Nokia Betalabs

+1

For London the mentioned services are a vital part of public transport and without support for these the app is basically useless

Thank you for your feedback.

For London, the transport agency we have signed up for currently is Transport for London and all services under TfL are available on the app, including DLR and river ferries, e.g. Piccadilly Circus to London City Airport, or Embankment Pier to Tower Bridge.

We are constantly adding transport data for new cities and expanding the coverage of existing one, so in time, these missing transport services will be included in our app in due course.

Len,

Thanks for your reply, but what you say doesn't seem to tally with what's actually happening.

Take the simple case of a journey from Cutty Sark DLR station to Canary Wharf DLR station. On the TfL website it is a 10 min journey purely on the DLR as you would expect. However on Nokia Transport Beta, it is a 30min journey(16 min walk to East Ferry Road/Westferry Road, followed by 9min bus ride on D7 route to Canary Wharf Station/Bank St, followed by 5 min walk to Canary Wharf DLR station)!! What gives?

Another example is a journey from Cutty Sark DLR to Shoreditch House, Ebor St, E1. On the TfL website it is a 32min journey on DLR to Shadwell, changing to the East London Line Overground at Shadwell and then getting-off at Shoreditch High St station. Whereas on Nokia Transport beta it takes about 1 hour walking to Greenwich Church St, catching 188 bus to Canada Water Bus station, walking to Canada Water underground, catching the Jubilee Line to London Bridge, walking to Borough high St and then catching bus 149 to Shoreditch High st/Bethnal greeen road. Again WHY?

Congratulations. You and user A Barton are the winners of 'Beta Tester of the Week Award' for correcting spotting a real problem! Sadly, there's no prize for this award.

Seriously though, we have managed to track down the problem to how the data from TfL are processed and converted into our internal format and during this conversion some line data were dropped off. We are looking into why this happened and once it is fixed, the missing data will be published when the data for London gets refreshed.

Going back to your problem, parts of the north-bound direction of the Lewisham Extension of the DLR line were missing (from Lewisham to Heron Quays), hence you weren't able to find routes with DLR from Cutty Sark going north. However, you should be able to go the other way, e.g. from Shoreditch down to Cutty Sark.

Thanks for your feedback and please keep on testing.

I'm glad my testing efforts have identified genuine bugs and here are some more for your attention :p

Staying with the Cutty Sark DLR to Shoreditch House example,

1. You're right that the journey the other way (Shoreditch House to Cutty Sark DLR) does use the DLR, but as stated in my original post IT STILL DOES NOT MAKE ANY USE OF THE EAST LONDON LINE unlike the TfL website.

2A. On the 2nd screen (the one showing "2 changes, 58 min total") the walk from Cutty Sark DLR to Greenwich Church St is shown as taking 4 min (200ft), whereas when you drill down to the 3rd screen for the street map for this segment, it shows 1 min (201ft). WHY THE DIFFERENCE IN TIMING?

2B. Similarly for the journey segment London Bridge Station to London Bridge Bus station, the 2nd screen shows 2 min (100ft) whereas the 3rd screen shows 1 min (240ft) WHY THE DIFFERENCE IN TIMING & DISTANCE

These timing and distance inconsistencies seem to be very widespread.

3. Finally as stated in my original post Nokia Transport Beta DOES NOT MAKE USE OF ANY OVERGROUND RAIL SERVICES unlike TfL website. Just take the simple example of Lewisham Rail Station to London Bridge Rail Station. Instead of a direct journey on Southeastern Rail service taking 9 mins, Nokia Transport recommends a 44 min journey travelling by bus route 47 and walking at both ends.

Thanks again for your feedback.

We are aware of the issues 2A and 2B and these timing issues will be resolved in due course.

For 1 and 4, unlike TfL website (which shows transport services above and beyond the TfL itself, we are limited (for the moment) to the actual services provided by TfL.

Our Backend Data Team is actively sourcing the missing transport data from the remaining services, including:-
1 - Overland rail companies (e.g. First Capital, Cross Country, First Great Western, Soutwest Trains, Southeastern Rail, etc.)
2 - Intercity coaches (National Express from Victoria to Hammersmith for example)
3 - Any other ‘Private’, i.e. non TfL, company transport.

Just got news that Transport has been release to marketplace today. In the current form and without the said support for additional services this is obviously a pretty much useless application for the greater London area as average travel time is around 2-3 times the actual travel time if proper routing is available.

No doubt this will result in most people either ignoring the app and your hard work so far and possibly a load of extra work for contact centres who will have to deal with the annoyed or angry customers who are told in the marketing blah blah they get a first rate app while it is less then substandard for the mentioned area for sure.

Another missed opportunity IMO and with the horribly bad beta testing of another major app (Drive 2.0 has some seriously stupendous bugs on release) this makes the average quality standard for Nokia Apps poor at best.

too bad!

Fully agree about the serious negative impression that these unresolved issues may create for what is potentially a huge differentiator for Nokia.

I hope Nokia views this as a top priority issue and assigns the necessary resources. In the meantime I feel it would be wise to be clear and highlight all known issues at launch-time in order to manage user expectations.

Moderator joined from <a href="/apps/nokia-transport-for-windows-phone">Nokia Transport Beta</a>/<a href="/apps/nokia-transport-for-windows-phone/discussion">Discussion</a>/No London Overground covarage?

Putting in Watford High Street the app directs me to walk 41 minutes to Watford Metroline underground station.

There is a London overground station in Watford High Street

Is the London overground network not covered?

Also it seems a number of bus routes are ignored. Example is X26 which is a fast service between Croydon and Kingston. When _at a stop_ and actually on that bus Nokia Transport will have me get off, wait 10 minutes, take another bus then walk and another bus..

Seriously?

Ok I have confirmed that the app does not use London Overground, which is part of the same network as London Underground.

Not only that but it does not include main line trains either

At the moment all trips I have entered have been twice as long as they need to be.

This is a major problem and needs addressing before the app is released

Thank you all for the report of missing overground trains. I can only reiterate what has been said before in that we only have data for services provided by TfL currently, since that is the contract we have with them.

To serve London commuters using overground trains to the outskirts of London means getting agreement from not one or two but all rail companies that operate in and out of London, which in reality is practically the whole of British Rail network, and it does take time to get agreements from all parties concerned to use their data.

It would have mean even worse user experience if we provided data from one rail company but not the other, especially if they operate out of the same rail station, e.g. East Coast, Hull Trains and First Cap Connect that operate from Kings Cross.

So, in the interim, the situation in London is not ideal for those users who commute to/from outskirts of London.

@paulheu: The issue with missing Bus services is a known data problem and will be resolved when London data is updated. Currently, London data set is in a testing phase and we have a list of new routes that have been added, including the X26 bus that you highlighted. Can you let us know which other bus routes that you said were ignored? I'd like to check them against our new data set.

Cheers

Now I have tried Watford to Bushey and despite there being 8 London buses an hour to Bushey it has directed me to walk or get the London Overground train that it did not seem to know was there on the last search

@len_aye Thanks for clarifying the situation again. It is good to know you are working on the problem although, as others have said, the lack of Overground and commuter rail services basically makes this app useless for a vast majority of londoners (which is a shame as the app looks great - I love the visual representation of the different journey options).

I think part of the confusion is that most people won't understand that TfL doesn't provide the full routing information for these missing services. This is not helped by the fact that the TfL website itself *does* provide routes that cover these services. In other words, when someone sees that TfL is a provider of data, they will assume the app will serve up the same routes as the TfL website (or other apps, that use TfL data, such as "London Travel").

If nothing else, you should probably make it clear in the list of cities and providers that TfL does *not* provide Overground or National Rail information.

Fingers crossed that you can get agreements with the other providers soon!

Ed

Moderator joined from <a href="/apps/nokia-transport-for-windows-phone">Nokia Transport Beta</a>/<a href="/apps/nokia-transport-for-windows-phone/bugreport">Bug reports</a>/London missing transport methods

London works great for tube and buses, but it does not have commuter trains (for example to go from Clapham Junction to Waterloo it's 10 minutes by train but I get a ridiculous bus & tube long journey), as well as DLR network.
Interface is great though, so with the missing feeds included will be awesome.
Have a look at JourneyPro app on the marketplace which has all London transport methods, and is the one I'll continue to use until you can add this :)