Great Western Coffee Shop

seen this?

Since when have GWR run bus services from Paddington to Stansted Airport?
 
 In
http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/P02536/2017/03/08/advanced
 
 Out
http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/P02694/2017/03/08/advanced

From last December ...

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=17741.msg205800#msg205800

Is that the one that runs from Bishops Bridge?

According to National Express, the A6 runs to Bishops Bridge Station. Actually, it doesn't start and stop there, the route goes on to Marble Arch.

So I guess the question is why this PAD-XTH link has been put into the rail service dataset, making it appear on RTT. I suspect it's labelled TOC=GWR simply because there isn't a code for National Express.

The obvious answer to that would be "journey planners". But why put in that bus, and no others? Or are there other examples of bus-company buses included so that get offered as part of a train journey?

But ... the National Rail journey planner doesn't actually find it. I don't know why - both ends have codes as stations, but maybe it doesn't know about the walking connection from the bus stop at Stansted?

The Luton Airport Parkway/Airport shuttles are in there

But that's a necessary part of going to Luton Airport by train (unless you prefer that log a walk). As the airport say:

And it works.

In the GWR area, journeys by bus to Bude (attachment example)

When I wrote "bus-company buses", meaning those promoted rather than run by "normal" bus operators, I knew it was more complicated. So here goes - there's a number of categories:

1. Bude from Exeter is a normal route bus (Stagecoach, as it happens) to a destination with no railway station. It's covered by through ticketing and in ITPS so it gets linked by journey planners and the right ticket offered. It's coded as "GW", but described (in RTT) as a Timetabled Bus service.

2. Railhead links, from the station that was probably built or at least built up because of the airport. Luton is one of those, and again you expect the bus to be in ITPS so you get the journey and ticket offered. (There are also "failed railheads", like Aberdeen Dyce, where there is a not very useful bus and it's easier to get the Jet 727 bus into town. While the shuttle to Dyce is called Jet Connect, it's still not in ITPS nor ticketable.)

3. Longer rail links, that are explicitly for rail users, such as Railair from Reading or Woking. I'm not sure to what extent these are still promoted or sponsored by the rail operators, if they don't actually run them; they are coded GW and SW, both of which are co-owned with bus companies. The bus from Feltham was once branded something similar, though now it's just a London bus route.

4. So what category does the A6 from Paddington to Stansted fall into, to justify its inclusion in ITPS data but not so as to be used by journey planners? Stansted Airport is a railway station, and I guess the bus stop has a code (XTH) so that rail replacement buses can be entered as serving it. Though wouldn't there need to be an explicit coded link - such as by walking - to the airport station (SSD) as well?

2 hours to get to Stansted from Paddington is a bit slow compared with tube and train.

Also: Minehead, Padstow, Wadebridge and Helston, all of which appear on both the GWR journey planner and on this map (http://www.projectmapping.co.uk/Reviews/Resources/network%20uk%20map%202014.pdf). However, the map also shows bus links that I cannot find on the journey planner; such as St. Austell to Eden Project and Bicester to Milton Keynes. I wonder what the criteria is for deciding which bus services go on the map.