National Routeing Guide
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@blakeyrat said:
Does anybody actually use that, or does everybody just ignore it?
I was shown this today, before mentioning this thread.
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But privatisation has made British railways so much more efficient, and only requiring five times more government subsidy than when they were nationalised!
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@SteelCamel said:
Now, being programmers, I'm sure that writing a manual that lists all the ways from A to B
in a usable and unambiguous format wouldn't be beyond us. Unfortunately the book that was created is diffcult to use and frequently ambiguousis insane. You want a well-written computer program to handle that. Fortunately, most of the time it agrees with common sense and you don't need to look at it - and most people don't.FTFY. Of course, since this system would be developed by either a government, its contractors/subcontractors, or companies to which the government sold a frustration it didn't want to deal with any longer, it wouldn't be well-written. That doesn't change the fact that the problem's too complicated to leave it up to your typical commuter to handle via a book, and far too complicated to leave it up to the typical person who is willing to work for what these companies are willing to pay for a ticket seller.
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@tgape said:
FTFY. Of course, since this system would be developed by either a government, its contractors/subcontractors, or companies to which the government sold a frustration it didn't want to deal with any longer, it wouldn't be well-written.
Read: It would be outsourced to and by Capita, with a 10-figure budget, which it would overrun by a factor of at least 200%, and should the code be completed, it would be less efficient to use than trying to read the NRG.
@tgape said:
You want a well-written computer program to handle that.
Given the rules are all route-specific, how would the specifications for the code be specified? The only way I can imagine is through a document approximately isomorphic to the NRG. And if you're preparing such a document, and it's sufficiently rarely used that it will take more time to develop than the time it saves in operation, then what's the point in going the extra step of developing code that will almost certainly not give the same output?
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@Watson said:
@PJH said:
@fennec said:
Apparently "routing" means something else (though given this guide, it would probably still be appropriate).British spelling
Erm - no. It's not. It may be ATOC's spelling, but the vast majority of the populace (who can spell) don't spell 'routing' that way.and for the record: it's pronounced 'rooting' not 'rowting' you halfwits.
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@homsar said:
Read: It would be outsourced to and by Capita, with a 10-figure budget, which it would overrun by a factor of at least 200%, and should the code be completed, it would be less efficient to use than trying to read the NRG.
My, you're an optimist!
@homsar said:
@tgape said:
You want a well-written computer program to handle that.
Given the rules are all route-specific, how would the specifications for the code be specified? The only way I can imagine is through a document approximately isomorphic to the NRG. And if you're preparing such a document, and it's sufficiently rarely used that it will take more time to develop than the time it saves in operation, then what's the point in going the extra step of developing code that will almost certainly not give the same output?
If the program were loaded on to the self-service ticket stations, as well as the systems used by the ticketing agents, it would be used by millions of people every day. Sure, some of the routes aren't going to be used very often - but those probably aren't the routes with rules attached to them. The routes with rules may not be the most commonly used routes, but if a route is used only ten times per year, why make a rule about it?
The vast majority of the complexity of the system is entering all of the station locations, and how they're connected, by rail, by road, and by sidewalk. This, by the way, means Google's probably in one of the best positions to do it right, as they've almost certainly already gotten how all the roads and sidewalks connect to the UK rail stations.
As far as the actual implementing of each of the rules, I would suspect (as an impartial and ignorant outsider) that most of the rules were made by the use of more general principles. That is, rather than arbitrarily pick on people wanting to travel from Selby to Doncaster, they probably identified York as an overloaded routeing point, and identified the Selby to Doncaster/Doncaster to Selby trip as one that had one or more viable routes besides going through York, and had sufficient traffic that moving those people to the other route(s) would significantly ease the York overload.
If that's the case, then many such restrictions could be handled automatically with QoS-ish code. You code for the *reason* for the restriction, not the restriction itself.
Assuming that one is given a physical ticket of some sort, and it has markings on it to indicate when and where you paid and where you're going, it shouldn't be too difficult to extend this to also include a list of the stations where you'll be changing trains. The ideal system would have the ability to list a few alternate routes as well. (Note: if there's dozens of possible routes, most of those routes should probably not make it onto the ticket: showing more than, say, three routes could be OK, but the value in doing so is probably insufficient to justify a larger ticket to have enough space for all the printing. Also, one doesn't want the ticket to be so busy as to be incomprehensible.)
On the other hand, it's entirely possible that the restriction is in place, because someone at the rail companies in charge of the York routeing point dislikes a particular person who lives in Selby and works in Doncaster. Or it could be a prejudicial thing. In either of these cases, I feel sympathy for most Brits, and offer y'all my condolences. (That having been said, no such sympathy would be directed at the management of the companies who own the British railways, nor any of the various stodgy British managers who have done such a wonderful job holding the UK back. Of course, I would still sympathize with the various theoretical stodgy British managers who have been aiding the UK in the advancements it has made - if any such people actually exist.)
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@derula said:
I like trains.
Heads up, all. Those of you who haven't already done so may now flip derula's anorak bit.
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@ais523 said:
I also think that it's theoretically possible to end up with two stations that it's illegal to travel between via any route at all, without a specific exception making it legal to do so
Possibly Frodsham-Runcorn (as shown on [url=http://getamap.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/getamap/jsp/map_print.jsp?mapX=351057&mapY=379970&zoomLevel=5&isNI=&mapAction=zoomabs&isGeo=y]this map[/url]). As Frodsham is associated with "Runcorn Group", and Runcorn [i]is[/i] "Runcorn Group", the permitted route is the shortest distance from the origin to the destination over which a regular scheduled passenger train service operates. Unfortunately, none of the trains which use the Halton Curve (the connection from the line from Frodsham to the line to Runcorn) stop in Frodsham.
If you ignored Frodsham's association with Runcorn, you could use an indirect route via Liverpool. In the real world, most people would catch a 'bus instead.
@tgape said:If the program were loaded on to the self-service ticket stations, as well as the systems used by the ticketing agents, it would be used by millions of people every day.
I'm quite sure that it already exists. The ticket machines (both self-service and staff-operated ones) and the search engines on sites like [url]http://www.southernrailway.com/[/url] need something like that to sell people tickets which are valid for their journeys.
@tgape said:As far as the actual implementing of each of the rules, I would suspect (as an impartial and ignorant outsider) that most of the rules were made by the use of more general principles. That is, rather than arbitrarily pick on people wanting to travel from Selby to Doncaster, they probably identified York as an overloaded routeing point, and identified the Selby to Doncaster/Doncaster to Selby trip as one that had one or more viable routes besides going through York, and had sufficient traffic that moving those people to the other route(s) would significantly ease the York overload.
You're putting too much thought into it. York is north of Selby. Doncaster is south of Selby. There are plenty of Doncaster-Selby trains, so they don't want people travelling all the way to York without paying extra for the privilege.
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@__moz said:
If you ignored Frodsham's association with Runcorn, you could use an indirect route via Liverpool. In the real world, most people would catch a 'bus instead.
I believe you're right, you can't get a single ticket Frodsham->Runcorn that is valid for travel. The National Rail site backs you up, and requires you to get Frodhsam->Liverpool and Liverpool->Runcorn as separate tickets.
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@__moz said:
@tgape said:
If the program were loaded on to the self-service ticket stations, as well as the systems used by the ticketing agents, it would be used by millions of people every day.
I'm quite sure that it already exists. The ticket machines (both self-service and staff-operated ones) and the search engines on sites like http://www.southernrailway.com/ need something like that to sell people tickets which are valid for their journeys.From the comments, I gathered that the existing system falls short of the ideal in several respects, including not actually conveying one or more actual routes to get to the destination. Otherwise, much of this thread wouldn't exist. Unless, of course, the brits on this thread are TRWTF.
@__moz said:
@tgape said:
As far as the actual implementing of each of the rules, I would suspect (as an impartial and ignorant outsider) that most of the rules were made by the use of more general principles. <snip>
You're putting too much thought into it. York is north of Selby. Doncaster is south of Selby. There are plenty of Doncaster-Selby trains, so they don't want people travelling all the way to York without paying extra for the privilege.Oh. That should be quite easy to implement as a general rule in a routeing computer program. Please forgive me. My knowledge of England geography is very weak. I was trying to make a general statement taking one of the quoted rules, and that one seemed particularly easy to do because it only mentioned three points. For whatever reason, I didn't expect them to have to state a rule that you can't go the opposite direction of where your ticket says you're going, but specific to one pair of endpoints and one additional point not between the endpoints. I must have forgotten what site I was on. No wonder they apparently have over 700,000 rules...
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@tgape said:
For whatever reason, I didn't expect them to have to state a rule that you can't go the opposite direction of where your ticket says you're going, but specific to one pair of endpoints and one additional point not between the endpoints. I must have forgotten what site I was on. No wonder they apparently have over 700,000 rules...
Implementing that sort of rule is not as easy as it first sounds. Suppose that most of your travel is going east. Your destination is south of your origin. A stop along the way is north of your destination. Is this legal? Should it be? Difficult to say. Depends, presumably on how far you go north or south, I suppose, plus what the other alternatives are. So, yeah, it's a reasonable rule of thumb, but an implementation could easily be a bigger WTF than something with explicit rules defined.
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@homsar said:
@tgape said:
I'd go the whole 9 yards: starting with the original PDF, the pre-processor would extract text and create rules in forms of boolean equations of some kind. Then, given a query, a solver would produce possible solutions, possibly minimized in some way. It'd be an expert system, pretty much bog-standard but with an input extracted from a human readable form.FTFY. Of course, since this system would be developed by either a government, its contractors/subcontractors, or companies to which the government sold a frustration it didn't want to deal with any longer, it wouldn't be well-written.
Read: It would be outsourced to and by Capita, with a 10-figure budget, which it would overrun by a factor of at least 200%, and should the code be completed, it would be less efficient to use than trying to read the NRG.
@tgape said:
You want a well-written computer program to handle that.
Given the rules are all route-specific, how would the specifications for the code be specified? The only way I can imagine is through a document approximately isomorphic to the NRG. And if you're preparing such a document, and it's sufficiently rarely used that it will take more time to develop than the time it saves in operation, then what's the point in going the extra step of developing code that will almost certainly not give the same output?
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@__moz said:
'bus
'llock
