Re: Burnley Grp Trains (Melb)

[Reuben Farrelly <reuben@mira.net.AAAA>]

Notagunzel wrote:
> 
> Christopher_Martin GORDON <cmgord@ecr.mu.oz.au> wrote in message
> 7g088v$1lu$3@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU">news:7g088v$1lu$3@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU...
> > Timetables are provided for the following reasons:
> > To know how late a train is running
> > and, to know which train are not running.
> 
> The best timetable is short and sweet:
> 
> "Trains run at frequent intervals"
> 
> just don't get bogged down in unnecessary detail (like times).

Well, there's a lot of truth in that actually.  The game is all about
Customer Service, or more to the point Customer _expectations_.  Not
about running as many trains as possible, but running them in such a way
that people *know* when they will be run.  For me, that's one of the
most annoying things about the present system, as I co-ordinate my
movements based on what times trains will arrive.

By setting expectations of train times to the nearest minute as they do
in the timetable, it's inevitable that the operators will run "late"
frequently.  OTOH, if there were advertisements of "trains running
frequently" then if there were trains running roughly every 4 minutes
but the specific times of those trains remained unadvertised, I'd say
they were doing a good job.  Likewise, if the system is advertised with
a timetable of trains running every 3 minutes and the times spelled out,
but most of them were late, I'd consider incompetent a good word to use
to describe them.

The answer to the timetabling may be to do away with absolute minute
timetables, and have a system where certain lines or zones are
advertised with "trains running at 15 minute intervals", maybe
additionally "...with express trains running every 9 minutes" :)

Reuben