traintaxi™ is a practical tool to help business travellers take the train instead of the car, by overcoming one of the main obstacles: information about how to bridge “those final few miles” between station and destination . . .
Business people now have good access to train timetable information. National Rail Enquiries is effective, as are the various on-line timetables. Indeed, despite the fragmentation brought about through rail privatisation, both the quality and the consistency of timetable information available to the general public are better than they have ever been.
But the difficulty for the traveller often remains in bridging “those final few miles” to his or her final destination. It is usually unrealistic to expect business people to travel the final leg on local buses to see a client, although many are happy to take a taxi.
So where’s the problem?
At the bigger stations, none. If you took the train to Norwich, you could be pretty confident of finding a taxi rank in front of the station. But at Felixstowe? Without local knowledge, it would be guesswork. And what about Gunton? Probably no taxi rank to be found at such a small place. How could you arrange for a taxi to meet you? With such difficulty, most people simply wouldn’t bother and would drive there instead.
Telephone and website services can provide torrents of (unvalidated) data, but are neither comprehensive nor selective. With 28% of station names not directly reflecting place names, that’s hardly a surprise.
We have created traintaxi™ - a database that:
Compiling, validating and maintaining our database remains a complex task, using relational databases to integrate information from 23 different sources. Since it meets several public policy objectives, it enjoys the DfT’s enthusiastic support as part of its Transport Direct vision. The project was supported financially for its initial pilot year from February 2002 to February 2003 under a Rail Passenger Partnership (RPP) Scheme funded jointly by the Strategic Rail Authority and the National Express Group plc. It is now run on a fully commercial basis.
Traintaxi information is available to:
