Another split ticket engine

[maniacmartin]

Hi all,

It's only a beta, but you might want to check out http://split.traintimes.org.uk/ It's another split ticketing engine. Don't direct any comments about it at me, as I didn't make it.

 

[trentside]

It doesn't appear to make any consideration of the timing of your return journey.

I did a lookup of Lincoln to Bristol Temple Meads through this engine and at TrainSplit and both returned the same price of £86.40 leaving at 0726. The former however suggesting a split at Wilencote despite a more appropriate split at Tamworth being more flexible - TrainSplit did offer the Tamworth fare instead, it being the same price.

Interesting to note that the 'More Information' links to the Fares Guide here!

 

[higthomas]

I quite like it, it shows the price of the normal ticket, which is good, it excludes fares that are unsuitable for a normal traveller, but gives you a link to them if you want the absolute cheapest ticket.
Also I like the video of tracks as it loads, and it seems pretty simple, and doesn't actually try to sell me the ticket, which is fine for me, but does give info about the restrictuions on each ticket which is clear and simple.
All in all I like the interface, but since I have only tried it for one pretty simple set of splits, I can't really judge its split-finding abilities.

 

[91103eastcoast]

It tells me to use a 'Grand Central only' ticket on the 1800 East Coast service from London to York.

 

[Paul Kelly]

And it tells me I can use a Hull Trains Super Off-Peak Return from Doncaster to Retford on the 08:25 off Hull (not valid because the train arrives in London before 11:30). But that's another tricky one to get right; maybe I'm nit-picking!

 

[Jeni]

Most of it's example tickets shown on the front page are invalid, I can't search for any new journeys since I get the "I’m afraid something went wrong and I couldn’t find any journey." message every time.

On it's example tickets, it even acknowledges that the ticket is invalid, yet still offers it as an option!

IMO, very very poor.

 

[bicbasher]

I tried various journeys from Forest Hill, including Brighton, East Grinstead, Birmingham New Street and Lincoln and had the same results as Jeni.

 

[TonyR]

I tried it on the split ticket routes I know and it failed to find any of them.

 

[Oscar]

It's now no longer working:

I’m afraid this site is currently not working, due to issues with traintimes.org.uk.

I’m afraid this site is currently not working, as connections from this server to National Rail’s server are not being accepted.

 

[dracos]

Thanks for the comments! Sorry that some of your looking coincided with some downtime due to the main traintimes.org.uk triggering National Rail's rate limiting (neither of us have yet worked out why, there hasn't been any change in traffic that I can see). It's hopefully working again now.

91103eastcoast, Jeni, bicbasher: Sorry, I think this is because the recent list on the front page was confusing (plus issues rebounding from the above downtime to the main site). It was not only showing results from form submissions, but also results when people the clicked the "Show me the cheapest possible, even from invalid routing" - so if you had clicked straight through to one of those, you might have wondered why it was giving you those invalid results. It does do that so that you could potentially alter your journey to be able to get that cheaper ticket, but I've changed the front page to only show 'normal' results to hopefully make that clearer.

trentside: No, I decided to concentrate on the outward journey, as many of my own journeys are peak morning journeys but then returning off peak. And I can always dig into it a bit more if it's to London or similar. I do see that optionally providing a return time would allow better results, of course and perhaps I can look at that in future.

higthomas: Thank you

Indigo2: Yeah, I might have given up by that point! I hope I've given enough disclaimers, and at least made it possible to exclude restrictions/routes so you can check other options. It's good enough for the journeys I am making anyway

 

[PermitToTravel]

dracos, you note on your site that the information about fare route restriction ("VIA DONCASTER"/"NOT VIA LONDON" etc) is incorrect.

The correct data is not in the fares database which you are using, but in the National Routeing Guide database. This is not freely available, and costs thousands of pounds per year.

 

[dracos]

The correct data is not in the fares database which you are using, but in the National Routeing Guide database.

Interesting, thanks I'll probably just update manually if someone lets me know of something wrong in such a case; it does at least always print the restrictions so you can check.

 

[bb21]

There are thousands and thousands of fares with routing restrictions. That would take absolutely ages if you want to update them manually.

 

[PermitToTravel]

Especially considering how rubbish a seed the fares database actually is.

It might be worth investigating some sort of pattern matching solution that interprets the restrictions manually

 

[talldave]

What was the motivation to create another split ticket site?

 

[dracos]

What was the motivation to create another split ticket site?

I made one that I would want to use I did look at existing ones - MSE's is singles only and can only be used five times a day(!); TCBC is certainly comprehensive but was very slow; splitticketing I personally found the site a bit fiddly to use, sorry, and it didn't seem to show explanations/alternatives to its output; TrainMiser I didn't know about until posted on this forum but again I didn't think it really explained its thinking - though certainly looks nice and gives good or better results, as do they all, I'm sure.

I also didn't want to have to give return times but still get return information (frequently I know I'm going out at peak and returning off-peak), though I know that providing a return time if known allows for less working things out yourself and provides more options (such as anytime single one way, off-peak single the other). Perhaps I will be able to add a return time as an option at some point.

None of the others have released their source code that I know of - https://github.com/dracos/split-ticket - which means you can run the site locally if you want, or if you wanted to parse the fares database for your own amusement you might have some code to look at, which I did not (if there was something, that I didn't find, oh well!). And lastly, none of them appeared to let you easily link to results like this: http://split.traintimes.org.uk/BRV/RDG/y/08:00 which is something I find very handy

 

[Paul Kelly]

Something else it doesn't handle is fares with a "via" station that the train passes through, but doesn't stop at. It thinks they're not valid. The example I came across was Gatwick Airport to Reading and fares "VIA GOMSHALL" - these are also valid on the trains that pass through Gomshall without stopping.