Organizing bus routes

[Fleet Lists]

Thanks for that Stu.

And to add to my post yesterday.
With my suggestions there to put all links in the home page, the large file which currently includies all routes for al areas, would no longer be required. I have found it very confusing with the sequence appearing all over the place. All that would be needed would be the individual region files as appears the case for Canadian cities.

[doconnor]

Breaking Transport for NSW buses into separate links would not be easy.

I have changes the ordering so to has Sydney by twitter area, then by the other Bus Networks, then the School buses by twitter area. I'm open to grouping the Sydney using a different method. I have fixed the links at the top so they work when some routes are not running and the link is removed if not of the routes in its group is running.

[Fleet Lists]

Much better - I particularly like the headings for each group in the big file - this makes it much clearer. I think the Sydney grouping is OK as it is now. And I am happy not to split the four outer areas any further. And I particularly like the temporary routes.

A few comments:-
These are at the top of the list without any headings:
The first two should be "Temporary routes" like 5A, 5B and 8
2-Glebe to Sydney Olympic Park via Gladesville
7-Cronulla to Sydney Olympic
The next four should be under Central Coast where they are also shown. The reason for the duplication is that they are operated by two different operators who both have entries for these routes. Is there any way we can suppress them at the top of the list?
78-Lake Haven to Tuggerah via Sparks Rd, Warnervale and Wadalba
80-Lake Haven to Tuggerah via Lake Haven Dr and Pacific Hwy
91-Lake Haven to Norah Head via Toukley and Noraville (Loop Service)
98-Lake Haven to Chain Valley Bay via Blue Haven (Loop Service)
Another duplication - I dont know why. Another suppression?
N70-Penrith to City Town Hall (Night Service)

Nightride routes
N10 and N11 are South and not East - Can this be corrected?
N50 and N60 are South West and not North West - Can this be corrected?
N70 and N81 are West and not North West - Can this be corrected?

School routes.
I notice that 'school buses North' not only contains Sydney North routes but also Hunter and Central Coast school routes. That does not worry me particularly but can we change the tag and link to it to include "including Hunter and Central Coast" which would make it a lot clearer?
Similarly for the Sydney West routes can we have a reference to "including Blue Mountains"?
And for the Sydney South routes that it includes the Illawarra school routes?

No school routes have been active while I have been looking at this. Hopefully they will be OK when I have a look at the afternoon school routes later today.

[Fleet Lists]

It was noticed that for a while both links for duplicated route 98 mentioned previously, were active so it may not be a case of deleting one of the duplicated entries but including both under Central Coast to ensure that that either one or both are shown there if active.

Had a better look at school routes with a lot active this afternoon and at this stage no further comments.

Routes 420 and 420N are not really Eastern Routes. They start just inside the East and it is proposed that later this year even this will be removed, when they will become purely Inner West routes.

The only other comment at this stage relates to the home page where "Transport for NSW (buses) including Sydney" should be expanded to say "Transport for NSW (buses) including Sydney, Blue Mountains, Illawarra, Central Coast and Hunter" to show that it covers more than just Sydney.

[Fleet Lists]

Further info on N70
The entry in North West shows all trips except the 12.15 from Town Hall and the 1.59 from Penrith which would be operated by the same bus and are shown in the second entry currently at the top of the list. It appears that both entries should be shown in western section. Possibly trips operated from different depots of Hillbus or possible the 12.15 trips by Forest Coaches which is also part of CDC.

Further temporary routes 11M and 12M have appeared shown as scheduled for 5 and 6 June. An alert appeared on Transport for NSW website for this yesterday but not shown today. There are also timetables listed for these on the Transport for NSW website but there are no actual timetables present with just a link to the trip finder so it is not known who will be operating these trips. Trip details are shown in TransSee.

As I am digging deeper into the TransSee data I have found that all temporary Olympic Park routes shown are scheduled to operate on 28 June and 5 July but can not find what is scheduled for the Showground on those dates. But not yet for 14 July which is the date for the State of Origin match referred to by Stu above.

Slow start.It has been noticed that when first loading https://www.transsee.ca/routelist?a=tfnsw for NSW or refreshing the page it takes 12 to 14 seconds which is very much slower that other pages. Why is this so?

[doconnor]

The ones at the top without any heading are missing data in the Transport Routes API.

For now I wasn't planning to making fixes for individual routes for now. I might if usage increases.

I don't want to make the links at the top any longer then necessary.

I have improved the loaded speed of the Route List, but it has 50-100 times the number of routes of typical North American agencies.

[Fleet Lists]

The speed seems to be much better now - yes I realise that the files here would be much bigger than I had seen in other locations - have not seen such a large list o school routes anywhere.

Could you advise what specific information is missing form Transport Routes API for the routes at the top of the list? I suspect I know what it is for some of the routes.

Route 861 appeared for the first time at the top of the list this morning - it is due to operate from 30 May to 27 June. Nobody here seemed to know about such a route when it first came up but a couple of hours later it appeared on Transport Info without a timetable but trip finder information is now present. Still no information as to why this route which will only operate for about 4 weeks.

It will be interesting to see what usage will be - I dont expect it to be very high which means there wont be any updates.

[iamthouth]

N70 is shared between Hillsbus and Blue Mountains Transit, two different regions, hence duplication.
78, 80, 91, 98 are shared between Coastal Liner (HVB) and Busways, hence duplication.

N10 N11 are operated from Region 9, hence why it appears as east not south. N50 N60 N70 are operated by Hillsbus, hence why it shows as North West, but if possible to manually tweak, the suggestions above seem sensible.

If you want to speed up load time, you could try to supress the school routes, loading public routes first. Many school routes are a single trip only, and numerous.

[Fleet Lists]

Thanks for that information. I knew Hillsbus was one of the operators and I had thought Forest Coach lines might have been the second one but Blue Mountains Transit makes more sense.

I was aware of the Busways/Coatal liner duplication. I was involved with Transport for NSW when they tried to create one timetable for each of the four routes so that only only one timetable would be issued for each - never totally satisfactory as each of the timetables still contains some incorrect information.

The load time has already improved considerable to a level which I think is now acceptable.

[doconnor]

I have implement your suggestion of switching Transport for NSW to the 5 areas.

[Fleet Lists]

That is a big improvement.
I note that the duplicate Central Coast routes now all show in the correct location which solves that anomaly.
The only real anomaly I found found so far is route N70 which has a duplicate entry in the Blue Mountains Transit in the Blue Mountains area but does not operate in the Blue Mountains but in Sydney West. The other N70 route still shows in Sydney North West but that is not as bad - like the other Nightride routes:
N10-Sutherland to City Town Hall (Night Service) to Sydney South
N11-Cronulla to City Town Hall (Night Service) to Sydney South
Sydney North West
N50-Liverpool to City Town Hall (Night Service) to Sydney West
N60-Fairfield to City Town Hall (Night Service) to Sydney West
N81-Parramatta to City Town Hall via Sydney Olympic Park (Night Service) to Sydney West
and
420-Eastgardens to Burwood via Sydney Airport & Rockdale to Sydney Inner West
420N-Eastgardens to Burwood via Sydney Airport & Rockdale (Night Service) to Sydney Inner West
which can probably be lived with.

Also at the top of Newcastle route 1611 which appears to be a school route shows in the normal routes but I suspect this is an error in the input as it also shows as a normal route in Transport for NSW. I will see if I can follow this up. The route schedule shows it as not operating during school holidays.

In Sydney new route 861 which started only this week Transsee shows as not operating during school holidays - shows as a full time route in Transport Info. I will confirm in tripfinder when it starts to show the next lot of holidays.

[Fleet Lists]

A link to Transsee https://www.transsee.ca/#AU has been added to Links to Transport Enthusiast Sites https://www.busaustralia.com/links2.php