Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

[HORN]

I'm looking for a website where I can specify a start and end point and it'll show me the travel options:

eg. Uplands, Swansea -> Downtown Santa Rosa, CA
option 1 might be:
bus to Swansea railway station (£2) or taxi (£10)
train to Paddington
tube to London Heathrow
plane to SFO
plane to STS
taxi to downtown

option 2 might be:
taxi to Swansea railway station (£10)
train to Reading
taxi to LHR (£35)
plane to SFO
BART to central San Francisco
Bus to downtown Santa Rosa.

Something loosely along those lines. So I can (as I have to) establish the best means of completing a trip to the arse end of Belgium.

Seems to me to be a big ask, but maybe someone knows?

[West End Zuma]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

There are regular buses from Reading train station to Heathrow, about 10 or 15 quid the last time I went. That'll be your best bet. They drop you right at the terminal.

If you're going all the way in to Paddington why not take the Heathrow express train instead of faffing about on the tube. 15 minutes and you're in like flint. The tube's a slog and then some.

Can't help you on the SF end of things but there might be buses or share vans direct from the Airport to Santa Rosa.

[Cal Alamein]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

My dad used to commute from San Rafael (Marin County - North) to downtown SF via Golden Gate transit (bus) -- looks like they still have some busses going north.

http://goldengatetransit.org/schedules/pages/Bus-Schedules.php

looks like routes 72,73,74 and 75 may be the ones....

[ursus arctos]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

Schedule for the Santa Rosa Airporter.

I don't know of any site that does what you want to do, unfortunately.

[Femme Folle]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

I think the above was merely an example. Belgium is the ultimate destination.

I think.

[Femme Folle]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

HORN- I think what you want is a travel agent.

[Third rate Leszno]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

1) Buy a big map of Belgium
2) Hire a car and drive there

Hope that helps.

[HORN]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

Yes, FF. Belgium was where I was planning to go, but since examining the Santa Rosa Airport Scheduler I've decided to go there instead.

A travel agent, eh? My initial reaction is that if it ain't in a Thomson brochure then they won't know how I'll get there, but that's maybe a bit premature.

[Femme Folle]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

I just think a specialist could help because they have, you know, resources.

[evilC]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

Horn...

If that was only an example, then I think your use of 'i.e.' rather than 'e.g.' will have confused us.

However, what you are asking for is something that I don't believe exists. That is, a site that contains - and runs co-ordinated searches between - every public transport timetable anywhere in the world.

As fascinating as the idea of such a site might be, I don't think it's something that any developer would want to undertake. The rewards for such a service would be far outweighed by the trouble involved.

The nearest I can offer up is:

http://www.uk.map24.com/

This is what I would normally use for finding road routes in this country, but (as I have just found, having experimented thusly for the first time) it seems to find routes to anywhere in the world - mainly by road, but it includes at least ferries too.

The only problem with it is that when you add 'waypoints' (which you have to do after pressing 'go') you often have to painstakingly fine-tune them. For instance, I tried a search from my home in Farnham, via Portsmouth (harbour) to Bilbao (assuming it would automatically choose a ferry between those two) and then on to Tarragona in Spain, where my brother lives. However, the (chaos) engine that drives the thing chose to take me over to Calais, followed by a drive to Bilbao and then on to Tarragona! You'd have to spend a while tweaking your searches, therefore, which you may consider onerous, or you may consider fun.

Good luck with it all, though and I hope this helps, of course.

[Femme Folle]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

Why don't you just write "For example:"?

[HORN]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

evilC wrote:

Horn...

If that was only an example, then I think your use of 'i.e.' rather than 'e.g.' will have confused us.

Doh.

Sorry all. Schoolboy error. I'll edit quick to prevent the day shift being sent the wrong way as well.

Cheers, Clive. I'll have a play, though driving is the one mode of transport I'm hoping to avoid.

[evilC]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

Having just experimented a little more with Map24, I have found that if you use the 'change language' option, you actually change the country whose maps you are searching in. However, not all of these (The U.S. being the main example) have the 'route flight' facility that makes the site so compelling when searching for directions in this country.

[ursus arctos]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

Via Michelin is similar to Map24 and good for the continent. It is, however, very auto specific (not surprisingly).

For public transport options to Belgium, try the SNCB's online international journey planner, which is quite good (I think your starting point can be any UK rail station).

For Europe-wide public transport options, my choice is still Die Bahn's timetable service, which really does get down to the "walk 150 metres" level if your start or endpoint is in Germany. Until a very recent upgrade to Trenitalia's site, we always used Die Bahn for internal Italian timetable information, as it was both massively simpler and more reliable.

[evilC]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

By the way - I may have made a mistake with the 'no route flight' bit - it looks like that function is simply not working for any of the location maps at the moment.

('Route flight' is just an animated map view, a bit like a sat-nav console.)

[evilC]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

...And further experimentation with map24 reveals that there is (within the configuration options on the lower left) the option of making it a search for 'pedestrian' travel options.

However, this - like the 'route flight' feature - seems to not be working at this moment. Pesky website developers, always... developing their websites!

[The Exploding Vole]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

Which end of Belgium is the arse end?

[Andy C]

Ultimate Travel Website Help Needed Rather Soon

Here?