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Why (UK) train departure information is not open data.

placr.co.uk

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Re: Why (UK) train departure information is not open data.

#31

Post by kierank »

arethuza wrote: post #19
rvkennedy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very simple, when you privatize something, it magically becomes cheaper. Because of "efficiencies". The way this works is you can always get a private company to pitch a service for a lower price than you're currently paying. Then it's up to them to squeeze a profit from that service by providing a lousy service. This is called "the power of the market". But because the service is lousy, and the public doesn't l…

Like for like, people in the public sector in the UK often get paid quite a bit more than people in the private sector: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13329634

Don't post reports from centre right think tanks if you want to be balanced. You could find an opposing report from a think tank on the other side of the spectrum.

Re: Why (UK) train departure information is not open data.

#32

Post by tobylane »

The tube (which i use about once a year) is considerably better at this (different, tighter consortiums). There are a bunch of good apps like Tube Boards and Tube Status (if I used it more I'd pay for some). Even just that, the current 30mins of the timetable, and any delays as a whole, would be a big improvement on what there is now - announcements on the platform.

Re: Why (UK) train departure information is not open data.

#33

Post by tobylane »

singular wrote: post #22

This is unbelievable. Do you think, if I decided to catch coaches/buses everywhere, I could get back some of the money they get from me? The fact that a publicly-funded organisation refuse to allow access to data because they have been criticised is absolutely scandalous. They get our money for free then dare to get shirty about the people who are funding them ?!! The railway service in the UK is appallingly bad, the…

The Government want to change that, they don't think that every taxpayer should be paying part of every train user's ticket. The rail companies will get less dependable, probably less overall money. I hope they still go ahead with the long term things, they said it would take 40 years (note: read the article a year ago) to break even on the cost of making it all electric.

Re: Why (UK) train departure information is not open data.

#34

Post by IHateATOC »

singular wrote: post #22

This is unbelievable. Do you think, if I decided to catch coaches/buses everywhere, I could get back some of the money they get from me? The fact that a publicly-funded organisation refuse to allow access to data because they have been criticised is absolutely scandalous. They get our money for free then dare to get shirty about the people who are funding them ?!! The railway service in the UK is appallingly bad, the…

I'm sitting on a lot of data that could do a lot of damage to ATOC. Time to stop sitting on it?

Re: Why (UK) train departure information is not open data.

#35

Post by IHateATOC »

wallflower wrote: post #15

If you are interested in transit-related information access, consider signing up for the very low-traffic but occasionally interesting Transit Developers group. http://groups.google.com/group/transit-developers

How interested would the transit developers group be in 'hacking' the transport system, i.e. ripping apart all the proprietary encodings etc used by ATOC?

Re: Why (UK) train departure information is not open data.

#36

Post by timthorn »

nodata wrote: post #10

When the trains are consistently late, the train company must refund a portion of the money that rail ticket holders pay. If the data was open, this process would become automated and cost the train companies lots of money.

Someone has already automated it. Take a look at http://www.delay-repay.com/

It only works for NXEA, but that's good enough for me!

Re: Why (UK) train departure information is not open data.

#37

Post by deadbadger »

mseebach wrote: post #28
deadbadger wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maximise the value for whom? The data is being monopolistically exploited by a private entity, for private profit. Where is the value for the taxpayer there? I think most people would agree that taxpayer value for public expenditure should be maximised, and were the money from the licences going directly into the public coffers then we could certainly have a discussion about whether taxpayer value is maximised by sel…

The government pays the train operating companies to operate trains, not to feed data to iPhone apps, just as they're not paid to sell crisps and sodas from a small cart. This creates value (otherwise there would be no profit to extract), so why not?

The government pays the train companies to run a transport service; departure times are an essential part of that, in a way that crisps quite plainly (or quite saltedly, ha ha ha* ) are not.

I agree that large-scale API provision is added value, and I have no objection to a private company making a profit from that. What I object to is a private company being handed a monopoly on that private data, with no effective oversight being given to the terms under which they provide access to it.

ATOC, by dint of the exclusive licence granted to them by Network Rail, have complete control of the market for this publically-funded data. They are adding value by serving it as a reliable API, certainly; however the price they are able to command has little relation to that value, because they have no competitors.

* sorry

Re: Why (UK) train departure information is not open data.

#38

Post by arethuza »

kierank wrote: post #31
arethuza wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like for like, people in the public sector in the UK often get paid quite a bit more than people in the private sector: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13329634

Don't post reports from centre right think tanks if you want to be balanced. You could find an opposing report from a think tank on the other side of the spectrum.

I can assure you that I'm not naturally on the right of the political spectrum, but I have a fair amount of knowledge of how the public sector works (particularly at the higher levels) and it pretty much aligns with my personal experience.

Re: Why (UK) train departure information is not open data.

#39

Post by batterseapower »

singular wrote: post #22

This is unbelievable. Do you think, if I decided to catch coaches/buses everywhere, I could get back some of the money they get from me? The fact that a publicly-funded organisation refuse to allow access to data because they have been criticised is absolutely scandalous. They get our money for free then dare to get shirty about the people who are funding them ?!! The railway service in the UK is appallingly bad, the…

It's hardly unusual for entities that receive government money to also charge for products/services produced using that money. Three examples I can think of just off the top of my head include 1) the health service in places like France where there are subsidised usage fees, 2) farmers in the EU who get large subsidies from the CAP or the equivalent in the USA, 3) application fees in patent offices.

It is definitely super annoying that this data is not free, but the reality is that it does cost a bit of money to gather and aggregate.

Furthermore, though I frequently take the train, I do consider it unfair that general taxation revenues are used to fund the train services -- especially considering that if you look at the stats they are principally used by the wealthy. Charging for data goes some way to shifting the cost burden of rail back onto the rail travellers themselves, as the person ultimately paying for this data is the traveller that uses the train time app/website.

Re: Why (UK) train departure information is not open data.

#40

Post by pbhjpbhj »

arethuza wrote: post #19
rvkennedy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very simple, when you privatize something, it magically becomes cheaper. Because of "efficiencies". The way this works is you can always get a private company to pitch a service for a lower price than you're currently paying. Then it's up to them to squeeze a profit from that service by providing a lousy service. This is called "the power of the market". But because the service is lousy, and the public doesn't l…

Like for like, people in the public sector in the UK often get paid quite a bit more than people in the private sector: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13329634

I'd be quite interested to see the comparisons they make and the raw data they use.

When I worked in the public sector the minimum wage came in and boosted a lot of the low grades pay levels. At the time this was said to be an embarrassment for the government as the minimum wage did little to similarly skilled workers outside of the public sector.

Indeed where I worked practically any of the staff could work for substantially more in an equivalent role in a private firm.

Teachers seem to get less money often in private sector, but benefits of shorter terms, better discipline, better working conditions and the like help considerably. Nurses in private employment seem to get quite a bit more.

What's equivalent to the police force?

Armed forces are supposedly poorly paid, but they get bed and board too.

>The report said the gap - or pay premium - between what a typical public sector worker earns above their equivalent in the private sector has increased to 16.5% over the past two years for salaried workers.

But it says this has risen by 35% for workers paid by the hour, despite efforts by the government to reduce the public sector wage bill.*

At the same time, real pay has fallen for the bottom 30% of private sector workers.

/ Is this a case of damn lies and statistics. If private sector pay falls then the gap widens, no? Is this article just about falling private sector pay due to recession?

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