Network planning workspaces
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Plan a transport network

Select a city to design routes, test timetables and compare journey impacts.
Aerial view of Norwich
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Norwich

Bus routes, official timetable data, stops and journey comparison.

Open workspace
Edinburgh Castle above the city
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Edinburgh

Bus & tram routes, stops, frequencies, timetables and the Edinburgh Trams network.

Open workspace
Bridge of Sighs over the River Cam in Cambridge
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Cambridge

Bus routes, stops and timetable data for city and regional planning.

Open workspace
York Minster in the centre of York
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York

Bus routes, stops and the rail network for urban routes and park-and-ride planning.

Open workspace
Desktop workspace

Designing routes needs a larger screen

This city uses a detailed map and route editor built for a laptop or desktop.

On your phone you can still open the analytics view: browse existing routes and their timetables, plan journeys, see map reachability and explore transport corridors.

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TransportForge

Norwich workspace

Click an existing stop to begin
Full workspace

This tool needs a bigger screen

Designing new routes and appraising them uses the full editor, which is built for a laptop or desktop. For full interactivity, open this workspace on a bigger screen.

Right here on your phone you can plan journeys against real timetables, browse every route, and explore reachability, corridors and passenger flows.
Early access

TransportForge is in early access

TransportForge is still being built. Features will become broader and more robust as the app develops, and this version will contain bugs, errors and incomplete behaviour. Treat its outputs as early evidence and check important results independently.

  • Routes, demand and journey results depend on the available network and timetable data.
  • Costs, benefits and wider impacts use editable modelling assumptions.
  • Check unusual alignments and results before using them in a presentation or report.
  • The Help Centre explains each tool and its methodology limits.
Updates · v0.51

What is new in TransportForge

v0.51 · Hotfixes
  • A number of hotfixes to address bugs.
v0.5 · Better evidence, clearer decisions
  • Evaluation pipeline. A new guided report brings journey improvements, access, demand, equity, costs and risks into one decision flow.
  • Analysis depth. Evaluations can now run as Fast, Standard or Full checks, with deeper timetable, demand and equity testing at each level.
  • Service-day control. Choose weekday, Saturday, Sunday or any combination before a run, then switch between the completed days in the result.
  • Faster analysis. Repeated checks reuse finished work, identical live runs share the same job, and larger regional runs can use several compute workers.
  • Journey reliability. Access results now explain optimistic, typical and dependable travel times in plain language, and include loaded running-time and cancellation evidence when available.
  • Background analyses. Longer checks can be minimised and reopened with their exact settings and map layer, with a clear option to cancel or delete them.
  • Plan checks. Unfinished routes are caught before an analysis starts, so reports no longer invent results from missing geometry or service details.
  • Editable existing routes. Published services can now be copied into a proposal, adjusted and tested against the original network without changing the source route.
  • Network data. A dedicated Data workspace now brings feed validation, local evidence and calibration together. GTFS feeds can add services, replace a network or create selected editable proposals.
  • Updated data. City analytics now use newer population and employment totals, alongside refreshed routes, timetables and supporting datasets.
  • Clearer guidance. Analytics copy is shorter, reliability is explained in everyday terms, and map layers step back while you choose a point.
v0.4 · UI 2.0 cleanup begins
  • Route and road editors now have clearer layouts, fewer panels and more compact controls.
  • Route badges, stop sequences and service indicators make routes easier to scan and understand.
  • Improved route shaping for road-aligned plans.
  • Tram and rail routes follow their alignments more reliably, with clearer design checks and cleaner map overlays.
v0.3 · Leeds joins, and journey-planner fixes
  • Leeds is now a full workspace: bus routes, timetables, the local rail lines, buildings, demand and appraisal.
  • Journeys now use heavy rail where it is quicker, with more accurate station locations.
  • Generated routes no longer overlap each other, and the journey planner has a cleaner From / To layout.
v0.2 · Analytics on your phone
  • Open any workspace on a phone in a new analytics view, with the menu along the bottom of the screen.
  • Run journeys, reachability, corridors and other network analytics on the go; results open right in the bottom pane and scroll like a page.
  • Route design and appraisal stay desktop only for now, and the app tells you when a tool needs the bigger screen.
v0.1 · Route generation and stronger appraisal
  • Generate candidate routes from modelled corridor gaps.
  • Validate bus candidates on the street graph before ranking them.
  • Keep legal detours visible and recalculate their runtime, costs and BCR.
Early public release
  • Design bus, light rail and metro routes across four city workspaces.
  • Test journeys, access, demand, appraisal and service patterns.
  • Use the Help Centre for guides, definitions and methodology caveats.
Help Centre

Help

Getting Started

Build, test, then compare

Start with a question: which journey should improve, which place needs better access, or which corridor needs more capacity?

Draw the proposal, test it against today's network, then save credible versions for comparison.

  • Use Design for new bus, tram and metro services.
  • Use Build for roads, guideways and crossings.
  • Use Analytics to compare journey time, access, demand and appraisal.
DesignCreate a service. BuildAdd infrastructure. AnalyseCheck the impact.
Route Design

Bus routes

Add stops and the route follows the street network between them.

How routing works

Routing follows legal street movements and avoids immediate reversals. Existing stops preserve interchange links; new stops snap to the nearest street. Length, cycle time and required fleet update as you draw.

What to set before analysing

Set the headway, operating days and first and last service. These values control waits, assigned demand, vehicle-kilometres and operating cost.

  • Direct beats clever. Every deviation costs all through riders time; the stop review prices this trade if you want the evidence.
  • Frequency is half the product. The same alignment at 10 versus 30 minutes produces radically different journey-planner and demand results.
  • Reuse stops where they exist. Existing stops carry interchange with today's network; isolated new stops start with no connections.
Route Design

Light rail and tram

Combine street running, existing railway corridors and new reserved track within one route.

How the three alignments work

Street follows roads. Follow tram/rail traces an existing alignment. New track creates a segregated section and checks buildings, crossings and gradients.

What the model charges you

The appraisal assumes roughly £20m per new route-km and £3m per vehicle. Sections following existing rail use a 15% retrofit allowance for stops, signalling and electrification.

  • Stops on followed rail sit on the rails. Suggested or hand-placed stops snap to the alignment; the walk from the nearest road is the passenger's problem, not the tram's.
  • Review crossings when prompted. Water and road crossings need a structure decision (bridge/tunnel/level) before the cost picture is honest.
  • Watch the grade warnings. Terrain checks flag climbs beyond light-rail capability on new-track sections.
Route Design

Metro

Design a fully segregated line on new track or an existing railway corridor.

How it behaves in the model

Metro uses a 40 km/h cycle speed and never follows streets. New sections trigger building, crossing and gradient checks. The appraisal assumes about £100m per new route-km and £9m per vehicle.

Designing a credible line

Use wider station spacing and connect stations to the surrounding bus and rail network. Test metro where a large market can justify the capital cost.

  • Fewer, stronger stations. A metro that stops everywhere is a slow tram with a tunnel bill.
  • Following rail reduces capital; tunnelling does not. Sections along an existing railway pay a 15% retrofit allowance rather than the full new-build rate, while vehicles and operating costs still apply.
  • Read the agent model too. High-capital modes need the distributional story as well as the aggregate one.
Road Builder

Draw infrastructure carefully

Add roads, bus links and junction changes to the scenario network.

How it works

New links join the scenario routing graph at the selected road speed. Resolve each crossing as at-grade, bridge or tunnel; that choice controls connectivity. Building footprints within the corridor are reported as early impacts.

Using it well

Use this tool to test a specific missing link, bus gate or barrier crossing. Resolve its crossings, then rerun the affected journeys.

  • Crossings decide connectivity. An unresolved crossing can leave your link visually present but unusable; resolve the dialog before trusting travel times.
  • Impacts are screening estimates. Building counts come from footprint overlap, so treat them as early constraints, not a demolition register.
  • Pair with a service. A road on its own moves nothing; add or reroute a bus over it to measure the passenger effect.
Metrics

Journey planner

Compare one door-to-door journey before and after your plan.

How it works

The planner searches scheduled departures and valid transfers for the chosen day and time. Walking follows the street network. With a plan active, the same journey is run on today's network and on your scenario.

How to read it

Start with the time saving and whether the proposed route is used. Expand a journey for its walking, waiting, riding and transfer steps. A ~ marks frequency-based times where a published grid is unavailable.

  • Departure time changes the answer. The best route at 08:00 can lose to a different service at 08:15. Test the times your users would actually travel.
  • An unused proposal is information. If the planner ignores your route for a pair, it found something faster. Check where your route loses: frequency, directness or stop placement.
  • One journey is an anecdote. Use it to explain a story people recognise, then back the claim with reachability or the travel-time matrix.
Metrics

Reachability

Choose a start point to map places, residents and jobs within each travel-time band.

How it works

The planner calculates the earliest arrival at every stop using the selected day and time. Population and jobs are totalled inside each band. Green cells show places brought closer by your plan.

How to read it

Compare the 30- and 45-minute totals, then inspect where the boundary moves on the map.

  • It is a one-point picture. Reachability from the station says nothing about the estate two miles away. Click several origins that matter: hospital, campus, deprived neighbourhoods.
  • No change can be correct. If your route does not pass near the clicked point, the isochrone should not move. That is the tool working, not failing.
  • Time of day matters. An hourly service produces very different 30-minute areas at 08:00 and 08:31. Try more than one departure.
Metrics

Opportunity map

Map how many jobs each part of the city can reach within 45 minutes.

How it works

The scheduled view tests each served grid cell at five times between 07:00 and 19:00. The dependable view uses more departure and waiting-time samples, and counts a job only when 9 in 10 journeys stay within 45 minutes. Gain mode shows what your plan adds.

How to read it

Darker areas reach more jobs. In gain mode, look for meaningful improvements in places that currently have poor access.

  • Jobs are the yardstick, not ridership. This measures potential access, which is the economic and equity argument, separate from whether people ride today.
  • Compare like with like. Always read before/after at the same threshold; the 45-minute cutoff is a convention, not a law.
  • The demand model feeds it. Employment sites missing from the inputs (new development, some special sites) will not show as opportunity until added.
Metrics

Appraisal

Estimate whether a plan's benefits justify its capital and operating costs.

Value for money

The initial BCR divides established monetised benefits by public cost. The adjusted BCR also includes agglomeration and labour-supply effects. The shaded range shows the sensitivity cases.

The economic case

The benefit bar separates user time savings, external impacts and agglomeration. The cost marker combines capital and operating cost, less fare revenue. NPV reports discounted benefits minus costs over the appraisal period.

Economic impact tiles

Use benefit per boarding as a reasonableness check. The remaining tiles cover GVA, operating jobs, labour-market reach, mode share, labour supply, carbon and health. Land-value uplift is reported separately and is excluded from the BCR.

Exchequer view and operations

The exchequer table separates fare and tax income from capital, operating cost and lost fuel duty. Operational tiles show boardings, fleet, cost recovery and improved journeys.

  • Initial vs adjusted BCR. The verdict uses time savings and established impacts tied to riders. The adjusted result also includes wider economic effects. If the initial BCR is 0.00 but NPV is positive, treat the wider result as an upper bound.
  • Open Sensitivity. The tornado shows which assumptions move the BCR most; if the case lives or dies on one elasticity, you know what to defend.
  • Trams and metros must earn their new capital. £20-100m per route-km applies to new-build sections. Existing railway corridors receive a 15% retrofit allowance, which can improve the result but does not remove vehicle, retrofit or operating costs.
Metrics

Assigned demand

Estimate how local modelled trips distribute across scheduled services.

How it works

Up to 2,400 trips are sampled from the demand matrix and routed for the selected period. Boardings, alightings and segment loads are scaled to a daily total using the regional trip-rate profile.

How to read it

Select a loaded segment to see its modelled origins and destinations. Use service profiles to find the busiest section and where demand falls away.

  • Low demand is a diagnosis. If your route assigns few passengers, sampled trips found faster paths. Check frequency, directness and stop placement before blaming the tool.
  • The matrix decides what exists. Airports, hospitals and campuses generate strong flows only because they are explicitly represented as special generators in the demand model.
  • Departure scope shifts results. A single-time run reflects that time's waits and connections; the all-day scope is steadier for comparisons.
Metrics

Agent model

Compare modelled commuter outcomes before and after your plan, including their distribution by deprivation.

The headline: annual consumer surplus

Each agent receives a home, workplace, deprivation decile and peak departure time. The same journey is planned on both networks. Changes in riding, waiting, walking and interchange time are priced and scaled to the represented commuter population.

Who gains & loses

The diverging chart shows gains and losses by deprivation decile, where 1 is most deprived. Check whether benefits reach the groups the plan is intended to serve.

Why journeys improve

The time breakdown shows whether gains come from waiting, riding, walking or fewer interchanges. Use it to decide whether to change frequency, alignment or stops.

Wider impacts and peak crowding

Peak crowding compares morning boardings with seats offered by the timetable. Overloaded routes are reassigned once with a crowding penalty.

  • Patterns over point estimates. With about 1,500 commuters, the broad decile pattern is more useful than a precise decimal. Raise the sample for finer splits.
  • Commuters only. Agents model the journey-to-work market; airport passengers and visitors appear in assigned demand and the appraisal via special generators, not as agent types.
  • Read with the appraisal. The agent model deliberately ignores construction cost: a distributionally beautiful tram can still fail its BCR.
Metrics

Compare plans

Compare two saved plans using the same day, demand sample and appraisal settings.

How it works

The table shows journey savings, mode shift, access, cost and BCR for both plans, plus the difference between them.

How to read it

Use the table to narrow credible options. Give versions descriptive names and change one major design choice at a time.

  • Change one thing at a time. If two plans differ in mode, alignment and frequency at once, the comparison cannot tell you which choice mattered.
  • Comparative results are the most trustworthy output. Model biases hit both options equally, so "A beats B" is more robust than "A is worth £4.2m".
  • Check build impact too. A narrow winner on journey time can be a clear loser on demolition and capital.
Metrics

Travel-time matrix

Compare travel between the 18 busiest zones in one table.

How it works

Rows and columns use the largest zones by residents and jobs. Each cell contains generalised minutes: riding plus weighted waiting, walking and interchange time. Savings view subtracts today's network.

How to read it

Rows are origins; columns are destinations. Look for consistently slow origins or destinations, then replay a useful pair in Journey planner.

  • Generalised minutes, not clock minutes. A cell mixes riding with weighted waiting and walking; two pairs with equal clock time can differ here, correctly.
  • Zones are the busiest, not all. The matrix samples the top of the demand distribution; small suburbs will not appear as rows.
  • Asymmetry is real. A to B can be faster than B to A on a one-way system or an asymmetric timetable.
Metrics

Frequency search

Find the headway with the strongest estimated return and review stop spacing.

Optimise headways

The tool tests practical headways. Shorter waits raise benefits; more vehicle-kilometres and fleet raise costs. The best result is retained. Crew rules and depot logistics are not modelled.

Review stop spacing

Long-gap checks look for nearby existing stops that expand catchment. Close-stop checks flag stops with overlapping catchments and little unique coverage. Each suggestion shows passenger gain and through-journey cost.

  • Check the operating cost. A shorter headway improves waits but needs more vehicles and staff.
  • Fix the route shape first. Applied stop changes re-route and re-cost the service.
  • Read catchment and delay together. A new stop can add coverage while slowing through journeys.
Metrics

Corridor finder

Find busy journeys where public transport takes much longer than driving.

How it works

The first list shows the largest travel markets with a clear public-transport disadvantage. The second starts from residential areas with poor links to the places people travel to.

How to read it

Orange lines head towards the centre, teal lines cross the city and purple lines highlight poorly served residential areas. Use the list to shortlist places for a closer look.

  • Review orbital links. Hub-and-spoke networks can hide slow outer-area journeys.
  • Compare both rankings. The busiest market and the greatest need may point to different corridors.
  • Check other evidence. Growth sites, tourism and education travel may be undercounted.
Metrics

Route generator

Create candidate routes for high-ranked gaps and compare their value and equity.

How it works

The generator places stops along each corridor at spacing suited to the selected mode, connects them to existing stops and validates bus paths against the street graph. It recalculates runtime, cost and BCR, then runs a small equity sample for finalists.

Rail-following capital

Light rail and metro sections following existing railway use the same 15% retrofit allowance as hand-drawn routes.

How to read it

Cards show corridor, BCR, NPV, boardings, length and equity share. Add a candidate to edit its alignment, stops and service level before running the full evaluation.

  • Review before use. Check stop locations, operating practicality and local constraints.
  • Rerun for each mode. Spacing, speed and capital costs change the ranking.
  • Check the equity label. These candidates optimise for underserved areas rather than the largest market.
Metrics

Service simulation

Replay scheduled vehicles and your proposed services on the map.

How it works

Vehicle positions are interpolated between stop times. Use the clock to inspect service levels through the day. Proposed routes run at their selected headway and span.

How to read it

Look for long gaps, weak evening coverage and overlaps between services. Adjust the timetable before relying on results built from it.

  • This is a timetable replay. Real operations add delays and cancellations.
  • Check early and late service. Peak-hour analysis can hide span problems.
  • Check the vehicle count. The busiest point provides an initial fleet sense-check.
Metrics

Methodology caveats

Use this page to understand which outputs are observed, modelled or early estimates.

What the model is

Timetables use published service data where available. Demand estimates trips between areas from current population and workplace totals. Journey planning follows the timetable. Appraisal uses editable TAG-based assumptions.

Where it is strong and weak

Comparisons between plans are more reliable than absolute patronage or BCR forecasts because both plans share the same assumptions. Use observed counts, local plans and engineering evidence before making investment decisions.

  • Demand data is commuter-shaped. Leisure, education, tourism and off-peak travel are represented only coarsely; special generators cover the biggest gaps, not all of them.
  • Do not over-read small differences. A 3% BCR gap between options is not a decision; a 2x gap is.
  • For decisions, add evidence. Observed patronage, counts, local plans and site constraints belong alongside any output you publish.

GTFS Studio

Operator feed editor
Start with an operator feed

Import a GTFS feed

Choose a GTFS zip, or select all of the feed’s text files together. The feed stays on this device while you check and edit it.

.zip, .txt and .csv files are supported
  1. 1
    ImportOpen an operator feed or a saved revision.
  2. 2
    Check and editResolve feed errors and update service data.
  3. 3
    Use or exportTest the revision here or download a new GTFS feed.
Road encounter

How should these roads relate?