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How I got 100% off my train travel

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Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#221

Post by RandomBacon »

devnullbrain wrote: post #218
RandomBacon wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have to or choose to ?

Yes, you're not a legitimate passenger if you haven't paid the fare. It's immaterial though. They could instead face increased cost in taxes, decreased investment elsewhere, or good-old eminent domain for infrastructure expansion. The downstream effects of an infinite number of backup lines to guarantee service following an infinite number of track trespassers are not good for passenger satisfaction.

Sorry, I misunderstood something earlier.

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#222

Post by ivanjermakov »

sebtron wrote: post #27

> Avanti West Coast offers customers: > 15 minutes — 25% off > 30 minutes — 50% off > 1 hour + — 100% off To me they look like very generous refund policies. I checked Italy's Trenitalia and what they offer is[1]: > 30-119 minutes: 25% > 120+ minutes: 50% I suppose anything below 30 minutes is consideres "on time". [1] https://www.trenitalia.com/it/informazioni/indennizzo_per_ri...

Trenitalia would be out of business with higher refunds haha. I had horrible experience with rail transit in Italy.

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#223

Post by ivanjermakov »

aredox wrote: post #186
sidewndr46 wrote: post #144

I used a much simpler variant of this to get Amazon Prime for free for years. When I needed something off Amazon, I'd just wait until the day before it was going to rain then order it with next day delivery. The couriers at that point in time seemed comically unable to deliver anything if it rained. Once it arrived late, open a case and ask for a month of free Amazon prime. This worked up until they discontinued that…

You know the couriers got punished for it? Whereas you enjoyed free stuff

OC should not be blamed for such ugly company policies, blame Amazon.

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#224

Post by ValentineC »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #170
ValentineC wrote: post #143

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.

> Though the problem is that delayed trains are often overcrowded trains.

I've experienced exactly this with Deutsche Bahn trains, but I've been looking at the National Rail Conditions of Travel [1], and there's no requirement that tickets automatically turn into "flexi" tickets, allowing use of alternate routes, unlike German regulations.

I'm guessing a huge number of people being allowed to hop onto the next train instead of just being provided a refund is a huge cause of overcrowding, but I also haven't experienced the UK rail system first-hand in many years.

[1] https://assets.nationalrail.co.uk/e8xgegruud3g/3Y9UXuFziljws...

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#225

Post by tehjoker »

dijit wrote: post #108
tehjoker wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

china has elections you know

Any elections in the People's Republic of China occur under a one-party authoritarian political system controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It's not the same, and as a consequence of being one-party; means (like the parent suggests) they can be more long term focused, which seems to be working.

prefer this to allowing conservatives to have any power. why should guys doing the heil hitler salute get a turn at the wheel

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#226

Post by amiga386 »

stephen_g wrote: post #132
amiga386 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's harder than it looks. Excluding special cases like HS1 and TfL, we have three players: - Network Rail, who maintain the entire country's track, signalling, etc. Also owns and runs some major stations. Run at arms length by government, centrally funded. - Train Operating Companies (TOCs), who won a bid held every few years on how much they'll pay the government to be allowed a monopoly on running a particular reg…

> ROSCOs exist because trains are so expensive that neither government nor TOCs can afford them. Is this sarcasm that I am missing? There is absolutely no reason that Government (or a Government-owned business) couldn't "afford" rolling stock. That's a really poor excuse (and completely made up) if they claim that.

There are loads of reasons governments can't afford up-front capital expenditure! They have an income stream (taxes) but that all goes out the door on existing liabilities, including financing existing debts. They can only get money by raising taxes or cutting existing services. The third way is to try and attract external capital, e.g. "attracting inward investment" or "public-private partnerships", where someone else puts the money down, the trains/hospitals/schools/etc. get built, but the investors who paid for the things own the things and the government pays to use them for decades to come.

This annoys the hell out of future governments, because it's effectively tying their hands, but it also lets the current government look like it's doing a lot more in its short term without raising taxes.

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#227

Post by tempfile »

sebastiennight wrote: post #207
tempfile wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For small probabilities it works :) 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

For probabilities (much) smaller than 10%, sure. But adding 10%, 20%, and 35%, is already a pretty bad start. The error rate becomes huge. (in the article example, the 10% estimate of chances of being on time is ~3.5 smaller than the actual 35% correct result). Being wrong by half an order of magnitude, is being quite wrong :)

I'm not disagreeing with you!

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#228

Post by nobody9999 »

Ray20 wrote: post #202
nobody9999 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>CTA never did that; I don’t think they could if the wanted to. >Metra did it, I’m 99.9% sure they stopped years ago. But yeah, there would be a person at the platform when the train arrived downtown with a piece of paper saying that the train was delayed. A late slip. Thanks for the clarification. I wasn't 100% sure about who the relevant agency was (as I mentioned, I don't live there -- although I do have family th…

>A fair point, but there are some circumstances where both employee and employer may need to justify/document such circumstances -- but on the whole, you're spot on. I think we should also make it common practice to share grocery lists with your employer, as well as the date and time of sexual acts. This is even more justifiable than the status of the train that takes you to work. I mean, trains are late not often en…

>I think we should also make it common practice to share grocery lists with your employer, as well as the date and time of sexual acts. This is even more justifiable than the status of the train that takes you to work.

>I mean, trains are late not often enough to make any significant difference. Whereas unhealthy diet, or say, sleepless nights of lovemaking, can dramatically affect a worker's productivity almost permanently.

You misunderstand me completely -- is that on purpose, are you only focused on your situation and assume no other situation could possible exist?

Or are you just dumb?

Contracts that an organization may have with their customers may require that personnel be onsite at particular times, with the caveat that penalties in the contract may be lessened or eliminated if the lapse was an event outside the contractor's control.

In such situations, it can be important (assuming you want to get paid) to be able to document such events.

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#229

Post by seabass-labrax »

ValentineC wrote: post #224
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Though the problem is that delayed trains are often overcrowded trains. I've experienced exactly this with Deutsche Bahn trains, but I've been looking at the National Rail Conditions of Travel [1], and there's no requirement that tickets automatically turn into "flexi" tickets, allowing use of alternate routes, unlike German regulations. I'm guessing a huge number of people being allowed to hop onto the next train…

It is mostly the same in the UK too, at least in principle. Sparpreis fares correspond to Advance tickets, which can vary over time or be sold at a discount. DB's Flexpreis would be called 'walk-up' fares in Britain, which are fixed in price by the Department for Transport (a part of the British government).

If you miss a train due to no fault of your own you can take the next available one, including with an Advance ticket[1].

What complicates the matter greatly in the United Kingdom is the semi-privatized franchising system and the hundreds of 'restriction codes' that limit the validity of the tickets to what is essentially an arbitrary subset of the available services, even in the case of disruption.

I think that German regulations, as well as European industry agreements such as CIV, are better for the passenger because they codify in law how reasonable railway staff would act anyway. However there are equivalent protections in Britain, albeit ones encoded in nebulous contracts and precedent rather than enshrined in law. They can help you but only if you know what they are and are prepared to fight the bueorocracy to invoke them.

[1]: https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/tickets-railcards-and-offers/...

Re: How I got 100% off my train travel

#230

Post by seabass-labrax »

nobody9999 wrote: post #228
Ray20 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A fair point, but there are some circumstances where both employee and employer may need to justify/document such circumstances -- but on the whole, you're spot on. I think we should also make it common practice to share grocery lists with your employer, as well as the date and time of sexual acts. This is even more justifiable than the status of the train that takes you to work. I mean, trains are late not often en…

>I think we should also make it common practice to share grocery lists with your employer, as well as the date and time of sexual acts. This is even more justifiable than the status of the train that takes you to work. >I mean, trains are late not often enough to make any significant difference. Whereas unhealthy diet, or say, sleepless nights of lovemaking, can dramatically affect a worker's productivity almost perm…

Parent's comment was the sarcastic observation that if employers ought to be able to verify workers' commutes, they could justifiably also want to monitor other aspects of workers' lives outside of work that have a significant impact on productivity.

The argument is valid whilst being entirely dystopian. There is a level of trust, or at least tolerance, between employer and employee that must be accommodated in society; otherwise there is no choice but brutally invasive surveillance of all workers.

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