Does it Work?

In about five hours, Transdev Yellow Buses will launch its brand new journey planner. We tested it to see how it performed, alongside that for Traveline South West.

You couldn’t tell easy & straightforward journeys apart. Both Travelinesw and TYB gave the same results though, on occasion, there were naturally Wilts & Dorset alternatives offered by Travelinesw.

We then made matters a little complicated, with a raft of journeys from a postcode near the dead centre of Bournemouth, its crematorium, located to the north east of the town in the pleasant Queen’s Park area, and sufficiently off the bus network to be awkward. Nothing TYB’s planner threw up was unexpected, and the walking options—a bit of a walk or as little as possible—came into their own. Traveline had the benefit of selecting some W&D journeys.

On a journey from Queen’s Park to the University, TYB always came up, among other options, with using its 3 and 6, changing at Coach House Place. Fair enough, that’s logical and saves going into town. This was never an option under Travelinesw, though you could try W&D’s M1 (paralleling the 3 over this section) and TYB’s 6. No mention of the 3, keeping your journey within one day ticket. This just illustrates some of the foibles of journey planning.

We also tried to see whether the schooldays only 0910 TYB Lychett Minster to Bournemouth was available. If it was, it did a good job of hiding itself. No real matter, though, as this is a one return journey service that backfills after a school movement.

Nice output that lets you easily modify your advance search options. Change the parameters and the TYB journey planner will give you other options for the same search time of 1105. Notice at the bottom of each, immediately above Feedback, it suggests that you can try searching again at 1045, 1055, 1105 and 1115

Everything else went smoothly. On occasion, the planner came up with an oddity, though. Like the journey from Bearwood (north east of Bournemouth, actually in Poole borough) to Littledown. Here, Travelinesw won, with a total journey time of 54 minutes, changing at Wallisdown and using the 6 and 26, with a 13 minute walk to finish. TYB? Same thing, 6 and 26, but changing at Winton onto the 39 into Bournemouth and back out again on the 39 (this to minimise waiting, no doubt). But, if you need to go into Bournemouth anyway, why not try the 6 all the way into town and out again on the 39? Neither planner thought of that.

It’s nevertheless a thumbs up for TYB’s planner. Might we now see this sort of off-the-front-page technology appearing elsewhere?

i Visit TYB’s homepage from 1200 to test the journey planner yourself