Great Western Coffee Shop

Hypothesis: Passenger information remains embryonic / liable to provide incorrect, impractical or none-optimum advice - even when things are running to schedules set weeks in advance.  This seems to apply especially to journeys that incolve a change along the way, even where that change is between two vehicles / pieces of transport operated by the same company.

Note: Some members may suggest that providing information that is right most of the time is better than provding no information at all, and/or is better than providing raw data and leaving it up to potential passengers to correlate and work out connections.

Example:  I arrived at Bristol Temple Meads at 13:30 yesterday afternoon, looking to return home to Melksham on the next available service.  The A to Z tells me to catch the train at 15:00 and change to another train at Chippenham, arriving at Melksham at 15:44.  The lady in advanced travel / information tells me to catch the train at 14:30, change to a bus at Chippenham and arrive at Melksham at 15:39. Personal experience tells me to catch te train at 13:49, change at Bath Spa and arrive at Melksham at 15:05.   All generally advertised First operated public transort services.

Knowledgable members here may well think or comment "yes, but ...".   But the details of operation, which division of First is involved, etc, really should not be of concern to the passenger who wants to travel by public transport from Bristol to Melksham.  The poster, suggesting a wait for the 15:00 train, is a snare this month ... after 6th July, that service is only scheduled to run as shown on one date (13th July) until 6th August.  It did run on time that day, but on all other weekdays it would result in an arrival in Chippenham just after the Melksham service has left, with a very long wait to the next scheduled service.

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Having pointed out what I believe to be a failure of the information systems, perhaps I should suggest how it could be improved?   Turn criticism into constructive criticism?  Let's try a couple of thoughts.

Ideally, where timetables are changed for a significant period - more than a couple of days - they should be updated to reflect what's running that week. Less than ideal would be "please enquire for this week" or similar words added if it's too much to actually provide the new data

Customer information systems should reflect the true public transport network; my example didn't even require a common database across different organisations - as both the route recommended by the information desk at Bristol Temple Meads and the route I took involved a First Group train followed by a First Group bus. Indeed, I think that both buses actually operated from the same garage!

Interestingly I used Google maps to give me a route from Temple Meads to Melksham today leaving at 13:45 (to allow time to get off the train etc).

It recommends the 14:00 Paddington train to Bath and the 14:20 D3 bus from Bath to Melksham; arriving at 15:08.

This routing is also offered by traveline.info.

Neither mentions the 13:49 train.

Yes, I use Google Maps pretty much consistently. Where it offers options, I've never found them to be wrong.

That's the bus I took ... not sure where in Melksham the 15:08 timing is for; I used a station estimate.

I took the 13:49 train as a piece of "defensive scheduling" - next available train and giving me 14 rather than 7 minutes between the train and bus in Bath.    I have just looked back, and see that both the trains were a couple of minutes late yesterday - I suspect I would have made it off the 14:00, with a bit of a dash - I saw that pulling in on the viaduct as I was queueing to join the bus.

Perhaps the information desk at Bristol Temple Meads should use Google or Traveline  ;D