{"id":1237,"date":"2008-10-11T22:12:51","date_gmt":"2008-10-11T22:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/10\/why-the-uk-national-rail-website-is-an-it-disaster.htm"},"modified":"2008-10-13T00:04:02","modified_gmt":"2008-10-13T00:04:02","slug":"why-the-uk-national-rail-website-is-an-it-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/10\/why-the-uk-national-rail-website-is-an-it-disaster.htm","title":{"rendered":"Why the UK&#8217;s National Rail website is an IT disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a few weeks&#8217; time, my wife is taking the kids to her parents&#8217; house by the seaside for a week.  I&#8217;ve got the week off work too but I&#8217;ve got a huge list of outstanding jobs to do at home, so I&#8217;m only spending part of the week with them.  It&#8217;s daft to take two cars (especially as we will be travelling together in one direction), so I thought I&#8217;d try public transport&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Problem number one is that I live in a rural area so public transport is not exactly plentiful &#8211; even though I&#8217;m just 12 miles from the thriving new &#8220;city&#8221; of Milton Keynes we have just one or two buses an hour, which run infrequently (and unreliably) and take at least 40 minutes for an indirect route to a location that is still just over a mile from the station. Not exactly convenient &#8211; and, at \u00c2\u00a33 (single fare), not exactly inexpensive either!<\/p>\n<p>Then, after a brisk mile-long walk from the shopping centre to the railway station, I&#8217;ll be catching a train to London, tube across London, and then another train to sunny Dorset.  The rail journey will take just over 3 and a half hours &#8211; which is not bad really (it would take me about 2 and a half to drive using a much more direct route &#8211; or around 5 hours by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalexpress.com\/\">National Express<\/a> coach) but <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/nationalrail-cheapest-fare.png?w=700&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Cheapest available fare - \u00c2\u00a356.60 (or is it?)\" \/>the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalrail.co.uk\/\">National Rail<\/a> Journey Planner tells me that the cheapest available fare is \u00c2\u00a356.60 with no advance fares available (at which price taking the car is suddenly sounding more economical).  (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.raileasy.co.uk\/\">RailEasy<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thetrainline.com\/\">The Trainline<\/a> also reckon that the lowest cost single fare is \u00c2\u00a356.50, despite the latter site <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/trainline-save39percent.png?w=700&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"The Trainline claims to save travellers 39% on average compared with buying a ticket at the station on the day\" \/>claiming to save travellers 39% on average compared with buying a ticket at the station on the day!<\/p>\n<p>Luckily, I spoke to my father, who knows far more about UK railways than would generally be considered healthy &#8211; and his advice came up trumps &#8211; instead of buying a single ticket for the entire journey, it seems the thing to do is to use the journey planner to work out which trains to catch, and then try again for each leg of the journey.<\/p>\n<p>Using this method, I found I can get the Milton Keynes-London leg for \u00c2\u00a314.50 (off peak return&#8230; not using the return portion), then cross London on the tube for \u00c2\u00a34 cash or \u00c2\u00a31.50 with an <a href=\"http:\/\/oyster.tfl.gov.uk\/\">Oyster card<\/a> and I can currently buy an advance single from London to my eventual destination in Dorset for \u00c2\u00a39 or \u00c2\u00a317 (depending on the time of day I travel).  Using this method, \u00c2\u00a356.60 becomes \u00c2\u00a325 &#8211; and that is not really bad value at all (especially when compared with \u00c2\u00a341.50 for the significantly slower coach journey).<\/p>\n<p>Why is this relevant on a technology weblog? Well, if a travel website that is incapable of accurately calculating the lowest available fare is not bad enough, the next stage of the process is an IT disaster &#8211; the sticking plaster that bonds together the various websites used to provide this &#8220;service&#8221;.  The National Rail website has the ability to hand off to third parties for ticket purchase, which sounds great &#8211; web services in action &#8211; except that I got more than my fair share of failed fare lookups (retrying seemed to result in success) and when I was passed across to the two train operating companies that I used (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.londonmidland.com\/\">London Midland<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.southwesttrains.co.uk\/\">South West Trains<\/a>), I had to register with each website individually &#8211; despite the underlying infrastructure being hosted under the oddly-named trainsfares.co.uk domain by The Trainline (where I also have an account) and an error page after my session timed out referring to yet another train operating company (with which I do not)!  I could almost excuse the National Rail website for being aesthetically dull (I find its basic colour scheme and busy layout presents a navigational nightmare &#8211; in web terms rather than its intended purpose as a travel aid!) but the results it produces are not even consistent &#8211; the train that I&#8217;ll be using for the Milton Keynes to London leg of the journey disappears from the list if I use the earlier and later links to navigate back and forth through the available journey options!<\/p>\n<p>Is it too much to ask that, now that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalrail.co.uk\/times_fares\/simple_fares.html\">train fares in the UK have (finally) been simplified<\/a>, the systems should be able: to calculate the the various legs of the journey and find me the absolute lowest fare; reliably integrate to provide consistent results; and, where several train operating companies use the same service provider, for a single online account to be able to buy tickets for the entire rail network?<\/p>\n<p>Maybe I just want too much&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a few weeks&#8217; time, my wife is taking the kids to her parents&#8217; house by the seaside for a week. I&#8217;ve got the week off work too but I&#8217;ve got a huge list of outstanding jobs to do at home, so I&#8217;m only spending part of the week with them. It&#8217;s daft to take &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/10\/why-the-uk-national-rail-website-is-an-it-disaster.htm\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why the UK&#8217;s National Rail website is an IT disaster<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[16],"class_list":["post-1237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inane-waffle","tag-useful-websites"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why the UK&#039;s National Rail website is an IT disaster - markwilson.it<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/10\/why-the-uk-national-rail-website-is-an-it-disaster.htm\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why the UK&#039;s National Rail website is an IT disaster - markwilson.it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In a few weeks&#8217; time, my wife is taking the kids to her parents&#8217; house by the seaside for a week. 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You flew half way across Europe and the best part was the vehicle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7276,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2017\/11\/weeknote-no-3-subscription-fatigue-travel-7-day-photo-challenge-microbits-remembrance-week-45-2017.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1237,"position":1},"title":"Weeknote No 3: subscription fatigue; travel; 7 day photo challenge; Microbits; and remembrance (Week 45, 2017)","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Sunday 12 November 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Another week, another week note. And I really should try and publish these a bit earlier (it's late on Sunday evening again!) More on my new roof bars\/carriers Last week I wrote about buying my new Thule roof bars and bike carriers from roofracks.co.uk. After I'd fitted the bars, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Weeknotes&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Weeknotes","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/weeknotes"},"img":{"alt_text":"Dent in new Thule wingbars","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/thule-wingbar-dent.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/thule-wingbar-dent.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/thule-wingbar-dent.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/images\/thule-wingbar-dent.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3926,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2012\/05\/useful-links-may-2012.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1237,"position":2},"title":"Useful Links: May 2012","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Thursday 31 May 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"A list of items I've come across recently that I found potentially useful, interesting, or just plain funny: CheatSheet - Display keyboard shortcuts for Mac apps Transport for London updates on social media - Travel updates on Twitter (and other social media channels) Text-based ASCII art generator - Create ASCII\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5817,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2015\/08\/short-takes-search-for-new-lines-in-word-exporting-exchangeexchange-online-transport-rules.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1237,"position":3},"title":"Short takes: search for new lines in Word; fix HTML &lt;code&gt; text wrapping in CSS; hidden elements in a WordPress theme","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Friday 28 August 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Another mini-blog post under the \"short takes\" banner... Search for new lines when reformatting text\u00a0in Word Unix admins will probably scoff at me as they\u00a0can probably cat, awk and sed this (or something like that)\u00a0but I needed to take a list of values from a web page and convert them\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/technology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6437,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2016\/06\/adventures-brompton-bike-first-london-commute.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1237,"position":4},"title":"Adventures on a Brompton bike: my first London commute","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Thursday 16 June 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Those who know me well know that I have a collection of bikes in my garage. Fans of the Velominati will be familiar with rule #12, which states: \"Rule #12: The correct number of bikes to own is n+1. While the minimum number of bikes one should own is three,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Exercise&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Exercise","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/topic\/exercise"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6624,"url":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2016\/10\/bike-wheel-circumferences-effect-recorded-distance.htm","url_meta":{"origin":1237,"position":5},"title":"Bike wheel circumference and its effect on recorded distance","author":"Mark Wilson","date":"Saturday 22 October 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A few months back, I rode the Prudential London-Surrey Ride 100. That's a 100-mile sportive,\u00a0except that my Garmin recorded the route as 155.9km, or 96.871769 miles. Somewhere it seems I missed about 5 km\/3 miles... or maybe I just cut all the corners! 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