
Transport for London – New responsive website - mcdowall
http://www.tfl.gov.uk
======
vanderZwan
This is really good.

To give an international perspective, this is what I was used to as a Dutch
person:

[http://9292.nl/](http://9292.nl/)

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...](http://www.reseplaneraren.skanetrafiken.se/querypage_adv.aspx?language=sv)

I've noticed that I used public transport on long distances a lot more when
the website was a lot easier to use.

~~~
iamtew
I have to agree on that, however I moved in the opposite way.

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 :)

~~~
symmetricsaurus
It really depends on where you are in Sweden. Different regions have different
public transport providers.

Never thought I would defend Västtrafik(public transport in south west Sweden)
but here I go.

Their webpage [http://www.vasttrafik.se/](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.

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idlemind
Looks fantastic! There is also an API and documentation available at
[http://api.tfl.gov.uk](http://api.tfl.gov.uk).

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.

~~~
Osmium
Is there an API for Oyster balances yet? (or planned?) I ask as someone
slightly concerned by popular apps which seem to rely on you giving some third
party your TFL login for them to scrape it for you...

Very happy to see that TFL have done as much as they have though. Lovely to
see :)

~~~
alexbilbie
Not yet, both myself and Tom Loosemoore (deputy director of Government Digital
Services) have queried about this here -
[http://blog.tfl.gov.uk/2014/03/12/why-a-new-website-but-
no-a...](http://blog.tfl.gov.uk/2014/03/12/why-a-new-website-but-no-app-
part-2/)

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zimpenfish
It formats nicely on Mobile Safari but ...

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.

cf [http://bit.ly/1gJ64ri](http://bit.ly/1gJ64ri)

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.

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pdevr
Really appreciate the initiative. Need to point out a couple of things (using
an Android phone):

Cannot do a search. The menu items are on top of it.

Cannot close the information box about cookies.

Overall, a very good initiative.

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dpina
Looks good, website is more responsive than the existing one. Quick wins I've
noticed on my 2min browsing: 1 Auto fill on the "to" and "from" boxes. 2
website looks clean and responsive 3 The future feature "avoid zone 1". Plenty
of people are limited with the travel card deals and will enjoy this feature 4
"View on map", thank God I really didn't like having to download a pdf every
time I wanted to check a trip

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sabret00the
They had it on a subdomain for ages. Glad it's finally the main site. It's
actually beautiful. Now if only they'd redesign the Oyster bit too.

~~~
alexbilbie
TFL's comment on this - "To make it easier to use Oyster on your smartphone we
will be launching a mobile-friendly version later this year."

[http://blog.tfl.gov.uk/2014/03/12/why-a-new-website-but-
no-a...](http://blog.tfl.gov.uk/2014/03/12/why-a-new-website-but-no-app-
part-2/)

------
rahimnathwani
This site is really nice to use.

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'?

~~~
idlemind
Can you send me a link to the journey planner results? There is no specific
way to contribute improvements to the results, best way for now would be to
leave feedback through the form in the title bar of the new website.

Edit: You also might get some mileage out of setting your walking speed to
"Fast" and selecting "Routes with fewest changes"

~~~
rahimnathwani
Choosing 'fast walking' and 'routes with fewest changes' sort of worked, but
it still shows a walking route which doesn't use the pedestrian-only bridge:

[http://www.tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-
journey/results?IsAsync=true&Jp...](http://www.tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-
journey/results?IsAsync=true&JpType=publictransport&From=Rutland+Close%2C+Merton+%28London%29&FromGeolocation=&ToGeolocation=&ViaGeolocation=&To=Tulse+Hill&TimeIs=departing&Date=20140328&Time=1145&Via=&NationalSearch=false&JourneyPreference=leastinterchange&Mode=tube&Mode=bus&Mode=dlr&Mode=river-
bus&Mode=tram&Mode=cable-car&Mode=overground&Mode=national-
rail&Mode=coach&AccessibilityPreference=norequirements&WalkingSpeed=fast&MaxWalkingMinutes=40&CyclePreference=AllTheWay&SavePreferences=false&FromId=-0.17270861753%2C51.41920719351&ToId=1001298)

~~~
jeffreygruber
Even with the fast walking, they seem to have employed a slow walker to
measure this. My walk to work I can do in 35 mins, which isn't at a terribly
fast pace, but even TfL's fastest option reports it as taking 44mins
[http://www.tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-
journey/results?IsAsync=true&Jp...](http://www.tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-
journey/results?IsAsync=true&JpType=publictransport&From=n1+6hq&FromGeolocation=&ToGeolocation=&ViaGeolocation=&To=se1+2xb&TimeIs=departing&Date=20140328&Time=1445&Via=&NationalSearch=false&JourneyPreference=leasttime&Mode=tube&Mode=bus&Mode=dlr&Mode=river-
bus&Mode=tram&Mode=cable-car&Mode=overground&Mode=national-
rail&Mode=coach&AccessibilityPreference=norequirements&WalkingSpeed=fast&MaxWalkingMinutes=40&CyclePreference=AllTheWay&SavePreferences=false)

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hoektoe
Interesting to note that they minified the generated html. Other than that ,
well done just on face value

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swalsh
This is great, much better than what my city offers:
[http://www.mbta.com/](http://www.mbta.com/) I really don't know how a company
literally focused on their customers being "mobile" can't have a decent mobile
website.

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neil_s
My main use case is checking what time the last tube home is, which I can't
yet find.

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.

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codemunki
Developer Tip,[http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tube-dlr-
overground/status/](http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tube-dlr-overground/status/) on this
page is an SVG version of the tube map...

~~~
idlemind
Surprised more people haven't noticed there's an SVG tube map right there!
Bonus: it's tagged with the station Naptan codes and TransXChange route ids
that are the API's currency.

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smcl
This is pretty neat. We've had one[1] in Czech Rep. for a while but the UI is
a little busy (and the adverts are a pain) so this TfL one is much nicer

[1] - [http://idos.cz](http://idos.cz)

~~~
antjanus
plus the fact that the site refreshes at almost every click on the menu. If
you have tabs, use them the right way! :)

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scope
doesn't disappoint on the title 'responsive', great!

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)

[http://i.imgur.com/z0LAmnJ.png](http://i.imgur.com/z0LAmnJ.png)

~~~
alphakappa
The hero image shows a lady using an iPhone. Where is the samsung image?

~~~
boristhespider
[http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/a-new-tfl-
website/](http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/a-new-tfl-website/)

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bananas
Wonderful - must better than the old site and has what I want on the front
page both on the desktop and my phone.

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jeffreygruber
This is really great! So much more useful (and aesthetically pleasing) than
their old site!

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kjjw
Wow, one of the best responsive designs I've seen.

