National Routeing Guide - Criticism and Confusion

Criticism and Confusion

The ATOC maintains the National Routeing Guide as an online program, which some find helps calculate valid routes. Others find the rather basic site confuses matters, and prefer to use the 'paper' guide which ATOC makes available for download as a PDF document . The online program appears no longer to be available according to a discussion in July 2009.

The rail network is complex, and the routeing guide an inherited document, not one designed from scratch. As a nodal network, the rail system lends itself to logical computer analysis. Accordingly, under such detailed analysis by enthusiasts, the routeing system has been found to contain many idiosyncrasies. An infamous example is the following query and response sent to customer services: "What are the permitted routes where a ticket is routed 'not London'; in particular, what if the only route given in the Guide is 'London'? A: In this case, you can use the ticket via London. The routes 'London' and 'not London' are not necessarily mutually exclusive." The latter sentence clearly defies logical explanation.

At one point the guide also permitted legitimate travel on a London to Carlisle ticket via Inverness, on a similar technicality, (travelling up the East coast, down the West, never needing to double back) though it is unknown whether anyone actually made such a journey. Other anomalies include the apparent option of using a cross-London ticket to travel via Cambridge.

The routeing guide now being available in computer form means that the traveller is one step removed from the rules of the system. In many cases the program produces results which cannot be explained by the PDF version's rules, and whilst the site implies the two are identical, the ATOC maintains the program provides the definitive answer as it is more recent. This has generated some protest on occasion, given that the queries into the system's working produces illogical results. As all travellers have a legal obligation to travel using a valid ticket, as the ticket forms part of a contract between traveller and train company (along with the National Rail Conditions of Carriage and the National Fares Manual), there is a sound argument that the principles of the routeing guide should be publicly available to enable compliance - a primary principle of contract law is that the terms of the contract must be known to all parties and available for scrutiny.

The ATOC's reluctance to answer questions about anomalies is often taken as confirmation of the opinion that the routeing guide consists of guidelines than actual rules on the finer points of logic.