Specifying additional connection time - how should this work?

[AlterEgo]

You can plan a journey using those tools, but they will not sell you an itinerary for your planned journey.

Indeed. So buy separate tickets if you want. The railway is not going to open itself up to risk of expensive obligations because one wants it to agree to a connection that involves a fit and tall man power walking and optimising every door and escalator.

 

[redreni]

That's not quite right, and is my point entirely.

There is no Minimum Connection Time between two stations. The MCT applies to the station.

The minimum total transfer time between two stations a journey planner should allow is MCT (A) + Fixed Link (A->B) + MCT (B).

Correct.

It's not unreasonable for St Pancras -> King's Cross to have a similar total transfer time allowance as Whitechapel to Fenchurch Street

It is. Have you done both of these transfers?

because you just walk between St Pancras and King's Cross platforms, whereas you're not expected to do that with Whitechapel to Fenchurch Street; you're expected to take the Tube option.

So what? It's about how long it might reasonably take compared with how much time journey planners must allow. It is perfectly feasible to step off the Thameslink at St Pancras and step on a train at Kings Cross 5 or 6 minutes later. I have done so. But I defy anyone to step off a train (Overground or Elizabeth Line) at Whitechapel and step onto a train at Fenchurch Street 5 or 6 minutes later; it can't be done. In the latter case, I wouldn't buy Advances on an itinerary that only allowed the MCTs plus Tube transfer time between those stations: it is too tight to be sure of making it.

The Fixed Links and the MCTs account for that.

Fine; they don't correspond to reality, though. Nor are different interchanges remotely consistent with each other in the manner in which, or the degree to which, they fail to correspond to reality. And there's no easy way for a passenger who is unfamiliar with station layouts to know if they've been given a connection with loads of slack or a tight one.

Comparing the two makes little sense.

Hard disagree. It doesn't matter how the total time is arrived at or how the transfer is expected to be made, what matters is the relationship between time needed and minimum time journey planners must give.

And in any case, they are not the 'MCT' for those transfers. They're the sum of MCTs at either end + the Fixed Link.

True, but I really don't think this affects my point at all.

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Indeed. So buy separate tickets if you want. The railway is not going to open itself up to risk of expensive obligations because one wants it to agree to a connection that involves a fit and tall man power walking and optimising every door and escalator.

I genuinely don't believe it's about that. If it were, the MCTs at stations like Lewisham or Lewes would be more than 4 minutes.

For my money this is about reluctance to change anything combined with a fear that a more consistent relationship between how much time most people need and MCTs would see some of the sillier cross-London transfer times that currently serve as delay repay killers shortened.