# introduction
Grass routes planning outlined the information requirements for using public transport to go for a walk. This is information planning at the level that anyone can undertake.
Transport information engineering outlines the business issues, information objects and structural forms which are necessary for smart partnerships to build a framework of concepts and an architecture for information planning.
Interchange engineering suggests the relation between information and reality. Information is necessary but not sufficient. Well engineered information will make it possible to do things that you hadn't thought you could do but the behaviour of reality will place all sorts of impediments in your way. The bus doesn't come, the gate is locked, there is a barbed wire barrier, even relatively small inconveniences can prove seriously upsetting. Changing concrete reality is much more difficult than changing information and it involves powers that no one individual usually has. This note is intended to provide a framework for thinking who can do what?
It is divided into you, me, us, them. To have a framework you need to know who you are and what the extent of your power and influences might be. I've done one for myself. By us I mean the groups and teams by which you might exert influence and by them I mean the others, those who cause the problems, though of course for all of them, they are yous, mes and usses. The political task is turning them into usses.
The second division is an architecture of problem type. These I have divided into: route formulation; getting on and off; Information engineering; negotiating the interchange; lines of influence; mode mode.
The third is a measure of complexity. I've called these simple stop, junction, simple interchange, complex single mode interchange, simple multi-mode interchange, complex multimode interchange and major interchange.
Fourthly, I've worked through some examples as case studies for three major players identified from the us, them category. These are about as unsympathetic as possible and are not intended to turn those thems into usses but to show the scale of the problems which need to be addressed.
There does seem to be a remarkably thin literature on something which seems so obviously a component of the functionality of public transport. The transformation of the Institute of Highways and Transport guidelines or the MVA transport model make entertaining reading if one can immunise oneself to the damage they have caused to civilisation. On two reports I've written longish reviews pointing out just straightforward errors of fact and theory. These are in the archive of trip on www.mailbase.ac.uk.
Some graphic representation of the issues would undoubtedly be useful. A simple table is probably the easiest though a Beck type diagram must be almost irresistible.