Today was again a day during which an i-Travel Personal Travel Assistant (PTA) could have saved me at least an hour of travel time. I got up early this morning to catch the train to the offices in Antwerp. I had to hurry a lot in order to get at the train station in time. I just arrived in time and was still catching my breath (I use my bicycle to go to the train station) when I hear via the intercom that my train will have a delay of at least five minutes. If I had been informed about this delay before hand, I would not have had to hurry so much and could have had a more relaxed trip to the train station. After 7 minutes my train arrives and I get on the train.
The train continues its journey to Antwerp on lower speed then normal. Once we arrive a few stations further, the train is stopped and they announce on the train that there is a defect goods-train on the rail track in front of us, due to which we can not continue our journey for the moment. The train stops and time passes by. After 45 minutes, the train continues its journey at a very low speed. I finally arrive in Antwerp with a delay of 1h and 15 minutes.
The break-down of the goods-train already occurred an hour before I had left home. Since there was only one rail track in each direction at the location of the goods-train, this break-down created large delays. If a service compliant with the i-Travel concept would have been available, my i-Travel PTA could have informed me about these delays and I could have selected an alternative route or another mode to travel to work.
I have two options to travel to Antwerp by train train. Both possible train routes do not have any overlap. One option takes 15 minutes longer than the other option. Therefore, I always select the fastest option. If my PTA would have informed me about the defect goods-train while I was still at home, I would have selected the other route to travel to work. This would have saved me 60min of travel time!
In normal circumstances (no train delays, usual traffic conditions), going to work by car is 15min faster compared to going to work by train. Taking into account the more relaxed journey on the train, I usually opt for the train to travel to work. However, if I had been informed about these large delays beforehand, I would have used my car. This would have saved me 1h and 30 min of travel time!
On the train, a lot of passengers were complaining and saying ‘If I had known about these delays, I would have…’. Therefore, I think that almost all my fellow-sufferers widely would agree with the statement that i-Travel could really be beneficial for the daily commuters/train travellers.
Nele works for Vlaames Overheid who are a full consortium meber for i-Travel
