The National Intermodal Journey Planner (NIJP)
 

http://www.nationaltransport.ie/proj...urney-planner/

Yes, its a mouthful, but they seem to be planning a much simpler name.

We have very limited access to the beta (i.e. incomplete) version.

Does anyone have a wacky journey they would like to try?

Does anyone want to try it themselves? NTA may require real name and e-mail, but hold the horses just for the moment. :)

OK, I've got to play with it for the last 24 hours.

I found it much happier on a desktop than on my 2.5-year old netbook.

It does come up with novel solutions, that might be counter-intuitive and Irish people might be sceptical, e.g. Rathmines-Airport via Red Cow - the risk however is making the connection to Dublin Coach at Red Cow.

They are happy that we share it with the group, but we need to coordinate the response, so as to not drown the NJIP team in queries.

So I think they way we will do it is send me an e-mail at colm.moore@railusers.ie and I'll send you the document with the website, password and survey.

Feel free to play with it to the point of breaking it (without hacking it :p )

So, I've been playing with this for nearly a week now. It considers pretty much every type of surface transport - options for train, tram, bus, coach, ferry, taxi and walking, although they're not quite sure what to do with the country's one cable car. :)

The planner is time sensitive, so that if you ask for a trip to the airport at 4am, you might get quite a different answer to the same enquiry at 4pm.

Aside from more than 200 rail stations, it has more than 12,000 bus stops, and 100,000km of roads. The real challenge is likely to be getting the data right and ensuring that all appropriate means of access are considered, so as to give the passenger the best options.

Depending on the journey, it normally returns about 4-5 train/tram/bus options and one taxi option or a combination thereof. It can plan a trip (admittedly a minority sport) from Dursey Island in west Cork all the way to west Donegal, although I have to warn you, it is a 15 hour trip.

Feel free to drop me an e-mail to try this out.

This is public now.

http://www.journeyplanner.transportforireland.ie/

Android app https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...elandCompanion

Launch
 

Seems a colossal waste of money to me.

It seems to send you the whole way by taxi rather than suggesting a taxi to the nearest point where you can get public transport.

My example: Ardagh Village, Longford, to UCD always gives me "Take a Taxi" the whole way rather than saying take a taxi to Edgeworthstown and catch a Longford/Sligo/Ballina bus or a Sligo train.

I can probably play around with settings to achieve this but the defaults are wrong.

It doesn't look to me as if it is quite finished yet. It is now giving somewhat more sensible results such as taking a taxi to the nearest train station although it is suggesting that I walk six miles to a bus-stop (which I can apparently do in 11 minutes). I must be fitter than I thought. This is probably without luggage.

I think it may be the modelling of the connections to Longford station need to be looked at.

Yeah, I had a similar problem once, where it seems a taxi was intended, but it said walk.

It seems the iPhone app is now available.‏

http://www.railusers.ie/forum/attach...d=134113651 0

And Android...https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...elandCompanion

There has been an upgrade ongoing over the weekend.

The look of the page has changed and some features prioritised or de-prioritised.

The mapping has also changed somewhat - some changes won't happen until Monday.

It's still giving a time of 65 mins for a journey that takes me 30 mins every morning because it doesn't believe the bus connection I do is possible. I have given details to them. This is not going to encourage public transport use.

I used this when I was in Donegal last month and it was a lifesaver.

One thing that I noticed - and this seems to be with ALL Journey Planners - is the difficulty of identifying the end destination.

So I would get results like Donegal to Killybegs:

17:30 at Donegal (Abbey Hotel) Donegal
Bus take Bus 492 towards Dungloe operated by BUS EIREANN
18:00 to Main Street Killybegs
18:00 from Main Street Killybegs
Footpath Footpath (about 17 minutes)
18:17 to Killybegs

Surely Main Street Killybegs is the destination? This further 17 minute walk seems odd!

It seems most of the changes are largely cosmetic so far, some layout changes, new icons and new maps. Taxi off by default, but taxi will be returned if no public transport journey can be found. Updates to routes / timetables are implemented from time to time.

The intention is that it will look like the attached PDF when fares data is added.

I can raise it with them if you wish. It may be down to how the routes are timetabled.

Do you want to say what routes / times?I don't know Killybegs, but I trust you that it is. It is an issue that has had changes, but as you can appreciate, there are about 100,000 locations to check - the original map database (NAVteq) is somewhat motoring orientated. You can of course add specific locations, e.g. "Main Street, Killybegs", "Chapel Lane, Killybegs" or "1 Lower O'Connell Street, Dublin".

Thanks. I've mailed them about it myself though.

It's 2 Bus Eireann buses - 202 and 226/249. The problem seems to be that it fails to recognise that the 226/249 has a stop on Anglesey St.

Also for buses that do stop on Anglesey St, it fails to allow walking the 90 seconds from Eglinton St to Anglesey St as an option. As a result, you spend 3/4 mins each way travelling to Parnell Place bus station and missing the connection. Instead, I usually have 4/5 mins of waiting for the 2nd bus.

The departures I use are the 7:30 202 (picking it up in Ballintemple at 7:40 or so and the 7:50 226, picking it up from Anglesey St at 7:55 or so. While the official timetables probably say this is impossible (even though in over 3 months on this contract I am yet to miss it), there should be no problem with the connection to the 249 departure at 8am.

On the subject of locations, it thinks the 202 bus stop at Ashcroft is in Ballinlough and the one at Eglinton St is in Turners Cross. Both of these are miles out.

comcor - does BE's own planner show that combo? I found BE's planner to be somewhat more conservative than NTA's when someone was trying to get from Galway to Portlaoise a while back

Could people have a look at the journey planner and check walking, bus and taxi routes to the stations they use?

Post any issues here or send them directly to the journey planner team, e.g. it seems that the journey planner only allows access from one side of Central Park Luas stop.

Thanks

Map for central park is right

That road provides access to a ESB substation

travelling to Dingle the planner suggests a train to Limerick, then a bus to Adare, then walk to Lispole to get a final bus to Dingle. Whilst the planner suggests the Adare-Lispole stroll will only take 6 minutes, I think Google are closer with their estimate of 24 hours (seeing as its 118km).

Thanks. Reported on 18 August 2012. It would appear to be down to confusion in the coding of the bus stops.

Feel free to post more.