Journey planning systems at stations

[cr767055]

I've just been delayed by 50 minutes on a CrossCountry service to Manchester Piccadilly from Oxford. As a result, I had some time to wander around the station, and I got talking to somebody at the ticket office (nobody behind me). She showed me the software they use to plan journeys for people, and printed me out a journey plan on a receipt (an alternate way of getting home!)

What is this journey planning system? Is it custom-made? It looks very powerful as opposed to what the customer has to deal with.

 

[yorkie]

If you want to use powerful journey planning system, National Rail Enquiries allows multiple via/avoid points, while FastJP.com does this and allows you to vary interchange time, exclude selected TOCs or only include selected TOCs of your choice. You can also specify maximum number of changes.

 

[Wallsendmag]

If Piccadilly is staffed by Avanti then I believe they use TrainItalia’s IBM supplied Pico4UK the same as CSC. We had a presentation as part of our Ticket Office TIS procurement a few years ago. We use three different journey planners depending where you are on our retail estate, they are supplied by Worldline, TTK and SilverRail

 

[njamescouk]

I've just been delayed by 50 minutes on a CrossCountry service to Manchester Piccadilly from Oxford. As a result, I had some time to wander around the station, and I got talking to somebody at the ticket office (nobody behind me). She showed me the software they use to plan journeys for people, and printed me out a journey plan on a receipt (an alternate way of getting home!)

What is this journey planning system? Is it custom-made? It looks very powerful as opposed to what the customer has to deal with.

an itinerary is a useful insurance policy against someone trying to charge you an extra few hundred quid

 

[miklcct]

an itinerary is a useful insurance policy against someone trying to charge you an extra few hundred quid

Can you explain this? I seldom use an itinerary when travelling on flexible tickets, and just wait and board the next train which travels to the next mandatory stop en-route instead.

 

[yorkie]

Can you explain this? I seldom use an itinerary when travelling on flexible tickets, and just wait and board the next train which travels to the next mandatory stop en-route instead.

I think that @njamescouk is saying that if the passenger was seeking advice regarding missed connections where the ticket(s) were Advance fares, staff issuing an alternative itinerary provides evidence of authority to travel on alternative services shown in the itinerary (notwithstanding the fact that contractual entitlement to be conveyed by alternative services does not require any such itinerary)