Journey Planning

Complex A to B planning made simple

We have been working with RATP Yellow Buses to launch an industry first; a transport operator with it’s own A to B journey planner.

The journey planning tool, which launched in beta to the public at the end of January 2011 after 13 months of collaboration, is the public facing part of a web based system built to publish the industry standard ATCO/GEO CIF file data format used by the majority of transport operators.

automatic timetable and route processing

Built across 2 dedicated servers, the tool is designed to process real time search requests using complex network algorithms, whilst providing uninterrupted access to timetable and route data, crucially through periods of peak use. The system manages scheduled updates to timetables, maps and routes, each time changes are made to the transport network. The system processes the data exported by the operator’s timetabling software, Omnitimes from Omnibus, and publishes it to an easy-to-use web interface, in a few short steps.

Intuitive user experience

The user experience team at Base have worked hard to ensure that the complexity of the processing is hidden by a very intuitive front end website.

Location relevant mobile apps

1st June 2011 saw us complete the live beta phase, during which automatically tagged feedback was collected from users. Their search results were dynamically logged and attached to their ratings and comments, as an integral part of the systems ongoing improvement. To coincide with the emergence from beta, we launched mobile apps on both the iPhone and Android platforms to compliment the desktop experience, allowing travellers to access location-relevant information whilst en-route.

Journey planning on your website, for your network

The whole system has been designed to hand operators themselves the ability to be able to offer journey planning on their networks – directly through their own websites, using data they’ve already generated from existing software packages. Due to the complexity and cost of development this hasn’t until now been possible.

But all of that is changing.

From our beloved cars, to modern public transport

At Base, we’ve been passionate about this project since we started learning the jargon back in 2009. We’re proud to be increasing public transport usage and pushing the boundaries of expectation in the industry. Ultimately we hope many more regional travellers will have access to the type of online facilities available to those in London and larger cities, and in an age of increasing personal environmental responsibility these tools will help to facilitate a regular shift from our beloved cars to modern public transport.