vstp whats the difference between public and scheduled depart/arrival times?

[Adam Flax]

I've been collecting vstp information for the past few days and I've noticed in the schedule_location every record always has a blank scheduled arrival time! I've also noticed more fields seem to be filled in for public arrival_time and public_departure_time so what's the difference between these rows?

[Adam Flax]

I've just noticed the lack of arrivals is due to a bug in my code (thought I'd still like to know the difference between public and schedule depart/arrival times

[Peter Hicks]

Hi Adam

Scheduled arrival time is the working timetable (WTT) arrival, which may
well be different to the public time. The public (GBTT, or passenger
timetable) times are the ones advertised to the public on CIS and
industry websites.

WTT times can include half-minutes, and also be earlier than public
times - for example, a train I catch may be timed to arrive at 1145H
(11:45:30) and depart at 1146H (11:46:30), but be advertised as the 1145
departure so the TOC can offer a clock-face departure time, e.g. xx45
every hour. Or, a GBTT arrival time may be some time after the WTT
arrival time - e.g. in the case of late-night long-distance services
arriving in London with a public time of later than the WTT time,
deliberately done so as they probably will arrive before the last
Underground trains run, but in case they don't, nobody can complain that
there wasn't sufficient time available.


Peter

[Phil Wieland]

Public times are what is published to the public, schedule time is what's in the working timetable.  They may be different for various reasons.  Sometimes VSTP seem a bit random about which are filled in and which aren't, I suspect it depends on who set up the schedule in the first place.

On Friday, August 29, 2014 10:55:12 AM UTC+1, Adam Flax wrote:

[Peter Hicks]

On 29/08/14 11:23, Phil Wieland wrote:
> Public times are what is published to the public, schedule time is
> what's in the working timetable. They may be different for various
> reasons. Sometimes VSTP seem a bit random about which are filled in
> and which aren't, I suspect it depends on who set up the schedule in
> the first place.

...and also which system they come through. I've never done it, but you
can create schedules from 'blankets' in TRUST, and also through another
system called Integrale - with different levels of sanity-checking in each.


Peter