Stefan Lindbohm

New feature of the Railfinder journey planner live today: avoiding station changes that require a metro or similar

We now consider transfers in three levels: within a station, walking between nearby stations, and changes that require local transit.

If the fastest journey possible requires a worse change of stations, we calculate other options that have easier transfers. And we promote the easier journeys higher in the list of results.

For example going Brussels - Barcelona skipping Paris ⤵️

Feb 25 at 4:53pmIvory for iOS
Show threadJonas BoströmFeb 25
@stefanlindbohm Fantastisk funktion!
Show threadQuixoticgeekFeb 25
@stefanlindbohm that's awesome. How difficult would the option for only doing changes with level access boarding? Or only where there's a lift?
Show threadStefan LindbohmFeb 25

@quixoticgeek It’s certainly possible technically, but the issue is we don’t yet have the data for it. I think it should be available for many countries, although definitely not across all of Europe. So then comes also a UX challenge of what to do when data is missing to not give false promises.

We would love to build a reduced mobility mode with adaptations like this and more, but it will have to come later due to the complexity of it.

Show threadStefan LindbohmFeb 25
@quixoticgeek In certain ways it’s similar to having a bike transport search mode which is also on our list to do once we can handle the complexities of it :)
Show threadPeterBFeb 25
@stefanlindbohm this is an awesome improvement. Changing trains in Paris can be... interesting.
Show threadSimon WaldmanFeb 25

@stefanlindbohm I don't think I'd seen Railfinder before - this looks great, and I look forward to trying it for real the next time I'm off my island.

A question / possible bug, though: does it use a specific time zone, or always local? Because if it's always local, then this duration is wrong.

Show threadStefan LindbohmFeb 25

@swaldman Thanks! Let me know what you think once you tested for real.

We’re using local times but not accounting for timezones when calculating the duration, it’s a bug :). It’s on our list to fix. Times are correct and it doesn’t affect the overall itinerary though. Thanks for reporting!

Show threadLeif SamuelssonFeb 25

@stefanlindbohm

This is great! I hope we will eventually get multi-stop/via and avoids as well.

Show threadStefan LindbohmFeb 25

@leffe Eventually yes! It’s a bit more complex to build so that will have to be after we’ve sorted out reliability and coverage for tickets that we’re happy with.

In the meantime it’s possible to do it by searching each segment separately by clicking ”Add stop” after selecting a specific journey (but before checking out). This will combine all of them into one booking and it will merge tickets between searches if appropriate.