171–180 of 240 posts
> if the baseline chance of delay is 10%, engineering works add 25%, strikes add 35%, and bad weather adds 20%, then when all these problems happen, there's a 90% chance your train will be delayed. What if signal failures "add" 15%? Then all factors combined would mean that there's a 105% chance your train will be delayed! Adding up probabilities like this doesn't make sense. If you simplify these things as independe…
The UK train system is a dire, expensive mess. Attempting to avoid getting directly political here, but I strongly believe it’s one of the lowest hanging fruit a political party could act on to curry favour with the electorate. Would be amazing to see this productised à la the way split ticketing works.
it's not dire and it's not expensive compared to the next reasonable alternatives if you compare the cost of a London commuter belt season ticket compared to the cost of driving+parking, it is still very much a bargain
If we drive our car, this is 4 hours with less than £35 of petrol (the full tank is approx £35 and it gets us there and some of the way back).
Booking in advance and having to get stressed about making it to the station on time, dealing with the frequent delays (I only started driving a year or two ago, so for many years I've been coping with the train, and genuinely it is delayed 50% or more for this journey in my experience) which can easily be another 2 hours on top etc, having to process the delay repay evidence for that, ...
Add to that, these 'cheap' fares are usually for awkward times, like arriving late at night. And then I have to get someone to pick me up from the station on the far end as well.
You can rightfully point out that my car needs maintenance too, but we have to do that anyway and I'd still argue that it's not enough to make up the difference.
Very tangentially, but a few years ago I was travelling at Christmas and the ticket machines were broken so wouldn't dispense the ticket I had already bought (for collection on departure). The station staff and train staff let us through for 2 trains, but on the 3rd train the guard was so vicious and insisted we pay for a whole new ticket for the whole journey, at full price with no railcard discounts or anything, which came to the aforementioned £400 when we had already paid £160. Was she right to do this? Maybe, but merry Christmas lol.
We were pretty miffed to say the least and it definitely spoilt the Christmas time a bit! £400 is not nothing for us to say the least. I eventually got it back by filing a chargeback with my bank. The train company never answered my e-mails or apparently even Mastercard's communications on the matter, so the ruling went to me by default. Kind of amusing in a way, but not an experience I'd like to repeat and it took 4 months.
So is the train not dire? I can't say I'm rushing to get back on it.
Due to an array of issues the train company has abysmall on-time records on our only high speed line, connecting A'dam to Brussels, Paris and London.
I mean we are still talking about 82% on time, not 60% lmao. But compared to the 97,6% of normal trains it's bad.
But anyway you can ask for your money back just like in the UK. The trick is that when you travel on a business card your company pays, but you get the reimbursement when delayed.
Must've made hundreds over the years. Everytime I heard the brakes I heard the cash register sound and since it's a train I would just happily chug along with my work anyway.
> if the baseline chance of delay is 10%, engineering works add 25%, strikes add 35%, and bad weather adds 20%, then when all these problems happen, there's a 90% chance your train will be delayed. What if signal failures "add" 15%? Then all factors combined would mean that there's a 105% chance your train will be delayed! Adding up probabilities like this doesn't make sense. If you simplify these things as independe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But in America, it doesn't make sense in most cases without subsidies That's the point of public transit, and that's the case everywhere. Also that of roads; roads wouldn't exist without government subsidies because nobody wants to pay toll to exit their driveways. Of course you'd need to reduce car dependency for any public transit system to make sense, and I don't think Americans care for that. For some reason, "…
> you'd need to reduce car dependency for any public transit system to make sense, and I don't think Americans care for that This is what I mean. To reduce car dependence given America's built infrastructure, demographics and geographic spread, you'd have to build such a massive amount of public transportation that I think--outside major metropolitan areas--it would be cheaper to stick to cars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Japan. Wait till you try the trains there! They're so punctual that delays issue a certificate for employees to present to employers* * Source: random article
Wait until you try high speed rail in China. They're 10-15 years ahead of Japan.
China is pretty good, but the only place I've ever seen proper turn-up-and-go HSR is Japan. Tap your card or phone (NFC-F, because credit card contactless is too slow for Japan), walk on. If you missed the train you were aiming for there'll be another one 7.5 or at most 15 minutes later, so no big.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
china has elections you know
Sure, "elections", that's why Xi has been president for how many years already? I lost count
Hua Guofeng: 1976 - 1981
Hu Yaobang: 1981 - 1987
Zhao Ziyang: 1987 - 1989. Removed from office for reasons related to the Tiananmen protests.
Jiang Zemin: 1989 - 2002
Hu Jintao: 2002 - 2012
Xi Jinping: 2012 - present
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leader_of_the_Chinese_Communis... )
So far he's in third place for length of service.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a good reason the return is only £3 more. It's so fare dodgers who buy a single have still basically paid the full fare.
I don’t understand. Wouldn’t most fare dodgers buy no tickets, not just buy a single ticket for part of a return journey? What’s the reason that people try to dodge fares by buying a single ticket? Is it because they know when and where tickets are likely to be checked?
I think the real reason is less sensational: trains that go full in one direction still have to go back in the other direction whether they're full or not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As for the article---I think you really undervalue your time and the price of inconvenience. I can see how you can romanticize it as a nice way to get things done, but (dealing with) train delays is hardly distraction free and is full of forced setting changes and (very) shit working environments (like waiting on a platform). By delays, I think the author meant that they get on a train, then sit in it for ~5 hours,…
Though the problem is that delayed trains are often overcrowded trains. And overcrowded trains are not conducive for doing work on a laptop, unless you like sitting on the vestibule floor outside the toilet door with your laptop on your knees.
> if the baseline chance of delay is 10%, engineering works add 25%, strikes add 35%, and bad weather adds 20%, then when all these problems happen, there's a 90% chance your train will be delayed. What if signal failures "add" 15%? Then all factors combined would mean that there's a 105% chance your train will be delayed! Adding up probabilities like this doesn't make sense. If you simplify these things as independe…
1-(1-p1)(1-p2) = p1+p2-p1p2
and a similar formula holds for more terms. so neglecting terms of order p^2 gives the form in the article