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Tuesday, 3 July 2018

TfL adds Pay As You Go fares to Journey Planner and Open Data feed

TfL have added prices to their Journey Planner to show commuters how much it would cost to travel on ‘Pay As You Go’ Oyster and contactless fares.


Customers using TfL's Journey Planner can now see how much a planned journey on public transport in London will cost, following recent upgrades to help make planning journeys easier for customers.

More than 2.5 million people a month use this (https://tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-journey) to plan their journeys on Tube, Bus and rail services in London.

The tool can calculate the quickest route from more than 225 million possible journey combinations on London's public transport, and automatically factors in any planned engineering works or disruption.

Results can also be filtered to only show step-free or accessible journeys or mode-specific journeys depending on customers' own preferences.

More informed choices

This latest update makes it easier for customers to see how much an adult 'pay as you go' fare is for any planned journey.

Customers can also view additional information to see how the fare is calculated, allowing them to make more informed choices about their journey.

Journey planner will also reflect the Mayor's Hopper fare, which offers unlimited bus and tram journeys within an hour for the price of one - helping to encourage more people to opt for buses to travel around the city.

Customers wishing to see fares information, including details of discounted fares and Travelcard options, can still do so using TfL's single fare finder at tfl.gov.uk/fares

Extensive range of TfL data feeds

As TfL's journey planning tool is powered directly from its open data API, the data will also be available to developers free of charge at tfl.gov.uk/open-data and joins an extensive range of TfL data feeds already available.

These include live travel information for all TfL services, cycling data and details of planned roadworks and live road incidents.

More than 675 mobile phone and online apps are already powered by TfL's open data, providing up-to-the-minute information and helping millions of people plan their journeys around London each day.

Improving walking options

Throughout 2018, TfL will be making further improvements to its journey planner, as well as providing new data to its open data feeds.

These include improving walking options within Journey Planner to better highlight when it is the quickest option and better accessibility information across the TfL network.

Ben Gammon, Head of Digital at TfL, said: 'This latest update to our ever-growing journey planning tool makes it easier for customers to know the cost of a journey before they travel.

'By being open and transparent with our data, we can strengthen our relationship with our customers, encouraging more people to use public transport and other more sustainable forms of transport such as walking and cycling.'

Innovative solutions

As part of its wider work to encourage innovative solutions to London's pressing problems, TfL has recently launched two challenges for start-ups as part of the Mayor's Civic Innovation Challenge.

The challenges will look for tech start ups to help encourage all people to walk more instead of using polluting forms of transport as well as solutions which can help TfL deliver homes across London, in line with the London Plan.

This aligns with the Mayor's target of 80% of all Londoners' journeys to be on foot, by cycle or by public transport by 2041.

For more information about TfL's open data feeds, please visit http://tfl.gov.uk/open-data

I don’t think Traveline (a journey planner website for Britain) would add fares to their journey planner because the bus services outside Greater London are deregulated which means the bus companies can set up their own fares and routes.

Here’s the London Bus news update from LOTS:

1) On 30th June RATP duly put into service numerous new E20Ds (DLE class) on routes 216, K2 and K3 and new B5LHs (VH class) onto route 105 taken over from Metroline. Staying at RATP and in spite of the garage allocation changes on routes 419 and H22, both have remained largely Dart SLF (DPS class). Indeed, with over fifty DPSs still in service, RATP has more than half of the remaining Dart SLF/ Pointers left in London service.

2) Stagecoach London has withdrawn the last few of its Dart SLFs, Plumstead route 291 being the last to use them. In the past week the first few of the new E40D “Smart Hybrid” buses arrived at West Ham. There will be 54 of these over the next three months, all for West Ham routes (mainly 241/330/474). They are not ‘hybrids’ in the accepted sense but have the Euro-VI 6.7-litre Cummins diesel engines plus an electric booster motor to produce ‘hybrid-like’ features. (‘Normal’ E40H hybrids have the 4.5 litre engine and a large battery pack).

3) Monday 2nd July sees the start of an unusual partnership in North Hertfordshire. Following the cut back by Arriva of route 331 from Royston back to Buntingford, HertsCC have sponsored a Centrebus route (18) to fil the gap, albeit not running so often. Convenient connections are scheduled at Buntingford and for through passengers an ‘Ermine Street Ticket’ can be bought to cover travel on both operators between Hertford and Royston.

This shows us that London is getting more and more diesel-electric hybrid buses for London bus services. I would of course prefer to see new orders for the zero-emission battery electric single deck and double deck buses for the new route contracts.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter and Google Plus by searching for @CLondoner92

Image attribution
By Sludge G - New CT Plus buses on the 26, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49459692
By Asim18 at the English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5220595