I recently discovered that the train companies had managed to get their live running information on the web, based on a pilot of 275 stations from reading notes about the service.
So there are time tables for Forest Hill where I live, Brighton, Charing Cross, London Bridge and virtually every train service for the South and South East.
The service is run by National Rail, who have a nice disclaimer and a full list of every train station in the UK, plus information for WAP and other mobile access.
I have a feeling that this is old news, vague memories of early WAP sites are coming back, but the livedepartureboards site seems newish, National Rail seem to be trying harder to put useful information onto their website. They also have a page with links to lots of timetables, as pdfs mostly.
Moving onto the tube, Transport for London have a very useful realtime tube map, showing what lines are not working and why.
Recently people have been finding odd maps of the tube system, I think they are quite good fun and some of them quite useful. In the tube stations you can buy a map which has a list of which carriages put you opposite the exit for which stations depending on the line you are travlling. eg carriage 4 for north bound Bakerloo line journey between Embankment and Oxford Circus.
There is also the geographic map of the tube, which correlates its shape to the real physical geography of London, the TfL website has a similar map, showing the evolution of the current tube diagram, from this page of Tube maps,
The tube maps with walk lines are similar, all about saving you money and adding layers of extra information on top of a recognised structure. The 3d tube maps are also fun, but non-interactive.
It'd be nice to see someone integrate all of these together with a route planner.
Eg your journey to work today is going to take 20 minutes extra,
Due to delays between London Bridge and Charing Cross, (train information)
Then you should walk from London Bridge to Bank, as Northern Line is congested (tube info)
Bring an umbrella, as rain is forecast and it will be 4 degrees (BBC weather or similar)
Central line is running fine out to White City (tube information)
All of these information resources exist now, but are not in an easy form to integrate. A realtime layered Tube map combining the tube, carriage information and walklines, plus the geographic map of London might be useful too. It would have user controlled switchable layers, with travel and weather information. Kind of a few generations beyond the Tube Guru, which is broken in Safari, but otherwise looks like an interesting service.
