Door to door

One journey, every mode

Ordinary planners treat trains and buses as separate worlds. This one searches them together, along with the walking in between, so the answer is the actual door-to-door trip rather than the rail leg with the ends left as an exercise.

• Start and finish at a station, a bus stop, or a point on the map — or use your current location.
• Train legs are drawn along the real track, not a straight line between stations.
• A step-free filter, for journeys where the interchange matters as much as the trains.
• Results give the latest sensible departure for each arrival time, so you are not sent off twenty minutes early for nothing.

How the search actually works

Both networks are searched by scanning connections outward from your departure time — every train and bus you could still catch, then everything reachable from those, until the destination is reached. Trains and buses sit in the same scan rather than being planned separately and stitched together, which is what lets a result use a bus for a leg where the train would have meant a long detour.

Walking is treated as a real leg with a real duration, not as free movement between nearby points. A journey that opens with a walk is slid forward so the walk finishes as the first vehicle leaves — otherwise the answer tells you to set off twenty minutes early and stand about, which is technically valid and useless.

Boarding is tracked per vehicle rather than per stop. That sounds like a detail and is not: track it per stop and the train you are already sitting on becomes unboardable at its next station, so the planner starts inventing changes you do not need to make.

What it will not do

• It does not sell tickets, know fares, or account for advance-purchase restrictions. A route that is valid to travel may be expensive or invalid on your ticket.
• Bus coverage is where operators publish it. Timetables come from the national bus open data service, so a service that publishes nothing simply is not there — which is a gap in the data rather than a gap in the bus network.
• Minimum interchange times are the published ones, not a judgement about how fast you walk. At a large station the booked change time can be optimistic with luggage and generous without it.
• It plans the timetable, not the day. Results are built from booked times; a train already running late is not routed around. For what is happening now, the live map and disruptions are the honest sources.

Step-free, and what that means here

The step-free filter restricts changes — it excludes journeys whose interchanges are not step-free. It is not a statement that every vehicle, platform and street on the route is accessible, because that data does not exist consistently enough to promise it. Treat it as removing the worst interchanges rather than guaranteeing the whole trip.

Rail only? Track a train plans and shares a single rail journey. Buses only? The bus planner works stop to stop. Why a bus can be early and still counted late is covered in why buses run early.