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Journey Planning in a different time zone

Posted by (not here anymore) on

an issue has arisen in the England forum which may be similar to one that caused a lot of confusion in the Germany forum last weekend.

Most public transport journey planners assume current local time when queries are made. If you don't notice this they may come up with some odd results and suggest services aren't available (which they may not be a 3AM local time!!). Always look for the option to set a specific departure time.

And it's not just public transport. Google Maps direction planning also assumes current local time unless told otherwise. And then it goes off and checks local traffic conditions - which can be very different at 3AM to what you may encounter on the actual journey. As a result the estimate of driving time may be way out and the public transport journey times could be ridiculous. So click where it says "Leave Now" and change it!

Posted by
4891 posts

Yep. I noticed this the first couple of times I did this. And I'm bad with math. So now I just automatically change the date to tomorrow, or even the next week (if I want a specific day of the week).

Posted by
15593 posts

It also happens on the trenitalia website which assumes current local time. If you don't notice and choose the hour as well as the date of travel, you can get bad results looking for trains for a future date

Posted by
4051 posts

One confusion I have witnessed and barely avoided myself is to pick the day a flight departs and then book a hotel for that evening -- even though the arrival, after midnight, is actually the next day. In Germany once, two women stepped on a train just after midnight and couldn't find their seats in my compartment -- until they realized that they were actually a full day late.

Posted by
8889 posts

I have seen at least one travel website that, when asked for train between Paris and London, gave the correct departure and arrival times, but than said duration: 1 hour 25 mins, but London to Paris was 3 h 25.
Some time ago I was on a train from London arriving in Paris. Everybody got up to get off, except a Korean/Japanese/Chinese looking couple. They looked around confused as everybody else got off, and then asked "is this Paris?". Nobody had told them there was a time zone change.

Posted by
631 posts

getting time zones wrong within the journey is a whole extra problem! Forgetting that the day changes at midnight is also common.

The classic mistake is Portugal which is in the same zone as UK/Ireland and 1 hour behind Spain etc.

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