Bike + Train is a new way to plan a trip in AusBUG: ride to a station, take your bike on a train, then ride the last stretch to where you're going. It works in Victoria (including V/Line), Sydney, South East Queensland, Adelaide and Perth. Here's where the idea came from and how it works.
Where the idea came from
Matt Katzen (@bikie_matt on Instagram) saw an app called Modemix at modemix.io and thought it was something AusBUG should have. Modemix describes itself as a navigation app that combines cycling and public transit, so you can ride part of a trip and take transit for the rest. It covers North American cities, and nothing like it existed in Australia.
It suited us straight away. AusBUG is for people who want to get around by bike, and the hardest trips to do by bike are the long ones. A train can cover the long middle of a trip while the bike covers the first and last stretch at each end.
What it does
Plan a trip as you normally would, then pick Bike + Train in the profile picker. AusBUG finds stations near where you're starting and where you're going, works out the riding to and from each one, and checks the timetable for trains that connect them. The journey can be a direct train or one with a change.
Each result shows the total door to door time, so you can compare it with the riding and walking tabs for the same trip. You can leave now or pick a time up to seven days ahead, and if there are no trains left tonight it shows the first ones the next morning.
Where it works
Victoria covers metropolitan trains and V/Line, so a ride from Ballarat, Geelong or Bendigo to a Melbourne suburb can use a regional train and a metro train with a change in between. Sydney covers the Sydney Trains network and the intercity lines to the Blue Mountains, the Central Coast and Newcastle, the Hunter, the South Coast and the Southern Highlands. South East Queensland, Adelaide and Perth cover their suburban train networks.
Tasmania and the Northern Territory don't have suburban passenger trains. Canberra only has light rail, which we haven't included yet, and nor have trams, buses or ferries in any city.
Live times, where they exist
In Victoria, Sydney, South East Queensland and Adelaide the train operators publish live running, so the times you see include delays, cancelled trains and stations a train skips, and the operators' service alerts show on the journey. Perth's operator doesn't publish a live feed that we could find, so Perth shows the published timetable and says so.
Reading a result
Each result is a step by step itinerary: the ride to the station and how long it takes, the minutes you have before the train leaves, the train and where it's heading, any change with the time to reach the next platform, and the ride to your destination. The map shows the whole journey, with the riding in LTS colours and the train as a purple line along the real track.
No time is added for boarding, and the riding ends at the station location on the map, so allow a little extra to reach the platform.
The riding is low stress
The riding to and from stations uses the same Low Stress routing as the rest of AusBUG, so it steers clear of busy roads where it can. In the app the riding is coloured by stress level, the same as a normal route, and footpath sections, where you'd walk your bike, show in grey.
Disruptions
Where the operator publishes them, closures, replacement buses and service alerts are checked for your journey. A cancelled trip, or a whole line marked as having no service, is left out of the results, and other alerts show as warnings on the journey. In Victoria, stations with a closure or replacement bus notice in your travel window are left out too.
What it doesn't do yet
It's a beta. A trip can have at most one change, and a Bike + Train journey isn't saved or exported as a cycling route yet. Every operator has its own rules for taking a bike on board, and some services need a booking or limit bikes at peak times, so check with the operator before you travel. V/Line in particular has its own rules, and AusBUG shows a reminder on its journeys.
When you can use it
Bike + Train is already in the web route builder as a beta, and it's coming to the iPhone and Android apps in the next build.
Tell me what you think, especially if a trip gives you a result that doesn't make sense. I'm happy to hear which stations and lines you'd like looked at next. And thank you to Matt (@bikie_matt) for the idea.
Happy and safe riding,
Vince — DEV
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