This paper summarises the way in which Buckinghamshire County Council has developed its provision of information about public transport services, and outlines some weaknesses inherent in the conventional methods used. This sets the context for the Council's development of a low-cost Travel Information Service on the World Wide Web. The background research for this development is described, considering both what would be useful and what could be delivered economically. With this background the original content of the site comprising timetable information and public transport maps is described, along with the major issues in achieving its implementation by Summer 1996. A Journey Planning system on the WWW was also launched in June 1997. At the same time minor weaknesses identified through operational experience led to some revisions in presentation of information and to enhancements of the available maps. Two further developments are also described. One is the linking of timetables and the Journey Planner to relevant maps, both as a source of reference and as a user interface. The other is a two-year collaborative research project, recently commenced with support from the LINK Inland Surface Transport programme, under the title "JourneyWeb". This recognises the desire for seamless journey planning to be available across local authority boundaries and seeks to develop a protocol by which local proprietary journey planning systems will be able to collate information from other participating systems in order to respond fully to long distance travel enquiries.
Abstract