Improving the representation of ticket restrictions?

[Bletchleyite]

In lieu of an update to the fares data spec, I am of the opinion that the human-readable restrictions text should go in the bin and a summary be generated from the electronic data. This would very quickly highlight all the shortcomings with the electronic data structure. It's far too tempting having free text fields, and it leads to problems like this. If a flag to allow connecting services to be ignored is seen as desirable, then it should be added to the electronic restrictions data.

I'm in a way surprised such a flag wasn't added as part of the Oval work given that it would allow the paper ticket restrictions on the cross London fares to be basically* the same as the contactless ones, rather than swingeingly more restrictive as they presently are because they consider intermediate boardings rather than just the origin tap in time.

The other thing that TOCs seem to want that is missing is the time the train departs from its origin as distinct from the time it was boarded. (I think time at the final destination is there, or have I got that backwards?)

I'm inclined to agree with you because of the whole "the journey planner is the arbiter" thing we seem to be moving towards.

Of course WMT could implement this but they'd need a lot of restriction codes, one per ticketed starting station, and it'd be easy to work around it by actually boarding elsewhere...

* Yes, I know, in a practical sense you can't make it exactly the same as one is based on tap in and one on the timetabled train time, but you can get pretty close.