New 'easy' web guide is actually one big headache!

It is meant to make it much easier to get around the rail network but the new feature on the National Rail Enquiries (NRE) website does anything but.

Launched today, a new 'interactive' web guide to stations in Britain, called ‘Stations Made Easy’ aims to help elderly and disabled people with mobility problems, parents with young children and passengers with heavy luggage to find out more about their local station and its facilities.

Apparently it's a first anywhere in the world. And over 2,500 stations in Britain were photographed to give passengers a step-by-step guide of how to get around when they travel by train.

But I have a couple of problems with it...

• First - the NRE website in general is bland and so visually packed with information it would put anyone off trying to find out anything.
  
• Second - it's not step-by-step. It's one big, confusing, visual-headache of a diagram that, when you hover over particular parts, up pops an amateur photo and a tip.
• Third - interactive is stretching it a bit. Unless you class clicking on a confusing diagram as interactive.
  

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for making rail travel easier for everyone (something we all need to do) and an easy-to-use, interactive guide would be great. But this is neither.

The idea is great, but the implementation is poor. It was probably done in-house by their programmers to save money. But in reality the ROI would have been far greater if a specialist interactive web agency was hired. They then could have had something like this.

Now I know to send a 'photographer' round all 2,500 stations taking over 700,000 images must be expensive. But I'm sure the £1.2million, yes £1.2 million could have been better spent!?!

Am I being harsh? Check it out for yourself.

Hold up, it gets worse