Transport for London – New responsive website(tfl.gov.uk) |
Transport for London – New responsive website(tfl.gov.uk) |
To give an international perspective, this is what I was used to as a Dutch person:
I didn't realise how great that website was until I moved to Sweden to study. This is what is available here:
http://www.reseplaneraren.skanetrafiken.se/querypage_adv.asp...
I've noticed that I used public transport on long distances a lot more when the website was a lot easier to use.
Back in Sweden I just found it easier to download the route maps of the cities and just manually follow the routes to determine the best place to get on/off or switch.
Also these travel planners that are available for Sweden (or at least 2000's) didn't really work well when you want to travel between cities.
9292ov.nl helped me out tons when I moved here, it still do, but mainly for trains these days. In the cities I just use the bicycle, as is customary around here :)
Never thought I would defend Västtrafik(public transport in south west Sweden) but here I go.
Their webpage http://www.vasttrafik.se/ is quite usable. It finds good routes and you can fiddle around with different parameters such as times for changes etc. You can say that you are willing to walk or take a bike part of the way as well. Overall pretty good as long as you are on a computer.
On a phone the default app is not so good. Instead use ResOplanerare which has a very minimal and slick interface.
I know that they tried to recruit a 'creative pascal developer' about a year ago :)
Disclaimer: I'm part of the combined TfL and BAE Systems Applied Intelligence team (née Detica) that did the build and architecture, along with the great folks at We Are Experience and Attenda.
1. "Welcome to our new site" wastes space. 2. The logo and menu bar wastes space. 3. "Tube, DLR and London Overground" wastes space.
Then I click on "Special service" for London Overground (the black text on dark orange is hard to read btw) and ... I get an entirely wasted page that tells me nothing about the Overground because the crap at the top has pushed the actual information I'm after under the fold.
Also, the "add any further feedback" text box has issues under Mobile Safari once you try and go back to edit text - I can't add any more text once I've deleted anything. If I close and open the feedback pane, I can type again. It's a bit confusing!
Minor quibbles really but I'd say it was only half responsive, not fully there.
Cannot do a search. The menu items are on top of it.
Cannot close the information box about cookies.
Overall, a very good initiative.
http://blog.tfl.gov.uk/2014/03/12/why-a-new-website-but-no-a...
Does anyone know where it gets data on walking routes?
There is a train station near where I used to live. Google Maps correctly identifies it as being 11 mins' away by foot. The TfL site thinks it's 23 mins away by bus, so never includes it in any suggested routes, instead showing my multiple-leg journeys by bus and tube.
Is there a place to report errors or 'I found a faster route'?
Edit: You also might get some mileage out of setting your walking speed to "Fast" and selecting "Routes with fewest changes"
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-journey/results?IsAsync=true&Jp...
On the old site, I could find the last tube out from Location to Middle Stop, but then get to Middle Stop and realise that the line from Middle Stop to Home is now shut. Hope they fix that now.
[1] - http://idos.cz
off topic: this is the FIRST site I've seen that used Samsung mobile image to show the responsiveness of the page instead of an iPhone or an iPad
edit: the favicon is not right, when the page is not in focus, you'll see pieces of the white-background left (i have OCD)
Another minor quibble - print the rules for passwords before people submit an invalid one. And if you do force a resubmit, persist all the form settings or you're going to annoy me^Wpeople.
Very happy to see that TFL have done as much as they have though. Lovely to see :)
Edit: ha, beat me to it alex :)
(I'm part of we are experience)
Having a fully responsive version means that users will navigate the site on mobile devices where data networks are not always good.
Do you intend to reduce the JavaScript payload?
