traveline News

Draft traveline News : November 2006

sample text to demonstrate the kind of news that can be sent by each region to interested users of the traveline internet sites

You are in good company

The number of users of the traveline service continues to grow. Each year there are now over 8 million enquiries over the internet (www.traveline.info) and 5.5 million enquiries by phone (0870 608 2 608). The SMS service is growing the fastest but as the newest service, is increasing from a small initial volume.

Boxing day is one of the busiest for telephone calls to traveline. That is because more people turn to traveline when they are uncertain which bus services will be running and need to find out.

Evening Out

It is good to leave the car at home but it is best not leave it until 11pm to start thinking how to get home. Taxis may be difficult to find and it is not worth the risk of getting into an unlicenced one. Plan how you are going to get home before you set out. There are late evening buses and trains to many destinations and some even run throughout the night.

The traveline call centres are open until at least 8pm. The internet is available 24/7 and if you know the bus stop for your departure you may be able to get the information you need with your mobile phone. (More details below)

Christmas and New Year

Bus services alter over the Christmas and New Year period. Sometimes on Christmas eve and New Year's eve bus services end earlier in the evening than normal. On Christmas Day and New Year's Day very few services operate. On Boxing day services operate normally in Scotland and are restricted elsewhere. On 2 January few services operate in Scotland. With all these changes can you rely on traveline to know all the changes?

Each traveline region makes special efforts to gather in all the changes. Some of these are notified very late on. The call centres should have complete details or be able to tell you if a bus operator has not let us know. The lead times in preparing internet journey planners means that sometimes these changes are not fully represented on the internet. Look for guidance on the internet journey planners which say whether the data is fully updated.

Travel times to your mobile phone

Bus stops throughout the UK are being given a code which you can enter into a text message on your phone. The bus stop number may be on information at the bus stop and there may be instructions there on how to use the service.

In most areas you send the txt to 84268. If you are in Yorkshire send it to 64422 and in Scotland send it to 0777 6082608. In London they do things a bit differently. Send the message TFL to 60835 to find out more about the SMS services available there.

Within a short while you should receive a txt message reply that will list the next departures from the stop. Where the time indicates a number of minutes, for example "2 mins" this is a time worked out from the real time positiion of the bus being known. If the time is in hours and minutes eg 16:24 then this is the time that the bus is scheduled to arrive.

Charges for the service vary in different parts of the UK.