Archived: New website – 2 weeks since launch

It’s now been two weeks since our new site launched, and hopefully you’re getting used to the changes we’ve made. Behind the scenes, the team have been monitoring services and analysing feedback to log and prioritise fixes and improvements.

Shortly after launch we posted on this blog with replies to some of the most common questions we had received through your feedback. Here is an updated summary of the more recent feedback themes and what we’ve done about them, along with a site usage update.

  • Refund forms – some of you said it was hard to find the refund forms so we’ve now added a link to every page under the ‘More’ menu in the ‘Quick links’ section entitled ‘Replacements and refunds’.
  • Tube weekend closures – we know many people look for Tube weekend closures information and some are not sure how to find it in the new site. This information can be found at http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tube-dlr-overground/status/?when=weekend. We also have a planned works calendar at https://www.tfl.gov.uk/forms/12392.aspx and those who like the 6 month look ahead documents they are at http://www.tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/improvements-and-projects/tube-improvement/whats-the-plan. Journey Planner will route you round any closures, just make sure you have put in the correct date of your journey.
Planned Works
Tube weekend closures are available from the Status Updates page

  • Live arrivals and departures – we’ve had some intermittent issues with the new version of bus arrivals. For the time being we’re linking from the homepage to the service at http://m.countdown.tfl.gov.uk. You can still reach the new tools via the main menu under ‘Stations stops and piers’ or through ‘Nearby’ to get route information and maps along with bus, Tube and Overground live arrivals. It’s running pretty well but we’re going to monitor it a little longer and make some tweaks to further improve its resilience before changing the homepage link back to it.
  • Postcodes in Nearby – some people have found it annoying that you can only enter stations, stops and piers into Nearby. We’ll be introducing improvements next week which mean you can enter a postcode or address as well.
  • Timetables – in the new site we integrated timetables into every station or stop element and built a much better way of finding first and last Tubes. This is driven by an API into our Journey Planner which was having some problems which affected other areas of the site. We had to switch off the timetables element while we worked through the problem with our supplier. We think we’ve got it sorted now and we are testing to see if it’s resolved. We should be able to switch these timetable features back on in the next week. Until then if you want the ‘old school’ timetables you can get them at http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk – from the link to ‘timetables’ on the left of the screen.
  • Blackberry OS7 – some Blackberry devices do not correctly display the new bus arrivals content, showing an empty table, which is understandably frustrating for me (with my Bold 9790) and fellow Blackberry users on OS6 and OS7. This is because the Javascript library we use is not supported on those devices, which don’t have particularly capable browsers. By volume these devices make up less than 1% (and falling) of our traffic, but we’d like to fix this if we can. We’ll keep you posted on that one.

Website Traffic since launch

TfL, website, stats, traffic
Hourly visits to our website – weeks 1 and 2 since launch compared with a normal week.
  • 45.2 million pages have been viewed in 9.1 million visits from 5 million customers since launch.
  • Traffic peaked on Tuesday 25th March between 5-6pm when the site served over a quarter of a million page views.
  • The most popular content is the Home page with 4 million visits so far, followed by the Journey Planner results page (2.8 m visits)and the Tube status page (1.2 million visits).
  • We’re officially mobile! 53 per cent of visits since launch have come from mobile devices, increasing to over 70 per cent during the morning rush hour.
  • For the status pages, 59 per cent of visits have come from mobile devices, peaking at 80 per cent on Sunday 30th March between 6-7am.

71 Comments

  1. Thanks for the update, and for doing things like reinstating that tfl.gov.uk/check URL for weekend closures, which is much easier to remember than the URL you’ve included in this post!

    I’d like to report a couple of problems I suspect your changes may have caused for some apps which I’d come to rely on but are no longer being actively developed and stopped working at the time you went live. I wonder if there’s anything you can do to reinstate whatever API functionality they are calling.

    First and most importantly, the lamented dormant London Transport Pro app for Android offered a feature which, as far as I’m aware, was unique in Countdown-using apps: the ability to see the number plate of the buses which would be arriving, and then behind the scenes to use this (by tapping on that bus in the list) to see when that specific bus was expected to arrive at all stops in the 30-minute Countdown data window. This was brilliant for being able to arrive at a stop, tap a bus and get a decent idea of when you were likely to arrive at your destination – or indeed to be sitting on a bus and search within the app for the bus number plate (displayed inside all buses on signs on both decks) to get the same info.

    The other use for this functionality was to deduce how reliable Countdown was likely to be when waiting near the start of a route. As you probably know, Countdown is generally not very reliable at the start of a route – I’m not sure how it decides when buses are likely to come but I’d say it’s wrong at least as often as right. The point at which it becomes reliable is as soon as the bus sets off. By being able to tap on the bus and see what times it’s expected at all stops, you can easily judge if it’s actually set off yet by looking at the very top of the list to see if the first stop no longer has an expected time attached – i.e. has already been called at. I used this frequently too.

    When your new site went live, all this functionality, apart from displaying the number plate on the initial Countdown listing, no longer worked in the LT Pro app – tapping a bus in the list just says it cannot load the info for bus XX run YY. I really miss this feature.

    I appreciate that TfL don’t write or maintain third-party apps, but you don’t offer this functionality yourself either, despite evidently exposing the necessary data for it in your Countdown API. If there’s any way you can restore whatever has been lost that is making this no longer work, so that I can return to using this app in this way, that would be great.

    Or, if you prefer, consider this a feature request for your site – the ability to see the number plate of each expected bus and tap a bus on Countdown to see its anticipated progress across all stops within the 30-minute data window. I’m quite happy to come to your site to get this feature, just as long as I don’t continue to have to go without it!

    Finally, the London Bus Stop Maps app has also become useless. This excellent app by City Of London Consulting is also no longer maintained, but it provided a really simple way to find the spider diagrams nearest to your location (or any other spider maps using alphabetical lists or scrolling around a Google map of the city and tapping a bus symbol at the geographical centre of each bus spider diagram). The spider diagram PDFs were downloaded from your site, and of course their URLs have all changed now. I imagine you probably won’t be willing to dedicate the necessary resource to go through the app checking which URLs it’s accessing and set up redirects on every one of those URLs to the latest maps, but again you could take this as a feature request – a PDF symbol (or spider!) or similar positioned for every spider diagram at its geographical location on your bus map, which you can click to grab that PDF. So much easier than having to work out what a location would be called in order to find it in the index of diagrams.

    Thanks for your help!

  2. In the age of mobile elecronic media and rising data quality expectaions when can we expect TfL to consign that wiring diagram to tourist Tshirts?

  3. “we’ve had some intermittent issues with the new version of bus arrivals”

    I hope that the new version of bus arrivals gets all the functionality of the old version before you switch over again (such as searching for bus stops by post code or street).

  4. As there are a few comments about Bus Countdown info on the new website and the fact you’re tweaking your new functionality can I ask that you show of bus stop code info when live departures info is displayed? It’s on the old Countdown site and is a very fast way to get to info if you can recall code numbers (as I can). As it’s a standard bit of Countdown info it should not present you with any undue difficulty.

    There is also still an error with bus departure info for Tottenham Hale station on eastbound journeys for routes 123, 230 and W4. The new website is configured to the old bus stop info prior to the bus station closing for reconstruction. TfL provided a new stop (countdown code 91385) which old Live Bus Departures does register but the new site does not. Please fix this before you remove the old Countdown page.

    I have also lost all the stop info that was Favourited on the new site. I have not cleared out cookies or tidied anything up but the info’s been lost anyway. It’s not the first time the site has failed to remember such info. Any idea why? (I’m using a laptop on Windows 7, IE11)

    Finally any luck with the Bus Service Changes page? You promised to check what had happened to it but I cannot see a further response under a previous post on the blog.

  5. Phil,

    Can the links on the Media page (http://www.tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/) be corrected please?

    The ‘Latest Press Releases’ box link leads to http://www.tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases?intcmp=4536 which gives a 404 type error page whereas the ‘Press Releases’ link on the right hand side navigation of the Media page leads to http://www.tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases and displays the current press releases but on the Origin site.

    Thanks,

    1. Hi Flippy

      I have just checked the links and they seem to be working now. I am not sure why they weren’t working when you tried, but I am hoping it was just a temporary glitch.

      At the moment press releases do link to the old site. We are still migrating some content including press releases and we hope to have finished the work in the next few days.

  6. I’m having no joy with the journey planner cycling options.

    The last site had cycle options in the regular planner, and also a separate mapping tool for planning cycle trips (off the ‘cycling’ tab), that offered genuinely different routes for ‘easy’ ‘moderate’ and ‘fast’.

    To date, my efforts to find different routes using the Planner, selecting for cycling-only option, give me *exactly the same route* 3 times, with three different estimates of time for the journey.

    This falls far short of the quality of mapping tool I’d come to use on TfL.

    What happened to the good-quality cycling mapping tool? When can we get it back?

  7. It is good to see that the refund form is no longer being hidden away. However, I was hoping the site would have more functionality around refunds. For example, I’ve got an annual Oyster card, it’s registered, so why when I fill in a refund form do I have to resupply information you’ve already got.

    It also monitors my journeys, so it should be able to work out if I’ve been delayed by 15 minutes or more and give me a refund automatically – without having to apply every time.

    It knows my card so why can’t it top the card up – I’ve got to queue with my bit of paper at the ticket office – and part of the point of having an annual ticket is so that I don’t have to queue.

      1. Hi, Had to make a customer charter claim refund the week before last. No paper forms available – as I believe you have stopped them – which doesn’t sound very accessible to people with limited or no access to computers. Anyway, that is by the by. The other week I had finished work late, was tired, hungry and fed up and just wanted to get home. I arrived at the District Line entrance at Victoria Station to discover the station was closed due to overcrowding. Despite the fact there was an employee manning the gate no one could tell me when the station was likely to re-open. so I waited a while, then decided to walk to St James’s Park – which I duly did. I then filed a charter claim, having been held up for more than 15 minutes – filling in the claim form as best I could – but it didn’t allow me any opportunity to explain what had happened.

        Next thing I know I get an email telling me my claim is rejected. So when I get the chance I ring the number supplied to dispute the rejection. During the course of the phone call I am told that because the system now checks when I entered the station and checked in with my Oyster at St James to when I arrived at my destination didn’t meet the 15 minute claim. I explain that, that wasn’t where the delay occured but the online form did not allow me to explain that – although I did say Victoria was where I intended to start my journey.

        The delay was definitely TfL’s fault – you weren’t running enough trains to clear through the numbers of passengers. I wasn’t allowed to enter Victoria Station to get my Oyster validated and by the time I had waited and then decided to walk it was at least 15 mins.

        Following my conversation with the employee they “as a gesture of goodwill” granted me the money. (by the time I had waited and then talked to them the call took 23 minutes – so another more than 15 minutes out of my life I will never get back again). However, the problem is more fundamental than that. I looks like you have deliberately designed the system to avoid paying people like me out unless we complain. The form needs to be redesigned so that situations like this are covered. You must be able to keep a record of when stations are shut.

        At least with the paper forms you could write what had happened on them – even if a space wasn’t supplied to do so – but this web application does not allow for any kind of explanation at all.

        Sorry for such a long post – but I feel that this issue needs to be addressed.

  8. Password Woes

    When I logged in to the TFL site this morning I was prompted to re-enter my login details. Fair enough. The process included entering and confirming my password. The page would not allow me to enter a strong (i.e. long and random) password.

    I use a password manager (KeepassX) which generates random passwords for me.

    The page on your site said it would not allow passwords of over 40 characters. I hope TFL are not saving these passwords in plaintext.

    The page seemed to allow me to paste text into the password field but not into the Confirm Password field!

    I tried to type in long passwords several times but a message saying the the password and confirmed passwords did not match kept appearing. Naturally the page hid the content of the password fields.

    In the end, I gave up and used a weaker (15-character) password, which the page did accept.

    This was a pretty terrible user experience and undermines my confidence in the security of TFL systems.

    Please allow users to paste password strings in both the password and confirm password fields. Do test that 40-character passwords (including those with no number among the first 10 characters) can be entered and will be usable.

    If there is another place to offer feedback on the user experience on the TFL site then I could not find it.

  9. The new tfl website is not user friendly at all. It is much worse than the previous version. Not sure what is the intention of the change. Should change for good, not for worse.
    Cromwell

    1. Hi Cromwell, can you let us know what specific problems you are having with the new site – we can point you in the direction of anything you have not been able to find.

      1. One change for the worse is that now the journey planner almost never recognises the name of a tube station. Previously, the default was ‘station or stop’ and one had the option to switch to address, postcode or place of interest via a drop-down menu. Now that the drop-down menu is no longer available, the planner nearly always announces that it has found more than one place with that name, and which one do I mean? What used to be a simple matter of entering two station names and getting immediate results now requires clicking on two intermediate pages because the search engine is no longer clever enough to recognise one of TfL’s own station names. This is not progress!

        1. Hi Hilary, apologies that the auto-suggest feature for stations and stops has been temporarily lost in Journey Planner. We’ll be releasing an update this week which restores it.

  10. Hi
    This new website has taken away so many features that I’m not sure how it ever passed a quality review being launched. I’m trying to plan a journey for tomorrow morning from Waterloo to Canary Wharf. I obviously want to avoid the Tube. In the old days that would have been easy as I could set the time/date of journey and also tick the options I want.
    In the new “simple” journey planner I can’t pick a date/time, I can’t pick my options, I can’t actually plan my journey. I can only get back what TFL has decided my journey should be e.g., in 5 minutes via the Jubilee line.
    When you try to look up the alternative forms of transport (other than Tube and Bus) what you get is…nothing – no results, no message, just a failure to display any knowledge.
    Helpful – not at all
    Intuitive – not at all
    Working – not at all
    What was once a very helpful website with loads of information has been reduced to an overly simplistic waste of time.
    So, now to plan my journey tomorrow I’ll need to look at 3 or 4 separate websites and pull the information together.
    Please bring back the features of the old website

    1. Hi there, you can change the times and dates using the ‘change time’ link and the modes of transport can be changed using the ‘accessibility and transport options’ link. In nearly all respects the new journey planner operates exactly as the old journey planner did.

  11. Thanks so much for advising on how to access the timetables. Please, please, please – add a link to the old ones in the message saying ‘coming soon’! I bet 90% of people looking for them would never come to this post to see how they still can be accessible

  12. I’ve noticed that Epsom is no longer available for selection in the journey planner. This is unfortunate because that’s where I live! It was possible to input Epsom into the old journey planner – is there any chance that it could be added to the new one?

    1. Hi Alex, I seem to be able to get a journey by entering Epsom in the Journey Planner. It offers me some options, which include Epsom rail station, which I think is your intended start point. Can you let us know exactly what you are seeing and we can take a look.

      1. Thanks for your quick reply, Phil. If I browse to either http://www.tfl.gov.uk or http://www.tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-journey and enter “epsom” into the From box, the only option that pops up is Epsom Downs. If I persevere and stick with “epsom”, on the next page I get a disambiguation prompt with various options, the first of which is “London, Epsom”. If I confirm “London, Epsom” as the start location and submit the search, I get a sensible set of results (i.e. starting at “London, Epsom Rail Station”).

        So it’s possible to get useful results, but it’s confusing when “Epsom Rail Station” (or maybe just “Epsom” would be more consistent) doesn’t appear in the initial auto-complete list on the front page above Epsom Downs.

        I hope that makes sense! Let me know if not and I will take a screenshot.

  13. Hello,

    I think what is difficult with the London underground is finding and knowing which door exit you should leave the tube on when reaching the destination station especially for people who don’t use the London tube as much and tourist. This can cause people to miss their stop as the tube can be over crowded and the uncertainty of knowing which doors you should go towards to exit the tube. It would be great if you could add this for each station and even the journey planner so people know which doors side they should go towards to exit. This would be a very helpful tool for people from young teens to adults of all ages as well as clear up the confusion and people missing their destination stop making the underground less intimidating for new users and tourists.

    Please could you do this since it will make the London underground more accessibly and people more confident in using the underground. There is few app around but I think it would be better if your did it on your website and your mobile app as it be something people will know and trust.

  14. I have just used the new website to plan a journey to the V & A avoiding the tube.
    With the old website it was very easy-I could download timetables, and the journey planner would find the V & A with no problem.

    Now, try as I like, I can’t find a bus timetable and a search of V & A reveals nothing sensible: how on earth is someone who is not familiar with London supposed to know that he has to search under London (Brompton) Victoria and Albert Museum in order to find what he is looking for?

    In my view, while the site looks prettier it is far less useful than was the old site.

  15. The summary of forthcoming bus service changes has disappeared. Tried searching but just not there.

  16. We’re a few weeks on, and I’m afraid I still hate the update. There is so much scrolling required…. Furthermore, though you say it is optimised for smartphones, it so full of unnecessary graphics that it is painfully slow to load on a smartphone (even an Iphone5S) – some of us do not have 4G.
    Now – a specific issue. The journey planner is producing incorrect – in fact farcical – answers. From the bus stop at the end of my street in zone2, there is a direct frequent bus to the nearby supermarket. That supermarket happens to be the terminus for 4 bus routes – so it is something of a hub for tfl services. If I ask for the journey from my street to that supermarket in the old journey planner, the solution is to use this direct bus. In the new journey planner, I get all sorts of wierd and wonderful journey suggestions – all laughably slow/indirect and it never shows me the frequent direct bus…… Even when I restrict choices to bus only, the planner never finds the direct bus.
    This is a really retrograde step.

    1. Hi there, the ‘old’ Journey Planner and the ‘new’ Journey Planner are the same under the skin and produce the same results. Happy to take a look in detail if you have a specific issue with a particular journey.

  17. Tube status updates: I suppose it’s inevitable that mobile users are now being privileged, but it’s annoying when using a desktop that you now have to scroll down instead of getting all the info immediately on screen. The top portion is wasteful of space – and the colours of the lines are immediately recognisable, so that the type here can be smaller. Omit ‘London’ from Overground, and the coloured blocks can all be shorter, allowing the map to be bigger.

  18. I’m sure others have said that the maps aren’t working? At all? Just get a map of the whole of central London.

    1. Any map in the journey planner results, when clicking the link “view map” instead of showing the map for that specific part of the joirney and the route, it shows the whole london map whitout any route

  19. Hi

    I’ve encountered a problem on Journey Planner.

    I was very frustrated not to be able to find an easy way to report the problem or give feedback about the website.

    So I tweeted this to @TfLOfficial and @TfLAlerts but have had no response.
    I tried again today and eventually used the Help & Contact > Make a complain > Transport For London > Website content route – which didn’t feel appropriate and too complex.
    It sounds like you you were collecting feedback during development, I suggest re-instating it.

    As for my actual problem, I’ll post it here too:
    “Journey planner doesn’t seem to know about Walthamstow Central rail station. It only offers tube and bus as means to get to or from there.
    I’ve seen this over the space of 4 days on several PCs and mobile devices.”

  20. When typing in locations in the Journey Planer it has stopped giving suggestions after you type 3+ letters, then asks you to select from a list which at times does not include Tube/overground/bus stations!
    It was working fine a week or so ago Please fix this

  21. I absolutely hate the new website. I access it from a desktop mainly, and all the clicking is doing my head in. I cannot find anything I want and the entire layout is just plain awful. It might work from a tap-with-finger-on-screen approach, but it is just horrendous from a PC user perspective. I don’t want to have to click an option, that opens up more options, then have to click yet another option… and repeat,,, and repeat… I just want to type in my search (eg, bus number) or select from a menu (top of page or left hand) and then generate the thing I’m after – eg, I want to print a timetable for a bus route from a specific stop. Used to be easy as pie. Now no easy bus or train pdfs and it is all mouse click, then mouse click, scroll, mouse click… hope something comes up… which it doesn’t quite often… and it just looks awful too. I am really disappointed as I used to rely heavily on the TfL website and recommended it to everyone new to London (I’m from New Zealand, so arriving somewhere with a useful journey planner was fantastic). I no longer recommend it, and suggest people find alternatives. I don’t understand why the user has been forgotten in the process. Please PLEASE consider the desk-top user, and the people who want to stuff something in their pocket/bag for their day out. The options available should be to type something in, use a keyboard, and click with a mouse, but definitely with far FAR less clicking and scrolling. Layer, upon layer of clicking is frustrating. Go back to simple please. I want to have a journey planner, a map, standard transport timetables, current traffic conditions (delayed/on time) and planned works. I also want the ability to print timetables, maps and journeys easily, and in a user-friendly format. All of which was previously available on the old website. Perhaps the old website could be maintained under the new one for PC users? I also note that the old website allowed you to see where a bus stop actually was, at one point the new website didn’t give you this – it may do now, but I found it completely ridiculous that the functionality disappeared – how is knowing when a bus leaves useful if you don’t know where it leaves from?! Bring back the old, far more user-friendly site. Just improve the specific aspects that were lacking. I’ve just tried to find and call customer services, but no automated button options were of any use and it eventually hung up on me! I can’t even imagine what it would be like for older users who have never used the internet as part of their daily lives.

  22. Could something to do with the website launch explain why I can’t get either pro or free LT apps to work on my galaxy II smartphone. Worked well for over a year
    – stopped working Tuesday 19th August.
    Very difficult to plan journey’s without it. Other apps do not include tram options.

    1. Hi Rose, we are still supplying all the necessary data feeds and APIs to developers so there’s no reason for them to stop working in general. There are around 200 apps made from our data so if one does not work you should be able to find another. If you really liked those apps it’s best to check with the developer directly what the problem is. The Galaxy SII is quite an old phone so may not support the most recent apps.

  23. I have made numerous customer charter claim refunds and this is through the new system of logging in and completing the form online. I keep getting emails back stating my claim has been unsuccessful. I ensure that I check my journey times and only if it is over the 15 min threshold, I make a claim. Previously, with the paper forms I have never had an issue.
    I have contacted TfLs customer services and they have checked my claims and given me the refunds. I have also submitted a complaint for another claim.
    Today I have made 3 claims over the 2 week period and I have already received my reply stating I was unsuccessful for one and am expecting the same for the other two.
    I am not going to bother ringing customer services again and shall be writing to Travel Watch with all my evidence. However, I shall wait and see what the advise and response is from this website

      1. The online form is badly designed. It fails to allow you to say what the issues are, for example, if you face the situation of a station being shut and having to go to a different station. You won’t have touched in so the refund system sees you as starting or finishing at the wrong station.

        We shouldn/t be needing to spend 20 minutes on the phone sorting this kind of stuff out with Customer services – which is what happened to me the last time this arose. The form needs to be redesigned to fit this kind of circumstance – especially now paper forms where you could write what happened are no longer available.

        Also, the customer service team won’t have any power to force through changes to the form for the benefit of customers – they are call centre operatives. This is a wider issue and it seems like TfL are just trying to get out of paying by making it impossible to claim.

        1. Have to agree that getting refunds are much trickier now.

          The old system of having one number for Oyster problems was much better.

          Trying to get through now involves listening to a recorded voice telling you which button to press.

          Having got through this you are then left in a long queue as “all our operators are busy” and after a while you give up.

          Not so much a customer response centre as a customer frustration centre.

      2. Hi Phil, As expected, out of the 3 claims I have made, 2 came back unsuccessful. I have, as you have advised, contacted customer services and they seem to have a script as to whether, according to the TfL logs, there was a delay. Looks like delays due to passenger alarms, default trains, red signal, slow trains (whatever the reasons) are not logged as delays although this causes the delay to be beyond the 15 mins. I have cross checked this with customer services and seems that they do not have any records of this. I expected this forum to be effective but instead you have provide me with a standard advise and I presume you did not take any notice of what I wrote in my blog ” I am not going to bother ringing customer services again “. I have also submitted complaints through your website and have had no responses. I shall be writing to Travel Watch and see if they can provide me with an explanation with TfL’s policy change.

  24. I hate the new journey planner. What has happened to the map at the end which used to show the pedestrian/ walk part to the destination printed on a map of the surrounding area. Now you just give a map of the area, not even showing the final destination marked on it. The old planner was so much more logical. You could choose destination by place of interest, address or postcode.This was so much easieer. Now it’s just an area. Please bring back the old one

    1. Hi John. The Journey Planner does offer an end to end map with all the journey segments shown. If this is not working for you there’s a couple of things you can try. Firstly check that you are accessing the site over http rather than https (some people have had trouble with the latter on some browsers for general content). You can use this link http://www.tfl.gov.uk.
      Secondly you can try deleting cookies and cached web content. Let us know how you get on. You can search by place of interest, address, postcode, station or stop in the new site. Many people found it frustrating to have to say what they were searching for so we do it in one box now.

      1. Hi, Phil…
        I still can’t get to grips with your new journey planner. I am using http: etc.

        However, when I click on Plan a Journey & FROM, all I get is: Use my location ~ no option for postcode, station etc
        It’s the same on TO. I see “use my location” & “turn on recent journeys”
        I cannot see any means of searching by address, station place of interest etc.
        I’m afraid I don’t understand the term cached web content nor how to delete cookies so that isn’t helping.
        What am I doing wrong?
        John

        1. Hi John. You just type anything in the box. As you are typing if it’s a station, stop or pier it will suggest a list of possible options. If you want an address or postcode just type it in and press go. It will remember recent journeys for one click access on the Plan a Journey page.
          Web browsers store information from previous visits in something which we call a cache. They use this to make your next visit faster. They also store information in small files called cookies. These are used to store preferences and help us measure the number of visitors we get to the site. You can delete these in the browser settings – sometimes called ‘clear web history’.

  25. Hi Phil Don’t know if this is the place to leave a comment on problems with the Journey Planner results being misleading – I couldn’t see anywhere obvious on the site to do this – I would suggest you put in some feedback boxes with one in particular to allow for misleading results on Journey Planner, as well as ease of use etc.

    Anyway, the issue is that tomorrow Sat 10 Jan there are extensive engineering work for SouthEastern Trains, so that journeys to London Bridge and Cannon Street are not possible, but some Journey Planner results still show the route as running. The engineering work seems to be allowed for sometimes eg if I put in a direct journey eg Lewisham to Cannon Street – the results show using an indirect route using DLR. But if I put in from our home postcode near Hither Green to Barbican or even Lewisham to London Bridge the results show that we should use Lewisham to London Bridge as part of the journey even though it is not running (services are going into Victoria).

    PS Apart from not having to say whether it is a post code, place, etc I cant see that the new Journey Planner is better than the old one!

    Roy

    1. Hi Roy, I’ll pass your comments to the team who work on the Journey Planner and we’ll see whether we can shed any light on this particular case. We rely on the timetables and information provided by National Rail but it should be accurate. I hope we’ll win your round to the new Journey Planner as time goes on and as you see further improvements coming through.

  26. I cannot access the “Change date” function on Journey Planner on one computer. On some computers “Change date” appears. On one computer it does not. Is there a fix for this problem?
    Mark

    1. Hi Mark, I think you may be using an old version of Internet Explorer. If you upgrade to IE9.0 you should find the options appear. Alternatively you can use Firefox, Chrome or Safari (recent versions).

  27. On the new website, I am having issues planning journeys properly due to the fact that the Earlier and Later buttons jump backwards or forwards too far. It seems to only want to show journeys around the selectable search times, i.e. every 15mins, and therefore finding a departure time outside that window (for example around 7.09 or 7.19) is impossible. It would be helpful is this is corrected so that we can either select any time we choose for a search, instead of being restricted, or for the Earlier/Later buttons to take you to the next available departures as they used to? Thanks.

    1. Hi Lucy, we’re working on this at the moment along with a number of Journey Planner improvements. You can expect to see these launched within the next 6 weeks or so. I’ll do a more detailed post on this to explain what we’re doing.

  28. Hi,

    I hope you can help me, or direct me to somewhere I can raise my concern. For some reason when I try to plan a journey from Watford Junction the planner now insists on sending me to Watford Met rather than listing the numerous rail / overground options from Watford Junction. This effectively renders the system useless to me and is very annoying as it always worked perfectly until Easter!

  29. I can find no contact details on the TfL website related to issues with the website itself, and ‘Plan a journey’ in particular. So I post here.
    I tried to search a journey using ‘I want to take my cycle on public transport’, but the result takes me on the tube through King’s Cross station, and I’m 99% sure you can only take folding bikes on *underground* tube services!

      1. I have seen the map before, and it clearly shows no cycles on Piccadilly line between Wood Green and Kings Cross, which is exactly where your ‘Plan a Journey’ app told me to take my bike! Clearly it is not working properly. Do you know what the issue is? Are people working on this app to iron out the bugs?
        Secondly, you did not address my other point – Why there is no contact info on your website for people to get help with website issues. Is commenting on this blog really the proper way to get support?

        1. Hi there, we’ll look into this and see why it’s letting you plan a journey on that stretch. We have a team constantly working on the data to make the service as high quality as possible and we have regular releases of data and application improvements. On the contact point, you can contact us about anything at https://custserv.tfl.gov.uk/ or you can call our customer services team at 0343 222 1234.

      2. I agree with cuyocksol
        The lack of clear way to give feedback about Journey Planner is very annoying, having tried to do it myself in the past.
        In the end I did: Help and Contact > Tube (this is where I suggest there should be a “Website” option) > Make an Enquiry/Complaint (neither of these applies) > Transport For London > Website Content/Design (neither of these is quite right)

        To add to this frustration the link you provided https://custserv.tfl.gov.uk/ is broken – 404!

  30. Why mess with the older version which was excellent? I tried to get a journey planned on the tube from South Wimbledon to St Pancras – it told me to go via Northern Line to Stockwell and then change to Victoria Line but warned that there were disruptions. It did not show all the alternative routes to get there ie. straight through on the Northern Line. It is frustrating and unhelpful.

    1. Hi Daisy, the choices are still there. You need to select ‘later journeys’ and you will get two more options for ‘fastest by public transport’. We made the change to provide more choice and flag up bus, cycling and walking options.

  31. I just used the Journey Planner, Tomorrow (Monday 31st) Arriving at 11. Surbiton Rail Station, London Euston. Leaving all the defaults the journey listed had mea LEAVING at 11:09 and arriving at 12:18 and included walking to the train station to catch a bus to the next station to get on train. There was even another suggested option which was for buses only and to 2.5 hours. Obviously something is not right and I feel sorry for tourist. I should add that if I removed all options but National Rail and Tube then it gave me the correct route. but again, if I was a tourist I wouldn’t know that I could do that.

    1. Hi Steve, Journey Planner takes account of closures so that might be why you’re getting a different journey tomorrow. If you’re not sure best to check with your train operating company.

      1. Hi Phil, thanks for the response. There were no closures and as I mentioned, when I limited the search options the Journey Planner provided the correct route. My reason for leaving the comment was to say that the Journey Planner wasn’t working,i.e. it did not provide me with the fastest route, and furthermore provided a route which was completely illogical and a waste of time. The algorithm which is used to calculate the fastest route is broken. Do you know who I can contact in TFL to report this misinformation being provided by the Journey Planner? As a side note, if I always need to check with my operating company, assuming I would know who that was, then to be honest what is the point of the Journey Planner.

  32. I’m trying to plan a journey from Lewisham to Orpington. Why does the TfL planner recommend I start at Lewisham DLR and walk the twenty yards to Lewisham Rail station? What a bizarre bug! I have even deselected DLR options, but it still makes the same weird recommendation. This is still a very poor site. It fails to do the simple things, I have no hope of it ever doing anything intelligent, such as recommending travelling from St Johns when Brockley is closed

  33. I get a lot of buses and I have to say big thumbs down to the new site 🙁 Too many clicks, too slow, too hard to find from the homepage…I’m kindof puzzled because it must have been through a ton of user testing but it’s just horrible to use – I live and work by bus routes not the tube so I don’t want to sift through other options or see an ad for the Emirates thing. I don’t need an alert to tell me ‘several options’ have been found and asking ‘did you mean’ when there’s one bus in 2 directions. It’s also slow, I don’t need to text a code for information when I’m clearly using the Internet on my phone, and tbh I do t need a raft of first and last times either, a simple link to them would do (9 times out of 10 they’re irrelevant). What’s going on, did Tfl cut the UX budget or did a bunch of stakeholders get involved and ignore or omit any user testing?

  34. This website is of little value to me and have to use alternatives. Why for a direct tube journey ( one line ), whatever preferences are ticked, does it only suggest walking or cycling ? Nonsense. Also, when a route is suggested by public transport, ‘show details’ will not open; why ?

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