UK Travel Blog

A new government backed web site aims to give Brits the freedom to plan journeys by train, plane, car and coach, plus a little walking and surprisingly it does actually work.

The web site called TransportDirect.info works a bit like those insurance comparison web sites but no one sings at you and unfortunately we didn’t see a cute merecat either, sorry. However what you do get are transport options for getting from A to B using live route planning information.

Testing the system: To test this, I tried asking it for a route from Penrith in Cumbria to Newark in Nottinghamshire and it came back with 4 options. Three of these were bus + train + walk and one was simple car journey. Unlike most other planner services, this new one includes bus routes and times plus even tells you what house to stand next to to catch the bus! Not that the large bus stop sign wasn’t rather a large clue.

Was it accurate? I’ve never actually tried this route via anything but a car, but the instructions did seem to make sense even the ones telling me to stand opposite number 109 on Brentfield Way to catch the bus. Walking times however seemed reasonable. Very glad to see it didn’t say drive to Penrith Station and park too.

Potential problems? The biggest problem I can forsee with this system is it assumes the buses and trains will be on time so one slightly late bus means you could miss the connection. Also walking times are probably for those not dragging kids along or people with walking difficulties.

Improvements: For train services you can book the train from the web site, but of course most bus services you can’t (perhaps this will come one day). They also don’t have fare information for the buses, but since these were town bus services one could assume they wouldn’t be very expensive.

One part that doesn’t always seem to work are train booking. For some journeys it is possible to book the train and get the fare although we’re not sure if it’s the cheapest fare, but on other similar journeys this option is missing. Perhaps a little more joining up is required there to make life a little easier.

Also a little more customisation would be handy especially allowing for switches between transport methods. For example adding an option for slower connections would allow people to more easily take into account kids in tow or likelyhood of carrying shopping to give more time between connections.

Overall impression: Considering this site isn’t trying to push any type of transport except possibly get us out of our cars, it seems to work remarkably well. Perhaps not quite as polished looking as some sites and could perhaps do with a few tweaks here and there, but well done to the people who managed to gather all this information together and create joined up government.

One thing however it does show rather starkly is public transport is very expensive and slow. The only part of this journey I could obtain a price for was the train and one way that was £55 plus the various bus fares so we’ll estimate £65. It seems I’m paying £65 one way and taking 6 hours to do what it costs me about £20 and 3 hours in a family sized car down the M6, M62 and A1.

Now we have joined up transport planning, perhaps it’s time for joined up transport to plan the journey on?

Finally: If you’re sitting in the office playing with this site, as presumably no one is actually going to use it for its real purpose, then try the CO2 Comparison option. Strangely, according to this planner, covering 170 miles in my 2L family sized car will output significantly more CO2 than going by plane.

Ah well, Jeaves, please bring the private jet round to the front door…one feels an obligation to be environmentally friendly today.

You can try the site at Transport Direct.