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Is it better for departure boards to show the real destination of a train, or the last intermediate stop on a stopper before it's overtaken by an express (which may have higher prices, tighter rush hour controls, and less cycle spaces)?

http://www.citymetric.com/transport/britains-departure-boards-should-tell-us-less-about-train-operating-companies-and-more

So he knows his German train system, but not the UKs one? Why? Because he must have done his research, or been told, or learnt.

If he did the same fir the UK, his argument wouldn't stand up...

Strange - last time I looked there was a junction at Didcot and trains could depart in three directions. 

I think the benefit of the current approach outweighs any minor disbenefits.  No doubt if he hadn't got his bike and got on a train that took an hour longer than he was expecting he'd have complained about that too.

Struck me as the "I've got find something to write about to earn my weekly fee" article.

I thought it was more a case of being too intoxicated by the sound of his own point-scoring to look at the points to be made. There were several valid ones, about how to present information to a disparate group of users with widely varying knowledge and needs. Plus at least two he missed, though they were latent in what he did say.

One is where have all our big boards gone? You can (now, if not when we had them) get more on them, but they have been replaced by more repeats of the simpler screens. Maybe with all the html/xml screens being generated now we may get the details back, whether the screens are big or small.

The other is that if you do find a screen with the calling pattern showing, it should include Paddington for these bogus Ealing Broadway terminators, but doesn't. That may be a system limitation at the moment (it's possible to lie  when creating a complete itinerary, but not to create one that goes past its destination), but I'm sure there's a way round it.

I have never been a fan of the practice of showing the penultimate station call for a stopping service.  I would much prefer the true destination shown with say something like "stopping service" or "local service" shown underneath.

At London Paddington a train shown on the screens as Radley or Twyford will show Oxford or Reading on the actual train which can cause confusion for the unwary traveller - who are supposedly the ones the whole thing is aimed at.

I assume the trains to Reading overnight are not shown as Twyford, otherwise people could be waiting for the first HST of the day to Swansea to get home to Reading!

It has always struck me that classifing trains as ICE, IC, IR, RE, RB, S bahn etc. has great merit you know what you are getting.

The only problem is agreeing a definiton of each type and classifying all trains.

Take a Weymouth Bristol which I travelled on last Summer

I don't think it can be called an ICE or IC, but is it an:
IR South Coast to Bristol Channel
RE serving Dorchester, Yeovil, Westbury, Trowbridge, Bradford & Bath
RB It stops everwhere.
S Bahn maybe from Westbury/Trowbridge/Bath to Bristol

What about a Padd Oxford fast IC or RE, what if it goes to Worcester IR or RE

Is an Oxford/Didcot to Padd stopper RB or S bahn.

The other problem is unlike Germany our network was unplanned so most lines are multi purpose but Germany it is usually obvious what  routes are served by particular types of train although the same route may have more than one type ie Berlin Dresden has EC (Direct) usually to Prague and RE (with change) alternate hours on which you can use Lander tickets.  

One key point is that IC, ICE, TGV (and others) tell you you need a different, more expensive, ticket for them. I guess we'll get that on the classic-compatible HS2 trains when they are slumming it.

Of course we don't now have that ... in general. But we do of course have a time-varying "which ticket for which train?" issue which it would take a board bigger than Paddington train shed to fully elucidate.

Trying to hide information from the passenger is never right because it will not work (people will find out) and only add to confusion.  Plus it makes the railway look either patronising or underhand.  If the stopper is not the fastest train then mark it as a "stopper" or "local" or whatever.  Also it is perfectly possible that a significant number of passengers will be happy to use a stopper which will be overtaken either because they have cheaper tickets (cf. Heathrow Connect with Heathrow Express) or because they can get a seat or wifi or bike space or whatever not available on faster train or because the stopper is there are ready to depart and they don't trust that the Express will be until it turns up ("a bird in the hand...").  Give people the info they need and let them decide themselves

It doesn't work too well on the stoppers to Oxford as the 'short' destination can either be Radley or Didcot, and of course people might associate Didcot with having 'fast' trains as much as they might expect 'fast' trains to Oxford.

Quite. List all the stops on the departure board was done i the past & pax completely ignored them & contiually founfd themselves on the stopper. Hence the change to Radley, Twyford etc.

Many pax just look at the final destination. No suggestion here will prevent them doing so.

Basically you're not going to win either way, and I believe the best compromise is the system we currently use.  Whilst acknowledging it has some shortfalls, it's hardly the sort of thing to bother writing a long twenty seven paragraph article full of 'wit' that the author might find hilarious but I found pretty tiresome - unless John R's comment about earning a weekly fee applies!   :D

I am on the 16:30 Paddington to Taunton, wondering why it's not the 16:30 to Bridgwater ... as there's a 16:36 that I suspect is quicker to Taunton ...

I think it would be quite confusing if they started doing that for intercity services since a fair few people will be on advance fares.  If  the 16:30 was shown on the boards as only going to Bridgwater you could even end up with some believing their advance reservations have an error and boarding the 16:36.  Although there do not seem to be any Standard Paddington to Taunton advance fares available on the 1630, they are available in First and so boarding the wrong train could be a very costly mistake.

I wonder if saying "passengers for stations to Radley / Bridgwater" should use this train rather than calling it the destination might be appropriate - with the departure board headline being the final station for which it's the fastest direct train, but the list of stations served going beyond right through to the end of the route?

The article I quoted did indeed seem to be stretched almost as if the author was being paid per word, but there's an interesting discussion here.    Having caught the one (and only?) "Twyford" train at Paddington on one occasion, just to be turfed out at Twyford when I had been looking for a comfortable ride to Reading ...

A little subtitle like "Stopping train, continues to London Paddington" / "Stopping train, continues to Oxford" on the display - in the same place that details like "GroupSave not valid" or "Formed of 3 coaches" are placed - would keep everyone happy, perhaps. I have a vague recollection that the displays at KX used to say this for stoppers to Cambridge at the time back in prehistory when I used to catch such things.

I recall it used to be shown thus.  Several times I've been aware of passengers who were expecting to get into Taunton around an hour earlier than they were actually going to. In most cases they have put headphones on as soon as they board and so have missed the announcement that might have given them a clue that they were going the long way round.

Buyer beware - put the true destination and if someone makes a mistake once they won't do it a second time. 

As I said above, it doesn't matter *what* you add to the descriptors, research & experience shows pax don't read anything below the destination.....

It seems in some cases they don't even get as far as reading the destination...

Last night at Reading I re-directed a group of four people who were heading for Bracknell away from the 19:12 to Swansea to the 19:12 to London Waterloo.