Public timetable requirements to reflect an amended service

[whole diary]

[grahame]

I've had a look at it, but it's not clear to me exactly where I would need to change trains and at what times the first train arrives and the second departs.

On the inbound I would probably put the Melksham arrival time on the top

There are rather a lot of destinations. Depending on the purpose I wonder whether it would be better to focus on a smaller number?  Or have two blocks, one for local destinations, and one for further afield.  I'm sure in a printed format it would be much more readable than as currently shown.

As an aside, I bumped into a colleague walking to Swindon station last week, who when asked told me he commuted from Trowbridge, and came via Melksham but dog-legged back. He was absolutely thrilled when I told him that from December he probably wouldn't have to leave so early and would have a direct train back.

I've tweaked it a tiny bit and put a printable (.pdf) at
http://www.wellho.net/downloads/dec13_mkm_x2.pdf

Interestingly, rather than "unreadable" I got the reaction - "WOW ... all those trains?"

The 17:36 back from Swindon will be very useful  

Now ... connection data is NOT shown - either how many changes, where etc.   This sort of format strikes me as useful for showing the 'marketing' data (and clearly it has helped sell the improvement to my guinea pig!) but it needs a reference back to the ticket booking sites (which is where I scraped the data from) in order to give journey details.   So as such it does not provide what people need at the station.

* "Local", "Regional" and "Long Distance" blocks.   Maybe ... although you'll then be tempting me to add a couple of others such as Birmingham and Manchester.
* Melksham at the top on the return side?  ... Maybe, or even both top and bottom - but once it's regionally split that becomes less of an issue.
* Sorting into some other order?  Perhaps.
* Bold font for through services?

What would be useful too is to highlight direct services with the times in bold, a bit like the current FGW^▸ (First Great Western) timetables.

You posted after I wrote .. yes, agreed ... great minds, etc 

One thought re my comment above is to perhaps have a hyper link or pop up against each time displayed so in the example I've circled the arrival time at Heathrow. By hovering the mouse or clicking on this would bring up:

Departs melksham  06:38
Arrives   station a    07:00

Depart   station a    07:30
Arrive     station b   08:20

Depart    station b   08:45
Arrive     heathrow   09:10

I know nothing about programming, design or presentation though. you've probably already guessed that.

That could be a good online approach - click on a time to come up with a popup / details.   There would need to be a way to print it out, and you can't have popups on posters at the station when you point at a time yet.  As noted, thought needed here .. marketing approach looks (and I'm slightly surprised, so THANK YOU John R) good.

[John R]

I've had a first play with that ... coloured columns need adding, I think - you're right on that. Plus perhaps split into two sets of destinations, and they should probably be sorted.   Early days on this one.

http://www.wellho.net/mouth/4175_.html?pwidth=wide

P.S.  Also N/S indicator missing ...

I've had a look at it, but it's not clear to me exactly where I would need to change trains and at what times the first train arrives and the second departs.

It's not clear as it doesn't give that information. What it's showing is basic information as to where you can get to from Melksham on any particular departure. To give more will immediately make it much more complex. As an example, if this was a flyer sent to every house in Melksham, the key message is to say "Look where you can get to by train now" and people can see that journeys are now practical to many places, including hopefully some places where people currently travel to by other means.

[eightf48544]

I think the first essential requirement at any station  is some form of route map. I would suggest three colours for the routes:  direct, one change and two changes. All intermediate stations to be shown. If a station is on a direct route but isn't  served by a direct trian  then it should be in one/two change coloursas applicable.

Boundaries: for Melksham I would suggest Taunton. Weymouth Southampton, Lodon Padd, Oxford Cheltenham Cardiff. All with arrows with onward destinations. Intermediate junction stations like Reading to have arrows showing Gatwick Staines etc.

Now to the timetables. It seems to me there are three ways of doing this.

The old fashioned columns with all stations listed on the left and trains in their own verticle column. However, this doesn't work too well for Melksham as you are basically on the third side of a traingle with two main lines you'd have to list both main line timetables in full. Also many people dfind the full timetable hard to read.

The seocnd way is to list stations served and the trains that serve them giving arrival and departure times. this works well for direct services but how many stations reached by  changes you need to list is an interesting one.

The third way we don't seem to use much is separate arrival and departure notices which list all train and the staions they serve (arrival/departure tiem in brackets by station. This might work well for Melsham with only six trains to list

You'd have on depature

06:00 Swindon (06:30) calling Chippenham (06:15)
Change Chippenham for Bath (xx:xx) Bristol TM^▸ (Train Manager, or possibly Ticket Machine, depending on context) (yy:yy)
Change Chippenham and Bristol TM for staions to Weston Suer Mare and Taunton S Wales Gloucester Cheltenham Birmingham and Northwards.
Change Swindon for Didcot arrive 07:00 Reading 07:30 Paddington (07:55)
Change Swindon Didcot for Oxford (07:30)
Change Swindon Reading for stations to Gatwick Airport London Waterloo local Thames Valley stations Rail air coach Heathrow.

07:00 Westbury [or further] (07:20) calling Trowbridge (07:10)
Change Westbury for staions to Weymouth (xx:xx) Taunton(yy:yy) Reading Salisbury (zz:zz) Southamton (aa:aa)
Change Westbury Taunton station to Exeter torquay Plymouth and Penzance
Change Westbury Reading for stations to Gatwick Airport London Waterloo local Thames Valley stations Rail air coach Heathrow.
Change Westbury Salisbury Staions to Exter via Yeovil London Waterloo
Cahnge Westbury and Southampton for staions to bournmouth Potsmouth and Brighton.

Arrivals Would be

05:59 Westbury (05:39) Trowbridge (05:49)

06:59 Swindon  Chippenham (06:45) mConenctions from London Paddington, Reading Didcot

 
Times ficticious:

[grahame]

I think the first essential requirement at any station  is some form of route map. I would suggest three colours for the routes:  direct, one change and two changes. All intermediate stations to be shown. If a station is on a direct route but isn't  served by a direct trian  then it should be in one/two change coloursas applicable.

Boundaries: for Melksham I would suggest Taunton. Weymouth Southampton, Lodon Padd, Oxford Cheltenham Cardiff. All with arrows with onward destinations. Intermediate junction stations like Reading to have arrows showing Gatwick Staines etc.

Yes - a route map is also needed ... another thread, I think.   Again I would much prefer to stick with standard practise as it's well tested but there are several and the specific case of Melksham is odd as you say being (a) cross triangle, (b) very connection oriented and (c) with a relatively naive ridership.

Now to the timetables. It seems to me there are three ways of doing this.

The old fashioned columns with all stations listed on the left and trains in their own verticle column. However, this doesn't work too well for Melksham as you are basically on the third side of a traingle with two main lines you'd have to list both main line timetables in full. Also many people dfind the full timetable hard to read.

We currently have this as part of Portsmouth  / Cardiff and people find it (a) hard to read and yet (b) incomplete in providing the information needed.  However, it's low maintenance as no specific sheet has had to be prepared for what's been a lightly used station.

The seocnd way is to list stations served and the trains that serve them giving arrival and departure times. this works well for direct services but how many stations reached by  changes you need to list is an interesting one.

That was the http://melksh.am/4174 experiment, and to some extent http://melksh.am/4175 - it's poor in providing the connection data but great for marketing purposes.  For direct trains it's all you need but a significant proportion of journeys will involve a change.

The third way we don't seem to use much is separate arrival and departure notices which list all train and the staions they serve (arrival/departure tiem in brackets by station. This might work well for Melsham with only six trains to list

You'd have on depature

06:00 Swindon (06:30) calling Chippenham (06:15)
Change Chippenham for Bath (xx:xx) Bristol TM^▸ (Train Manager, or possibly Ticket Machine, depending on context) (yy:yy)
Change Chippenham and Bristol TM for staions to Weston Suer Mare and Taunton S Wales Gloucester Cheltenham Birmingham and Northwards.
Change Swindon for Didcot arrive 07:00 Reading 07:30 Paddington (07:55)
Change Swindon Didcot for Oxford (07:30)
Change Swindon Reading for stations to Gatwick Airport London Waterloo local Thames Valley stations Rail air coach Heathrow.

07:00 Westbury [or further] (07:20) calling Trowbridge (07:10)
Change Westbury for staions to Weymouth (xx:xx) Taunton(yy:yy) Reading Salisbury (zz:zz) Southamton (aa:aa)
Change Westbury Taunton station to Exeter torquay Plymouth and Penzance
Change Westbury Reading for stations to Gatwick Airport London Waterloo local Thames Valley stations Rail air coach Heathrow.
Change Westbury Salisbury Staions to Exter via Yeovil London Waterloo
Cahnge Westbury and Southampton for staions to bournmouth Potsmouth and Brighton.

Arrivals Would be

05:59 Westbury (05:39) Trowbridge (05:49)

06:59 Swindon  Chippenham (06:45) mConenctions from London Paddington, Reading Didcot

 
Times ficticious:

Looking at the current service, this would have merit and is something we could have done ages ago.  Looking forward to a future service with more trains, I suspect that the destinations are going to get lost in the text and there's no data on connectional returns.

And we then start looking at the whole business of fares and which tickets are allowed by which routes. 

[eightf48544]

My third option is standard in Germany and works quite well even at big staions it's divided into hourly or two hourly blocks.

And we then start looking at the whole business of fares and which tickets are allowed by which routes. 

I'm afraid your last requirement for fare information is  beyond even "Deep Thought and will have to be left to the computer that will follow" to paraphrase Douglas Adams.

Of course you could make all fares mulitples of 6 or 7.