Zipabout Connect enabling NRE to re-route passengers during disruption

[yorkie]

Has anyone heard anything about this...?

https://www.zipabout.com/portfolio/national-rail-enquiries#view-project

Working with the Rail Delivery Group to achieve their objective of providing passengers with better guidance through severe disruption, we have deployed the Zipabout Connect platform nationwide on National Rail Enquiries (web and mobile).

In a global first for the transport industry, Zipabout Connect now enables National Rail Enquiries to deliver targeted, fully personalised journey information and disruption support directly to passengers through Messenger in real-time, establishing a unique two-way channel of communication with the customer.

It also talks about gathering information about demand:

The Connect platform also gathers unique behavioural and demand data from passenger interaction, delivering unrivalled business intelligence and genuine passenger insight.

I wonder if it's able to detect spikes in demand, e.g. a lot of people travelling to a major event, presumably based on NRE searches? Could it even alert people who are making a journey that may be disrupted due to crowding? e.g. someone may board a quiet Stansted to London train which is later going to become crush loaded at Northumberland Park; some advance notice of that would be welcome.

And this is of particular interest from a fares perspective:

provide re-routing alternatives where available.

I'd really like to learn more about how this works, and whether it can take into account the fare(s) held by the customer and ticket acceptance?

For example if there was a major incident on the East Coast Mainline, you don't need ticket acceptance to send people travelling between London and Wakefield on the Midland Mainline if they hold a walk-up fare. But you would need ticket acceptance to send a London to Leeds passenger via that route, and of course for any passenger on an Advance fare.

And if the Midland Mainline was unsuitable (say they had problems of their own or engineering works), you would need ticket acceptance to send people via the West Coast Mainline.

I'd like to see a system that allows passengers to be re-routed seamlessly, without fear of being told their ticket isn't valid on the alternative route, but I am not sure how that can be achieved. It would be great if retailers could have access to the information, so they could automatically contact a customer with alternative itinerary suggestions.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm not sure why Messenger is seen as a suitable platform for this sort of thing (though I don't "get" chatbots generally).

 

[typefish]

I'd like to think that because it's on most people's phones - and with a link in to Facebook you'd have a surefire way to know which account is linked to what tickets

I'm sure something like WhatsApp would have been a better target however, but I doubt it would be hard to change it

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'd like to think that because it's on most people's phones - and with a link in to Facebook you'd have a surefire way to know which account is linked to what tickets

I'm sure something like WhatsApp would have been a better target however, but I doubt it would be hard to change it

I don't think WA is particularly good for it either. It'd be better for it to be integrated into the app for the TOC you purchased your tickets from.

 

[ashkeba]

I don't think WA is particularly good for it either. It'd be better for it to be integrated into the app for the TOC you purchased your tickets from.

Agreed. Messenger is on a lot of phones only because it was pre loaded and difficult to un install. Lots of people on package deals disable it after it starts using up their data. This sort of notification is what app notifications were designed for!

 

[alistairlees]

I don't think WA is particularly good for it either. It'd be better for it to be integrated into the app for the TOC you purchased your tickets from.

Other retailers are available.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Other retailers are available.

Or their apps

 

[greatkingrat]

I'd really like to learn more about how this works, and whether it can take into account the fare(s) held by the customer and ticket acceptance?

For example if there was a major incident on the East Coast Mainline, you don't need ticket acceptance to send people travelling between London and Wakefield on the Midland Mainline if they hold a walk-up fare. But you would need ticket acceptance to send a London to Leeds passenger via that route, and of course for any passenger on an Advance fare.

If you look at the screenshots it says "check your ticket is valid", so it looks like it is just giving the quickest route, taking into account any known delays/cancellations, regardless of whether it is permitted or not.

 

[typefish]

I don't think WA is particularly good for it either. It'd be better for it to be integrated into the app for the TOC you purchased your tickets from.

Well, you're right there - but who's going to pay all the app developers to implement a custom AI engine into their apps?

Whereas you can use FB's chatbot API for what is for all intents and purposes zero cost, and have everything in a central place

 

[Bletchleyite]

Well, you're right there - but who's going to pay all the app developers to implement a custom AI engine into their apps?

Whereas you can use FB's chatbot API for what is for all intents and purposes zero cost, and have everything in a central place

Er, I thought it was about giving you an alternative route? That's a journey planner task, not an AI.

I see no use-case at all for chatbots.

 

[323235]

Agreed. Messenger is on a lot of phones only because it was pre loaded and difficult to un install. Lots of people on package deals disable it after it starts using up their data. This sort of notification is what app notifications were designed for!

It seems odd that they would develop an app experience with a platform which is centered around the NRE app but then rely on a third party app outside that for messaging. Seems much more sensible from a business perspective to have everyone in one place, even it relies on third party plugins/APIs/services in the backend.

Is messenger also being used as a way to hook people into the experience and get the NRE app?

It's quite interesting that I was watching a podcasts which was centred around the flaw in Android with multitasking which Google don't dare fix (the podcast was a few months old) because it would stop Facebook from overlaying messenger conservation notifications.

Is this also one of the primary reasons for using messenger, as it is very effective at grabbing peoples attention with these notification bubbles.

Do you think that they could also with permission of users start to use location data to track major events and disruption for such a service in the future?

 

[yorkie]

If you look at the screenshots it says "check your ticket is valid", so it looks like it is just giving the quickest route, taking into account any known delays/cancellations, regardless of whether it is permitted or not.

If it just looks at normal validity then it makes it almost useless, given that passengers are encouraged to use ToC specific fares and even more geographic route restrictions are being introduced.

What I want to see is something that actually can re route people during disruption; it's often the case that disruption results in ticket acceptance on alternative routes, which makes the ticket de facto valid on such routes. Without that functionality, what's the point?

 

[Bletchleyite]

What I want to see is something that actually can re route people during disruption; it's often the case that disruption results in ticket acceptance on alternative routes, which makes the ticket de facto valid on such routes. Without that functionality, what's the point?

Yes, I agree - not just "you might want to do this if you can", but rather "here's your new e-ticket and itinerary, and by the way we've already refunded your Delay Repay". And potentially even "we've reserved you a seat, it's this one" too if the train hasn't left its origin yet.

Giving people something in writing saying "do this, and here's the proof you can" is going to solve all sorts of problems.

With Advances you'd also have the option to reroute different people differently (where journey times would be similar), so avoiding some services becoming swamped. Potentially also to offer things like "well, you can take the next LNER train instead of your Avanti train, but we know it'll be heaving, so we'll upgrade you to 1st and give you full Delay Repay if you will wait another two hours, do you fancy that?"

 

[greatkingrat]

I think the problem is that in disruption NRE may say that "tickets are being accepted on TOC X and Y", however it doesn't give an exhaustive list of exactly which routes can or can't be used, it is just a case of what is considered reasonable. So it would be very difficult, if not impossible for a journey planner to definitively say what possible alternatives are or are not valid.

 

[yorkie]

I think the problem is that in disruption NRE may say that "tickets are being accepted on TOC X and Y", however it doesn't give an exhaustive list of exactly which routes can or can't be used, it is just a case of what is considered reasonable. So it would be very difficult, if not impossible for a journey planner to definitively say what possible alternatives are or are not valid.

Yes exactly, you are right; problem is that's not in electronic format.

But I think it needs to be, if services like this are going to be a success.

 

[BayPaul]

it is just a case of what is considered reasonable.

problem is that's not in electronic format.

Something like this app could be a great way to deal with reasonableness. It would be fairly simple to write a set of 'reasonableness' rules for a piece of software to decide if the current level of delay for your journey is reasonable, and then allow it to re-route you, with the confirmation message displayed on the app being a guaranteed allowing you on that service. For example, if you have a TOC-A specific fare, and the TOC-A train is cancelled, the app could check for the time for the next TOC-A one, and if the amount of delay is less than, say, 1 hour (or perhaps less than 25% of the journey), then re-assign you to that one. If the delay is greater than this reasonable limit, then it could suggest an alternative quicker route using TOC-B. It could well be a much simpler solution that having to centrally make these decisions, then put them into electronic form. As @Bletchleyite says, adding an automatic link to claim delay repay (or having the money appear in your account automatically) would be an obvious addition

 

[Paul Kelly]

That sounds like the beginnings of a good suggestion, but what if the route using TOC-B isn't normally a permitted route, but would still be reasonable given the circumstances? Would your idea be that the delay causes a temporary suspension of the routeing guide and the journey time becomes the deciding factor of permittedness? Again that sounds like the beginnings of a good idea but needs refined a lot. One problem I would foresee with that is that while it might be obvious to a human observer that the line was blocked and the next few trains on TOC-A's route weren't going to be run, they would need to all be properly cancelled "in the system" in order for journey planners to find the faster route (under the cirumstances) using TOC-B. So you'd be back to relying on central decisions being made to cancel the later TOC-A trains in good time before they were due to run. That might not happen due to staff being too busy, or there might be valid reasons too.

 

[Starmill]

Zipabout are a very interesting Birmingham-based tech and software company. They seem very into technology-based solutions for travel, especially things like machine learning and MaaS.

They also operate Passenger Connect, which seems to be a service for transport providers to communicate better and to foster customer goodwill, among other things.

And then there's this, probably an awful lot more significant, element of their business:

Passenger data indicates new reduced rail timetable does not meet current demand

• One in four passengers unable to find rail services to match their travel needs
• Overall passenger demand decreases by a further 38 percent following PM’s lock down announcement
• Regions most impacted by service reduction and cancelations include Dumfries and Galloway, Leicestershire and Swindon

Transport technology specialist Zipabout has revealed 25 percent increase in the number of passengers, including key workers, that are unable to find rail services to match their travel needs following the Coronavirus outbreak.

The data comes from Zipabout’s patent pending passenger communication and analytics platform, which is used by companies such as National Rail Enquiries, LNER and ScotRail to provide millions of UK passengers with live journey assistance and personalised travel updates.

Passenger data indicates new reduced rail timetable does not meet current demand

One in four passengers unable to find rail services to match their travel needs Overall passenger demand decreases by a further 38 percent following PM’s lock down announcement Regions most impacted by service reduction and cancelations

www.railbusinessdaily.com

You may have heard of Crispin Humm there, who used to be in passenger experience at ATOC? He is very interested in using data science to advance passenger transport analysis with things like live demand data. They are clearly looking to expand quickly into the niche of coronavirus disease impacts. The phrase that has been used in the logistics world is "Swap' in-time' for 'real-time'".

Big data is definitely their thing.

 

[Paul Kelly]

My hunch is they are taking a feed of all searches made on NRE and trying to monetise that through various analyses.

 

[Starmill]

My hunch is they are taking a feed of all searches made on NRE and trying to monetise that through various analyses.

It seems they've got themselves into position where they're allowed to take all of that data, yes. Could be very lucrative.