Tag: trains

One page guides: uk train times and cheap fares

Train times guideOk. I promise this is the last one page guide I'll post this week (possibly this year…) – and this one isn't strictly about a social media tool.

I don't own a car and I don't drive, hence I rely heavily on the UK rail network. And to make that as straightforward as possible, I rely heaving on the fantastic traintimes.org.uk created by Mathew Sommerville (ok, I realise I've raved about this before… which to non-uk-train-travelling readers is possibly slightly odd… but I'm not going to let that stop me). And so that others can benefit from the sheer brilliance of traintimes.org.uk and its bookmarkable URLs (and so they can use if to find cheaper rail fares), I've put together this one page guide to using Traintimes.org.uk.

Ideal to print out and keep by the computer for the next time you're planning a journey and wondering whether taking the train would make sense…

As with all these guides, feel free to download the word copy and edit it to suit your needs.

Attachment: 7 – Train times.pdf
Attachment: 7 – Train times.doc

Two very helpful tools for public transport travellers (Or ‘when good design and useful tools collide…’)

TrainTimesAddressI have a confession. I can't drive. I did try to learn once, but realised:

TrainTimesResultsa) I don't like driving

and

b) I really would rather our world was far less reliant on the car, so I ought to make a start by being less reliant on the car myself.

Which means I spend a lot of time trying to find the best way to get places by public transport. Which isn't always as easy as it should be. However, the are two key tools which I find indispensible, and which I often find myself showing to others. So, I thought I would share them with you too…

#1 TrainTimes.org.uk

The fantastic Mr Mathew Sommerville (behind much MySociety code) has created an accessible Train Times website at www.traintimes.org.uk.

At a glance, you may think its just a slimmed down version of the National Rail website… that is, until you see URLs like:

http://www.traintimes.org.uk/leicester/london/09:00a/tomorrow

which will return all the train arriving in London from Leicester at 9am tomorrow.

Simple. But incredibly effective. No more skipping through form after form to plan a journey. One visit to the address bar of the browser and bingo – all the train times you need.

This slide show explains it a little more, as well as having some good tips on getting cheaper trains by splitting journeys.

Transport Direct#2 TransportDirect.info

Sometimes, just sometimes, I can't get where I want to just by train. In such cases I could spend hours struggling with local bus timetables and inadequate bus company websites.

Or I could use the very good, but very under-promoted Transport Direct website at www.transportdirect.info, which is not only a rather nifty Multi-modal journey planner – but which also will tell me how much CO2 my journey is likely to use depending on how I travel.

So, not only can I get places by public transport when others would quail at the thought, but I can feel smug good about the environmental benefits of the extra hour travelling and the lack of circulation in my legs due to somewhat cramped bus seats.

Anyhow. Hopefully these tools will prove useful to others, and I can just point people to this post in future rather than feeling compelled to spend 1/2 an hour raving about them and demonstrating how just fantastically handy they are… although, come to think of it, I could just do that as well…