A very well designed journey planner
Most cities now develop their journey planners, to help people find their way around using various modes of transport. London’s TfL Journey Planner is useful but the best i have found and used so far is Brighton’s Journey On.
Not only it provides you with a neat table detailing the various options (walking, cycling, public transport, car), but it also gives estimated cost, estimated carbon emissions, and the amount of calories you would burn.
And if all this information above wasn’t enough, it also provides you with an altitude profile for the cycling option, which is really useful as Brighton is very hilly.
The design is simple and effective. The main colours are black and white, with an additional touch of purple pink used for links and part of the logo. Additionally, while the website carries out the search, it displays a funny or surprising anecdote or statistics about transport underneath the customary “loading” icon.
An example of simple, beautiful, user friendly and efficient design for all other journey planners websites to be benchmarked against.
Edit (17th April 2008):
Following comments from reader Mark Aberdour from Bricycles (Brighton, Hove and District Cycling Group at http://www.bricycles.org.uk/), it appears that there is a problem with the backend of the website, whereby it doesn’t always display the best cycling route, and recommends cycling routes similar to the car routes. This is clearly an issue and indicates that all the design efforts have gone into the front end, which is really neat and user friendly, but isn’t actually efficient at delivering the information people go there for in the first place.
What about your city’s journey planner? Is it user friendly and accurate?
Additional resources:
Brighton’s Journey Planner http://www.journeyon.co.uk/
Legible London http://www.legiblelondon.info
Comments
Comment from Natalie
Time: April 15, 2008, 3:37 pm
Mark, interesting comments.
I don’t live in Brighton at the moment (though i am planning to move there within the next few months) so i have only ever used the journey planner for public transport and walking.
Do you find it gives wrong routes for cycling on a regular basis?
Comment from Mark Aberdour
Time: April 16, 2008, 8:17 am
It does tend to take you the most direct route as the crow flies rather than exploiting available cycle routes which tend to be planned to go the most direct **and easiest** route. My previous example was heading North to South, but if we go West to East from the Station to the Marina, for example, the best route would be straight down Queens Road to the Seafront (all downhill) then west along the brilliant seafront cycle route (NCN Route 2 - totally flat and traffic free). But JO takes you East directly across town, including some very busy roads with no cycle lanes and a very harsh climb East of Grand Parade. Even though the cycle routes are mapped as coloured lines in JO, it seems that the software is not intelligent enough to use these when recommending cycling routes, it just gives identical route recommendations to both cycles and cars alike.
Comment from Angharad Parry
Time: September 3, 2008, 7:50 am
Not sure if you’ve looked at the latest Journey On feature but as we’re developing a similar site for Plymouth I’d be interested to hear what you think of the gradient profile given on cycling/ walking routes. It now includes the ability for you to select whether you want the shortest route or the flattest…
Comment from Mark Aberdour
Time: April 15, 2008, 1:03 pm
You are right, brighton is very hilly. My cycle commute is from Patcham in North Brighton all the way to the seafront following the NCN Route 20 cycle lane which is slighly downhill all the way, not an uphill stretch in sight. However Journey On tells me that as a cyclist I should veer away from this official NCN Route and instead tackle the biggest, longest, steepest hill in North Brighton (Braybon Avenue) on my way in to town. This journey planner is not fit for purpose, and being a Council website and a Cycling Demonstration Town I think that’s a real shame. Nice design though, I agree.