, then this can be modelled by putting an additional version of the journey in the data that terminates in the diversion. Alternatively set down only restrictions can be used. It is important to ensure that the passenger knows to ask the driver to divert.

Timing Points, All Stops and Interpolation

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Limited stop services

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