Bristol and transport mess

[whole diary]

[simonw]

I apologise for my coding errors in station names, they are now corrected.

How can anyone who is not involved in the industry realise that Filton Abbey Wood is FIT, and Bristol Temple Meads is BRS^▸ (Business Rates Supplement).

My original point about the lack of coordination of all transport systems in North Bristol being torn apart at the same time stands. Whilst all this work needs doing surely it could be better integrated.

[John R]

How can anyone who is not involved in the industry realise that Filton Abbey Wood is FIT, and Bristol Temple Meads is BRS^▸ (Business Rates Supplement).

Or even BRI^» (Bristol Temple Meads - next trains)...

I'm not involved in the industry, and yet can usually guess if I don't know.  One presumes that regular posters and readers a) have an interest in the subject, b) are at least aware of the three letter codes used by Nationalrail.co.uk (amongst others) and c) can make the connection if they don't actually know that (e.g.) TAU^» (Taunton - next trains) is the abbreviation for Taunton.

[grahame]

How can anyone who is not involved in the industry realise that Filton Abbey Wood is FIT, and Bristol Temple Meads is BRS^▸ (Business Rates Supplement).

Or even BRI^» (Bristol Temple Meads - next trains)...

I'm not involved in the industry, and yet can usually guess if I don't know.  One presumes that regular posters and readers a) have an interest in the subject, b) are at least aware of the three letter codes used by Nationalrail.co.uk (amongst others) and c) can make the connection if they don't actually know that (e.g.) TAU^» (Taunton - next trains) is the abbreviation for Taunton.

There are some interesting ones - ZBB, DBG, BPC, KPA ... how many of those can you get without looking them up? (Perhaps we should move this to lighter side)

[John R]

None, it's fair to say.  And two don't even appear in the nationalrail look up (i.e. if you populate a station field with them). 

[Western Pathfinder]

KPA Kensington Olympia.

[stuving]

None, it's fair to say.  And two don't even appear in the nationalrail look up (i.e. if you populate a station field with them). 

There are alternative look-ups - for ZBB (underground, not national rail, at least not any more). But BPC?

[grahame]

None, it's fair to say.  And two don't even appear in the nationalrail look up (i.e. if you populate a station field with them). 

There are alternative look-ups - for ZBB (underground, not national rail, at least not any more). But BPC?

BPC is in the ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road, formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) stats, but seems to have been changed on the National Rail site. 

[Red Squirrel]

How can anyone who is not involved in the industry realise that Filton Abbey Wood is FIT, and Bristol Temple Meads is BRS^▸ (Business Rates Supplement).

Strictly speaking you would have to be a person who has had the need to check a train time online. I'm rather surprised if that's not the vast majority of the people lurking round or contributing to this forum.

In other news, I see that these Station Codes used to be called CRS codes, from Computer Reservation System. I wonder how often people were accidentally booked to Carstairs?

Have we digressed?

[Bmblbzzz]

There's a difference between guessing from context that BRI^» (Bristol Temple Meads - next trains) and TAU^» (Taunton - next trains) and Bristol Temple Meads and Taunton or that BRS^▸ (Business Rates Supplement) is a "typo" for Bristol Temple Meads, and guessing while writing that the code for Bristol Temple Meads is BRI not BRS. In other words, you can't guess the code from the name, you have to either know (great! but you can't expect everyone to) or look it up (easy enough in most cases, but again, depends on time and might be more difficult if eg posting from a phone).

Digressing a little (more), I have heard of someone booking a flight to Birmingham, Alabama rather than Birmingham, UK^▸ (United Kingdom), because they were distracted by the IATA code BHM. Following from that, whereas it's normally relatively easy to guess a place from an IATA code, it gives you no clue as to where the place is geographically; which is why air traffic control, flight plans and the like use International Civil Aviation Organization codes, which have a global continental, regional and national structure easily locating an airport geographically but giving no clue as to its name. Heathrow, for instance, is EGLL.

[John R]

Having very recently flown from BRS^▸ (Business Rates Supplement) to BSL it did occur to me then the scope for confusion.  (Oh, Bristol to Basel, in case you're wondering.)

[Trowres]

All this talk about misleading codes reminds me that, in the bygone days of printed national timetables, the Longbridge-Four Oaks pages once carried a footnote "Also calls at Chester DMUD". (Diesel Multiple Unit Depot). Presumably, a mis-coding of Chester Road.

Now perhaps we can go back to working out how to make transport better...

[stuving]

BPC is in the ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road, formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) stats, but seems to have been changed on the National Rail site. 

It was changed in both - because the name of the station was changed (belatedly).

[ChrisB]

So what is/was BPC

[grahame]

So what is/was BPC

"Penychain railway station, formerly known as Butlins Penychain railway station, is located by an over bridge at Pen Y Chain on the Llŷn Peninsula in Gwynedd" - WikiPedia