Replacement busses are not shown in the planner, nor in the vehichle call

[TomDG98]

Hello all!

First of all, thank you for the great product. I'm getting to know it better and better, however, there seems to be an issue with the replacement services when having track works. For example, if you go this weekend from Ghent to Wetteren, you have to take a bus. But, it is shown as no options are available. In the NMBS app, options are available and busses are shown.

https://api.irail.be/connections/?to=Gent-Sint-Pieters&from=Wetteren&date=110323&format=json
{"error":404,"message":"No results found"}
If we go to the departureboard, busses are shown correctly, however, you can't acces them to see the different stops on the route. I think this was something @koeleboe mentioned last week.

https://api.irail.be//liveboard/?id=BE.NMBS.008893559&station=Wetteren&date=110323&time=1922&arrdep=departure&lang=en&format=json&alerts=false

Moreover, the same happens when there are extra trains planned with different trainnumbers. Those are not accesible either (but that could be an issue of the data deliverd by the NMBS) and may be related to another issue than this one for the busses.

Keep up the great work, especially after the big change last year!

[Bertware]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the kind words.

The replacement busses not showing up in the routeplanner could be either due to the route-planner having a different data source, or due to the standard filtering being set to "all trains". You could try making a request with the typeOfTransport query parameter set to all. In that case, planner apps might need to take this into account. If this doesn't resolve the issue, please check if the official app shows these busses in the route-planner, since we use the same data source as the official app in the background.

Regarding vehicle details/vehicle routes, I can imagine the lookup of a journey id for the given bus isn't always successful. We need to perform this lookup based on the GTFS data, so might need to look how busses are represented there. Again, this information has to be in the official app for iRail to be able to expose it.

Regards,
bert

[TomDG98]

Hi Bert

Thanks for the answer.

I came across this issue while using the hyperrail app. So I checked it by using the API of irail (as this uses the same datasource).

In the planner of the NMBS, the replacement busses do show op in the planner and are given a timetable when looking them up. This doesn't seem to work here.

Kind regards

Tom

[koeleboe]

Hello @TomDG98 @Bertware

I looked into this, and it seems that the data for the replacement busses is available in the nmbs data source. It also seems that the irail API doesn't show the journeys (from one location to another, if there are only busses).

Extra information for the planner: route from Ghent to Merelbeke, which gives us a result.

https://mobile-riv.api.belgianrail.be/riv/v1.0/journey?originExtId=8892007&destExtId=8893013&lang=nl&date=2023-11-05&time=17%3A21%3A18&searchForArrival=0&originWalk=1%2C%2C2000&originBike=0&originCar=0&destWalk=1%2C%2C2000&destBike=0&destCar=0&minChangeTime=0&products=116&numF=6

Next is to implement this in the Irail API route planner as only trains are shown and not the direct option with the replacement bus. I take 4th november as the 5th takes the planning for the next day on the 6th.

https://api.irail.be/connections/?to=Merelbeke&from=Gent-Sint-Pieters&date=041123&format=json

https://api.irail.be/connections/?to=Merelbeke&from=Gent-Sint-Pieters&date=051123&format=json

I think this is a must have, as it would seem that there is no possible way to travel between Gent and Merelbeke (but there are replacement busses).