Trains on the Brain

Image: Mikey Ashworth

There’s been a fair bit of fuss this week about the new service Google Maps has hatched with train ticket re-seller the Trainline, enabling people to map British train journeys with accurate timetables and route mapping. Obviously it’s a great idea (what took them so long anyway?), motivated in part by the London 2012 Olympics, and on the face of it seems like a no-brainer, but well, even the most cursory dabble with it will show you that as it stands, it’s not without its flaws…

Familiarity breeds comfort

First up, the good stuff. The interface is delivered with typical googlesque cleanliness and precision. We all know where we are with google maps by now after all, if it ain’t done broke etc…

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So how do you use it?

When you go to the standard google maps search screen and click Get Directions between your two points (including your specific location if you like, or just the nearest town) you’ll notice three little icons right below the search box which are obviously markers for train, driving or travelling on foot.

Route choices

Click on the little choo-choo, enter your date and time of travel if you like, and you instantly get a number of suggested routes delivered below. It’s certainly quicker and easier to use than trying to fathom one of the  many third-party booking sites and TOC sites currently available in the UK, that’s for sure, especially if you’re not from round these parts.

It gives you step-by-step directions for each leg of your journey, including walking time where changing, duration of each journey leg, total journey time and connections with other modes of public transport, indicated by their respective icons (Tube, bus etc).

Trainline again or…?

Below the respective route results there’s a section titled local agency information. This provides links to the individual operating companies running these routes…or does it?  When I searched for Edinburgh to Bath I got 3 TOC route links, but all of them sent them to the Trainline. And not for that specific journey result either, just their homepage. So there’s something which could do with a tweak right there.

Unless of course this is but a deliberate and sneaky ploy to tie you in to using the trainline. Shurely shome mihstake Scherlock? If that’s the case then at least they might click straight through to the route you’ve specified, rather than making do all that tiresome typing again. (I don’t know about you, but my stubby little fingers are practically worn down to useless, gummy stumps, what with all this tappy tippy tip tap malarkey I am forced to do to earn a crust.) And of course TL is not the cheapest way to book UK train tickets online. Your route operators are always ( ‘should that be usually?’ legal ed) going to be cheaper…

Pasty lovers rejoice!

Perhaps the best thing about it though (other than the simple fact that it is actually embedded in google maps, so you don’t need to ferret about on other sites to check your basic routes) is the map itself, which could not be clearer. That sweet little train icon pops up as clear as a red nose on a clown at the connecting point, showing you where you need to change trains.

Clicking on it brings up a box, even reminding you exactly how long you have to make your connection. Sales of Ginster’s pasties and damp, squished blueberry muffins are set to shoot through the roof at depressing stations across the land!

Bad mapping

I’m constantly agog at just how badly some rail sites (even massive national and international ones) handle their route mapping online. PDFs that you have to manipulate, zoom into or squint at, maps which just display it as the crow flies giving you little actual info about the route and where it stops, messy, overly complicated maps which look like someone has just scanned in the closest Ordnance Survey map they happen to have to hand, scribbled on with a dog-chewed biro, the list goes on and so do I.

Looking good

So, anyway, kudos to the project team for getting that all-important, ‘where am I going again?’ at a glance bit spot on. You can also filter it by 3 options: best route, less walking (if you happen to be rotund and lazy, like me) and fewer transfers.

But not always working so good…

Of course I’ve only played with my new toy a little so far (I don’t want to spoil the fun or I’ll have nothing to look forward to come Christmas) but the second search I did didn’t seem to work. It was from Edinburgh to Bristol, so not exactly a logistical conundrum I’m sure you’ll agree. I even made sure I’d chosen a journey time when the trains would definitely be running, cos I’m nice like that. And here’s the message I got:

Now, in the unlikely event that you’re still reading, you might think I’m just griping for the sake of it, but here’s the thing. This all looks like a quiet revolution in accessible online rail info, and in the wider context of what we’ve had to put up with maybe it is, but it’s been done before and on a far larger scale.

Enter Rome2Rio, a multi modal mapping site, also built on our trusty google maps, but for the WHOLE…WIDE…WORLD. A small team of software developers in the Australian outback (or possibly a city) have been quietly burrowing away at this site for at least a year and while it’s not yet perfect either, (it’s not obvious to see, for example how to tackle major overland journeys with it, creating a bias towards flying) it is pretty darn impressive, given the heap of complexities they no doubt have to contend with.

The site lets you plot your journey on the map, while also comparing the various modes of transport: rail, air, car – in terms of price, journey time and of course CO2 impact. And it is just as easy to on the eye and on the brain as most flight comparison sites. That’s got to be the clincher in my book. The day that international train travel is both as easy to book and inexpensive as flying is the day we can say ‘so long and thanks for all the pish’ to Mr Michael O’Leary and his brethren.

There’s a few decent multi-modal transport sites which cater well to those looking at rail, overland or flightless travel, and I include a few in that round-up post from way back when.

So there you have it. The Trainline have proved that they’re not just there to annoy us with the cheesiest adverts since the Gold Blend couple bagged the Dairylea contract, but instead have knocked their clammy little heads together with the google drones to make something genuinely useful, at a  time when literally billions of Johnny Foreigners will be flocking to our shores, with their fancy pastel mohair jumpers slung casually around their sickeningly tanned shoulders like they really couldn’t care just how chilly it actually is during British Summertime, to watch a group of grown men and women see how far they can throw a pointy stick.

But they ain’t the first and I hope they won’t be the last. Go Team GB!