Odd routing today 28 Dec

[cookie365]

Travelled from Manchester Piccadilly to Hassocks today. Some very odd routing from NRE.

It wanted me to take an XC to Reading, then wait nearly an hour, then an FGW to Gatwick and then a Thameslink. Would have taken 6h31. And that's if the last Thameslink leg hadn't been cancelled!

Southern's site wanted me to go the same route.

I actually did MAN-EUS-VIC-EGR-(bus)-TBD-HSK which I think was probably the quickest and a good hour and a half faster. I don't really understand why that wasn't offered as the default route, as it was basically the 'official' Brighton main line replacement route and clearly better.

What's more, on the MAN-EUS journey apparantly the booking engine had wanted to make people change at Milton Keynes for a London Midland service. The train manager had to reassure people with Advance tickets it was OK to stay on all the way to Euston.

Did I just get unlucky, or did the booking engines foul up right across the country?

 

[Starmill]

I suppose it could be down to the booking engine being very confused about sending you to East Grinstead for a journey to Hassocks. Does it offer this route for London to Hassocks journeys? Journeys like this very often tell you to change at Milton Keynes or Watford Junction and then at Clapham Junction. Where it would have you go from Clapham Junction today is another matter. Via Horsham potentially?

 

[Hadders]

I've not checked but does you route via London take account of the official connection times?

In reality you can usually do it far quicker but the journey planners have to allow the official time for the connection which is probably why via Reading was given as the quickest route. The official connection time between Euston and Victoria is 54 minutes, for example.

 

[cookie365]

NRE does give the East Grinstead and Three Bridges route for tomorrow for a Victoria to Hassocks journey, and that's the specific journey that Southern say you should take on their website. So it seems that the booking engines can cope with the changes for local routes but maybe not ones that cross London?

There are trains going to Gatwick via Horsham, but I can't find one that forms a quicker journey than East Grinstead.

Hadders, point taken about the official tube time, but even if I'd taken an hour to get to Victoria my route would have still beaten the Reading one.

Incidentally, Southern seem to have got much better over the last few months at arranging bus replacements; they always seem to be well signposted, buses already waiting for you, plenty of staff who know their stuff. Much better than the bad old days where you'd get off at Nowheresbury and be expected to find the bus yourself.

 

[45107]

Suspect that it is more to do with using alternative routes instead of too many people turning up for the limited rail replacement bus.