pavel_lishin•1m
How I got 100% off my train travelreadbunce.com
239 comments
  • zfnmxt•1m

    > 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 independent events, the probability of delay is just the 1 minus the product of all the probabilities of each event not happening (i.e., 1 - P(event)).

    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). This is a bad deal, even if it's free. Money is there to to be spent; this is a instance in which to spend it, moral/ethical/fraud concerns aside.

    But hey maybe you're a Von Neuman type and thrive in cacophony and chaos.

    • WindyMiller•1m

      I think you really undervalue the pleasure of getting one over on our awful train system, and also overestimate how much money the young people of the UK have access to.

    • ValentineC•1m

      > 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, with the option of paying roughly twice the price for first class [1].

      As someone who frequently uses their laptop on public transport too, this sounds like a great way to either get things done or pass time.

      [1] https://www.avantiwestcoast.co.uk/travel-information/onboard...

      • Doctor_Fegg•1m

        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.

        • tempfile•1m

          To be fair, in my experience a lot of train operators will not declassify a train unless it is very very full. So if you got a first class ticket, you wouldn't be as stuck.

        • ValentineC•1m

          > 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...

          • seabass-labrax•1m

            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/...

    • sveme•1m

      Sir, this is an Englishman writing; he‘s obviously taking the piss.

    • MathMonkeyMan•1m

      Your comment made me wonder. 65% chance of delay.

          >>> s = 'if the baseline chance of delay is 10%, engineering works add 25%, strikes add 35%, and bad weather adds 20%'
    >>> pb = 0.1
    >>> pe = 0.25
    >>> ps = 0.35
    >>> pw = 0.2
    >>> p = 1 - (1 - pb)*(1 - pe)*(1 - ps)*(1 - pw)
    >>> p
    0.649
      • irjustin•1m

        Agreed, but also where did those %'s come from? Seems like thin air so it's really all a gamble at this point.

        • sdenton4•1m

          78 percent of statistics are made up on the spot.

          • chii•1m

            and 42% of the time, they match up with reality.

    • Aeolun•1m

      Most of these trains are one and done things straight from the departure station to London?

      The only experience I have was taking them in the other direction though, because I opted for a flight instead of dealing with it again to go back to London.

      Was a new experience booking a train ticket and seeing a quote of £250. I thought the machine was broken.

    • tempfile•1m

      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

      • sebastiennight•1m

        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 :)

        • tempfile•1m

          I'm not disagreeing with you!

  • sebtron•1m

    > 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...

    • tecleandor•1m

      When high speed trains started operating on Spain in 1992 (AVE [0]) they offered 100% refund in any delay higher than 5 minutes (here a TV ad with very happy passengers because the train is arriving six minutes late [1])

      But nowadays and after some mismanagement and also private operators coming to share lines it's:

      For all high speed and other long distance trains: 60min delay, 50% refund. 90min delay, 100% refund.

      This and other policies [2]

      --

        0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVE
  1: https://youtu.be/Djv91oHkj4k
  2: https://www.renfe.com/es/es/ayuda/compromiso-puntualidad
      • brnt•1m

        I was once over 90 minutes late on a TGV. Naturally, SNCF reported a delay of 59 minutes when calculating my rebate...

    • dataengineer56•1m

      This is UK law(?) or standard across all rail networks. It's automated too, you don't have to fill in a form. Immediately after arriving at your destination you get an email telling you that your train was delayed by enough to give you compensation, click a link and the money is in your bank account in a couple of days.

      • lozenge•1m

        Automatic Delay Repay depends on your train company and which company you used to buy the ticket.

    • sensen•1m

      I commuted via train for years when I lived in Chicago and a refund policy like Italy's definitely would've been amazing. Perhaps the trains would be more reliable with refunds, all we received was a late slip when the train was delayed by 2 hours..

      • BeeOnRope•1m

        What is a late slip?

        • Larrikin•1m

          An absolute requirement in Japan if you are more than a few minutes late in Japan. A thirty minute delay during morning rush hour used to have train staff with a stack of papers handing them out to everyone going out of the gate kiosk. I used to get them after any delay at all on my commute.

          I assume now annoying bosses can check online, but it's Japan so an old person in charge might ask for the paper slip as well just in case you overslept when you were in a nearby business hotel after a rather awful stint of over time the night before.

        • nobody9999•1m

          >What is a late slip?

          I imagine (I don't live in the Chicagoland area, so guessing here, perhaps someone from the 'burbs there can chime in) it's a note from the CTA saying the train was delayed so you can limit your negative exposure when you boss wants to know why you're two hours late.

          Which is actually much more than NYC does. Although that has its advantages as well. The linked fortune[0] (actually an excerpt from a NYT 'Metropolitan Diary'[1] piece ca. 1980) details this:

             I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the accompanying
   promises that this would in no way improve service.  For the transit system,
   as it now operates, has hidden advantages that can't be measured in monetary 
   terms.

   Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have that 
   unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by subway."
   Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should someday show up    
   and mumble them, any audience would instantly understand his long delay.
          [0] https://motd.ambians.com/quotes.php/name/freebsd_fortunes/to...

          [1] https://www.nytimes.com/column/metropolitan-diary

          • alwa•1m

            To be fair, NYC’s MTA writes tardy slips too: https://delayverification.mta.info/

            I shudder to imagine the working relationship where that’s relevant.

            But I very much appreciate the advantages you point out. I felt a little sense of loss when, on work in that city, I noticed that some degree of cellular service had reached the stations…

            • nobody9999•1m

              >To be fair, NYC’s MTA writes tardy slips too: https://delayverification.mta.info/

              Wow. TIL. I'm a life-long NYer and never knew that.

              Thanks!

              >But I very much appreciate the advantages you point out. I felt a little sense of loss when, on work in that city, I noticed that some degree of cellular service had reached the stations…

              If it makes you feel any better, such signal isn't very common, although the MTA is looking to change that[0]

              [0] https://www.mta.info/press-release/mta-announces-5g-wireless...

              Edit: Added quote that I replied to.

          • Kon-Peki•1m

            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.

            Nowadays, you have real-time location tracking of the train. If it’s late, you can tell your employer what train you’re on and they could verify it. At least to a better degree than with the late slips. Still not perfect. But if you’ve got an employer that would want to verify such things, you’ve got worse problems.

            • nobody9999•1m

              >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 that does).

              >Nowadays, you have real-time location tracking of the train. If it’s late, you can tell your employer what train you’re on and they could verify it. At least to a better degree than with the late slips. Still not perfect. But if you’ve got an employer that would want to verify such things, you’ve got worse problems.

              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.

              • Ray20•1m

                >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 enough to make any significant difference. Whereas unhealthy diet, or say, sleepless nights of lovemaking, can dramatically affect a worker's productivity almost permanently.

                • nobody9999•1m

                  >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.

                  • seabass-labrax•1m

                    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.

                    • nobody9999•1m

                      >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.

                      Was it? Where did you get that idea?

                      Based on their posting history (and I did check before replying just to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding), that they were absolutely serious is most likely.

                      >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.

                      Absolutely, and I never said anything different. In fact, the bit GP quoted and replied to was:

                         >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.
                      Their response was orthogonal to my point. Which made me wonder why. And so I asked.

                      Keep an eye on my userid. If you don't like what I have to say, I strongly suggest you don't read my comments.

                      Have a great day!

                      Edit: Removed poorly supported assertions.

                      • seabass-labrax•1m

                        > Based on their posting history (and I did check before replying just to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding), that they were absolutely serious is most likely.

                        I, on the other hand, didn't check their posting history, and it looks like you might be right... Poe's Law strikes in reverse, perhaps!

            • Spare_account•1m

              Somewhere else in the thread, it was suggested that these 'late slips' might be useful for proving to one's employer why they were late to work.

              Is this the only use for them?

              I am reminded, once again, how lucky I am to have been employed by people who trust me.

              • tmtvl•1m

                The only use for a late slip is to prove to someone (doesn't necessarily have to be an employer) that you were late due to no fault of your own.

    • Tomte•1m

      Deutsche Bahn: 1hr+ --> 25%, 2hr+ --> 50%

      • chgs•1m

        So 80% of journeys have a 50% refund?

        • usr1106•1m

          First of all while punctuality is not good, the majority of delays is at most 60 minutes. On many lines there is a train every hour, more in denser areas. So for the majority of the delays, zero refund. And then even if entitled for a refund many passengers never apply for it. Not sure whether there are any reliable calculations available, my feeling is a significant part. While annoyed when it happens many are not excited by the paperwork (or type and clickwork) later. And if you do your paperwork sloppily the refund will be refused. Also correct but complicated cases will often be refused in the first round, so you have go through a 2nd or even 3rd round of detailing your connection and ticket.

      • eCa•1m

        I believe that’s the level EU requires for long distance trains.

    • chgs•1m

      This is standard U.K. policy

    • dylan604•1m

      > I suppose anything below 30 minutes is consideres "on time".

      sounds about right for the stereotype. it's the 'murikans that are the ones so uptight about time

      • ikawe•1m

        I think by and large this doesn’t play out with trains. American trains tend to be much less frequent, slower, and less comfortable than most European trains.

        I road a swiss train a couple years ago that was something like 5 minutes late. To me (American) it was “on time” but the conductor came on the PA and apologized. He did make a point to clarify the delay was because they’d been stuck behind an off schedule German train.

        • JumpCrisscross•1m

          > American trains tend to be much less frequent, slower, and less comfortable than most European trains.

          Exception: the New York regional rail system. Its on-time stats are comparable to Switzerland.

          We love to talk about subways and intercity high-speed rail. But in America, it doesn't make sense in most cases without subsidies. Drive-on / drive-off regional rail, on the other hand, trades pursim for pragmatism and could really work in our car-dependent metros.

          • jeroenhd•1m

            > 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, "15 minute towns" were turned into some kind of boogeymen to scare conservatives for a while during the last election cycle, which says a lot about the American approach to infrastructure design.

            • JumpCrisscross•1m

              > 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.

              • lmm•1m

                Most major American cities have terrible traffic and air quality problems already, which are only getting worse as cars get bigger and heavier (and electric cars can be worse). America might need thirty years of densification before some of the high speed rail boosters' ideas make sense, but congestion charging, better zoning rules, and gradual elimination of street parking coupled with improving bus and rail infrastructure made sense thirty years ago and made more sense today. Amsterdam didn't get to be a nice place to live through natural luck or some magic non-Americanness, it took fifty years of gradual improvements and rebuilding, and the fights about it in the '70s were just as bitter as the fights about transport in the US today.

                • Lanolderen•1m

                  Just quickly gonna shill that carsharing and motorcycles/scooters are a pretty good option as is home office/decentralized offices for many current commuters.

                  • lmm•1m

                    Carsharing doesn't really help with peak time traffic which is the biggest issue. Motorcycles/scooters/e-bikes can work if you can figure out the right incentives to get people to use them. If you can get employers to support working from home that would help hugely, but that's a big if.

          • throwaway2037•1m

                > But in America, it doesn't make sense in most cases without subsidies.
            Do you think any of those magical NYC metro area trains run without govt subsidies?
        • worldsayshi•1m

          It would be so great if the rest of the world could take inspiration from Switzerland and Japan regarding train management.

          Also perhaps Ukraine. I heard they had stepped up during war time to the point of being more punctual than many other European countries.

          • Ray20•1m

            >It would be so great if the rest of the world could take inspiration from Switzerland and Japan regarding train management.

            I would be glad to hear more about their success in the train management. Probably starting with one of the most important parameters - the cost of travel per kilometer per passenger (taking into account all subsidies, infrastructure and operating costs, and everything else)

            >Also perhaps Ukraine. I heard they had stepped up during war time to the point of being more punctual than many other European countries.

            Probably they have simply returned to the good old Soviet tradition of compiling beautiful statistics. Brought back bad statistics? Perhaps you and your male relatives will be more useful in the trenches. Complaining about train delays instead of productive work? Such active people and their male relatives are exactly what are needed to storm Russian fortifications! And voila - the statistics went through the roof.

          • dan-robertson•1m

            Swiss trains are often on time because they are deliberately slow, and so they can speed up a bit if things are delayed. They are sometimes deliberately slow because the Swiss system is designed to have trains arrive and leave interchange stations at the same time to make changing trains easier. Some are also slow because they take routes that wind along mountainsides which are scenic but not particularly direct.

            • dkga•1m

              Well, that and their amazing logistics. Their annual time table is even connected to the local public transport in major and medium-sized cities.

            • worldsayshi•1m

              Interesting. I wonder if this goes further than just allowing trains to catch up. Like, does going slower lower the chances of failures and failure cascades in the first place?

              Maybe trains in many/most systems are running faster than they should for optimal performance?

            • ruszki•1m

              I travel between Vienna and Budapest quite frequently, and ÖBB (Austrian railway) does also this deliberately on Austrian side towards Vienna. Trains can arrive about 15-20 minutes early in Vienna if they go full speed in Austria, and they arrive in time to the Hungarian border. This rarely happens, and in that case, they go slower.

              Also, there is almost always delay between Budapest and a smaller Hungarian city. ÖBB changed schedule for their own trains quite quickly reflecting that. MÁV (Hungarian railway) still hasn’t done that for almost two years now on the same line. They still basically lie about it.

          • cyberax•1m

            Ukraine and most of the xUSSR countries have always had timely service. Trains are usually on time, although they are not always very fast.

        • PaulDavisThe1st•1m

          > less comfortable than most European trains.

          For long haul journeys, not really true. The reclining seats on most Amtrak rolling stock are amazing compared to most European seating (bigger, softer and they genuinely recline). The sleeping cars on Amtrak are at least if not more comfortable than the equivalent in Europe until very recently (and that exception only applies to specific night train routes so far).

          It is true that if you're just hopping on a train to move around within a metro area, or to take a short journey within a corridor, US trains are not particularly comfortable, and their European equivalents are probably more so.

        • Suppafly•1m

          >He did make a point to clarify the delay was because they’d been stuck behind an off schedule German train.

          That's hilarious.

      • tdeck•1m

        FWIW Amtrak's policy is 15 minutes, but they're not known for being on time:

        https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance

        It's interesting how much effort here is dedicated to explaining that it's the freight rail companies' fault.

        • PaulDavisThe1st•1m

          Because it is ... though Amtrak trains do sometimes break down, the vast majority of delays on long-haul Amtrak routes is caused by decisions made by the freight rail companies who own the lines.

      • kevinventullo•1m

        Japan would like to have a word.

        • criddell•1m

          Have them talk to the Swiss.

          https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41189834

          • 1024core•1m

            Oh yeah? https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/17/611860169...

            • Aeolun•1m

              To be fair, it’s hard to see why a properly planned train journey would have any delays at all.

              • labster•1m

                Maybe a huge snowstorm happens blocking the train overnight, then someone is murdered on board, and a detective has to figure out who the perpetrator is before the next station?

                • nobody9999•1m

                  >Maybe a huge snowstorm happens blocking the train overnight, then someone is murdered on board, and a detective has to figure out who the perpetrator is before the next station?

                  That sounds like a great idea for a mystery novel. Perhaps one that includes the world's greatest detective. It might even get adapted several times for movies, both on the big screen and made for TV.

                  I'm going to write it all down and make a mint!

                  • labster•1m

                    Now that’s using your little gray cells!

              • devnullbrain•1m

                The optimal amount of train delay is non-zero. You need high redundancy to avoid many causes - and their knock on effects - and redundancy is antithetical to efficiency.

                • seabass-labrax•1m

                  You're missing an axiom there - that efficiency is a superior goal to punctuality, or to something else entirely. Considering the amount of rolling stock just sitting around unused in sidings at depots, one can presume that many railway operators don't rank efficient allocation of resources quite as highly as you do!

                • Aeolun•1m

                  That’s only true if your goal is to optimize for profit instead of passenger satisfaction.

                  • devnullbrain•1m

                    Passengers have to pay.

                    • Aeolun•1m

                      And trains have to reliably get people to their destination on time.

                      Regardless, my point is that the optimal amount of delay for profit and passenger satisfaction is not the same.

                      Ever since I’ve seen Japan’s trains drive perfectly as long as it’s not raining, on segments as short as 2 minutes apart, its become abundantly clear to me that delay is not an inherent property of any rail system.

                    • RandomBacon•1m

                      have to or choose to?

                      • devnullbrain•1m

                        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.

                        • RandomBacon•1m

                          Sorry, I misunderstood something earlier.

        • charlieyu1•1m

          When I was taking a train in Japan I heard an announcement apologising for severe delays. It was less than 5 minutes.

        • dylan604•1m

          I think there's a difference from being uptight about time and obsessively punctual

        • toephu2•1m

          China would like to have a word.

          • B1FF_PSUVM•1m

            They are not prepared to have that conversation yet - still slumbering in 1972.

    • ivanjermakov•1m

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

  • sarreph•1m

    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.

    • sksksk•1m

      I agree that it's a dire , expensive mess. But it doesn't seem like low hanging fruit at all...

      Anything that will improve the situation will be expensive and/or take a long time to achieve.

      • HPsquared•1m

        And "short-term cost, long-term benefit" is kryptonite to the average politician. "We get the blame, the next guy takes the credit"

        • thayne•1m

          Which is why the mess of American healthcare won't be fixed anytime soon.

        • mattigames•1m

          One of the reasons China gets things done.

          • tehjoker•1m

            china has elections you know

            • mattigames•1m

              Sure, "elections", that's why Xi has been president for how many years already? I lost count

              • InitialLastName•1m

                When the key criteria for leadership selection is alignment with a specific ideology, and that ideology is defined by a specific person, it's almost tautological that said person will end up in charge for as long as they'd like to be.

              • thaumasiotes•1m

                Mao Zedong: 1943 - 1976 (various titles?). He was sidelined around 1959 and staged a successful coup, retaking actual power, in 1966.

                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.

            • dijit•1m

              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.

              • PaulDavisThe1st•1m

                There's still blame, but it is attached to people, not "the party" (at least not in terms of action taken to enforce blame).

              • tehjoker•1m

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

      • cameronh90•1m

        There is some low hanging fruit, like the ticketing system.

        Might be possible to improve satisfaction without costly infrastructure upgrades by ensuring you have a seat for long trips and being more aggressive with discounts at quiet times.

        Plenty of times I’ve been one of like 30 people on a 12 car train despite the ticket having cost £60. The train is going to run anyway, so may as well price more aggressively.

      • isaacremuant•1m

        That's why we focus on the important stuff like spending several million to call lines suffragette and lionness.

      • 0xbadcafebee•1m

        > Anything that will improve the situation will be expensive and/or take a long time to achieve

        Only if you do it properly.

      • crowselect•1m

        I mean there’s pretty low hanging fruit mentioned in the article. If rail strikes are frequent enough to feature in the formula, end the strikes by paying the workers well.

        • sksksk•1m

          Paying train workers what they are demanding is expensive

          • Symbiote•1m

            British train drivers are the best paid in Europe by a staggering amount.

            https://www.euronews.com/travel/2022/12/23/train-strikes-the...

            • oniony•1m

              And the average UK citizen seems to have a huge problem with that, but seems to be completely happy with private train company executives getting paid obscene amounts and train companies paying out huge dividends when the services are so bad.

              Why do people resent train drivers getting paid well?

              • pbhjpbhj•1m

                Because the media tells them to.

                When train workers demanded inflationary pay maintenance the highest train driver pay was splashed all over the media in an attempt to get workers to hate one another and ignore the execs and shareholders walking off with all the money.

                • londons_explore•1m

                  There shouldn't be any money to walk off with whilst services are more expensive and less good than most other countries.

                  Creating a market for a natural monopoly like train travel should always include simulated competition against other remote geographies (ie. France), and financial penalties for losing that competition.

            • Nextgrid•1m

              This is 2021 figures. Wondering how this would change for cost of living and especially rent/housing inflation.

            • WindyMiller•1m

              Of course, train drivers aren't the only rail workers, and pay isn't the only reason for strikes.

        • Ray20•1m

          You don't understand how this works, do you? By paying workers because of strikes, you are increasing the number of strikes.

          • crowselect•1m

            Any evidence for that, or is this entirely opinion?

    • controlledchaos•1m

      As a North American who travels in the UK multiple times per year, I really need you to elaborate. My experience has been nothing less than amazing, in comparison to the complete lack of rail options at home.

      • graemep•1m

        Low bar? British people tend to compare with rail travel experienced on holidays in places like France. Those systems do seem to be better (I do not have recent experience myself) and this then feeds the usual British tendency to take a rosy tinted view of the rest of the world and pessimism about the UK.

        It also varies a lot in different places. Costs vary with types of tickets, who you are, and whether you have various discounts.

        Local train services are very weak where I live (Cheshire) so while I can get to major cities quite easily its difficult to travel between towns in the county on trains (or buses).

      • habosa•1m

        I’m an American who lived in London for 3 years and was also impressed, but as someone who only had to use national rail for leisure (got around London by bus/tube) I was oblivious to two things:

        1) Commute hours are brutal. Trains are packed and even a few minutes delay can feel like ages when you’re missing a meeting.

        2) The cost of 5x weekly round trips is enormous. The average annual pass for someone commuting into London from outside is like £4000. That’s in a country where the average wage is around £40,000. That’s a huge amount of money to spend on public transportation. I know a car would be more but I’ve never met a single American who spends that fraction of their income on public transportation.

        Still though … I’d rather have expensive and unreliable trains than no trains at all.

        • xnorswap•1m

          Also it's hard to state how much, and especially when it comes to transport, that London isn't England.

          London is it's own bubble with "Transport for London" running all transport.

          It has lots of investment, cheap busses, frequent trains and a reliable underground. It has synchronisation between different forms of transport, and timetables that make sense.

          The rest of the UK, the rest of England especially, has incredibly expensive buses, might be lucky to get one train an hour in some places, and might have 3 different bus companies serving a small town, meaning you can't even travel on a day pass, as you'll find that one bus company refuses to accept your ticket because it's a different bus company. Or you find you have to wait much longer for your return journey as the "wrong" company buses turn up first.

      • djhworld•1m

        If you travel in and around the South East, inc. London the service is pretty good, regular although still very very expensive.

        In the north though it’s a mixed bag, frequently delayed, huge underinvestment, expensive etc.

        • thebruce87m•1m

          Note that when an English person says the north, they expect everyone to know they are talking specifically about the north of England, not the north of the UK even if everyone else is talking about the UK.

          • dendodge•1m

            Similarly, Americans expect people to be aware that California is not "the South", despite being on the southern border, and that the Midwest is actually in the eastern half of the country.

            Basically the names of geographical regions don't always make sense.

          • pjc50•1m

            It's a very moveable dividing line depending on where the speaker is from, there's no Mason-Dixon line here. Can mean anywhere north of London.

            No normal person refers to Scotland as "north UK" when they could say Scotland, though.

            • twic•1m

              You do occasionally see "North Britain" for Scotland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Britain

              It was once common, and in modern times it's occasionally used as a deliberate affectation.

            • PaulDavisThe1st•1m

              When I grew up (in London), Watford was always the "gateway to the north".

              On the other hand, Balham was the "gateway to the south" (which reached as far as the Mediterranean).

              • rjmunro•1m

                I think the original phrase was "North of the Watford Gap", but people often mis-abbreviate to "North of Watford". The Watford Gap is not the same place as Watford. It's about 75 miles north of London. Watford is within London's motorway ring road (The M25), and on the underground map. Its only about 17 miles away from the centre.

          • reedf1•1m

            Did you know that most people outside the US do not intuitively understand the arbitrary US delineations for North, South, West, Midwest? And yet, "they expect everyone to know they are talking specifically about..."

          • AlotOfReading•1m

            Though Scotrail was just as bad for many years, so it was a bit of a moot point until a few years ago.

          • naming_the_user•1m

            Every country does this, the US south, midwest etc are nonsense geographically.

        • Moomoomoo309•1m

          You have to remember what public transit is like in NA. What in Europe is unacceptable, late frequently, and problematic, is probably the best public transit someone from NA has ever been on, except maybe the NYC subway. It's a really, really low bar. NJTransit is considered one of the best in the US (and it is, unfortunately), and it's worse than anything I saw in Europe when I visited.

          • drstewart•1m

            From NA

            The UK definitely does not have the best public transit I've ever seen. ESPECIALLY for the price.

      • oniony•1m

        I often travel intercity to London and a ticket travelling out early, say, Monday and returning after peak hours, say, Wednesday costs upwards of £75. I have to book well in advance to get this price. I have just priced such a journey and the cheapest I can get for the days I chose next week is £105, for example. The journey time is about 2:20 but often it takes 10 minutes longer.

        Quite often (maybe 1 in 6) my train to London would get cancelled. I would be able to get a refund no problem, but there is no compensation for the fact I have driven to the station and am now stuck without any travel plans.

        Conversely I would have to arrive at the station early, for if I missed my train I would forfeit that half of the ticket and would have to pay again to travel on the later train. As such my journey would actually also include an extra 15 minutes of slack time in case the car didn't start and I needed to wake the wife for a lift, for example. It would also be quite stressful on the way home, where a meeting might overrun, putting my chances of getting my booked train at risk.

        A year or two ago they opened a new "parkway" railway station (basically park-and-ride) and now the earliest train no longer stops at my local station. It would take me 30 minutes to drive to the parkway station, plus cost me £6 a day parking there, so my only option now is the later train which arrives in London at 8:30, if it is on time, making it impossible for me to start work before 9am.

        The trains are supposed to have eight carriages, of which one is first class. On the outward journey I could often get a seat but the return journey would be standing only for the first hour. Quite often the train would arrive with only five carriages meaning it would be absolutely rammed the whole way. This leaves you very exhausted and sweaty for the start of the work day. And forget first class: it is twice the price of standard class.

        So I've given up with the long distance train and now drive down to a commuter town near London and get the train just the final bit. I can also get into London much earlier and I don't have to pre-book specific trains. It's actually cheaper too, with the fuel and train tickets coming in at about £65, though obviously there's car depreciation, tyres, &c. on top.

        So between £75-£130 for a prebooked ticket on an inflexible, specifically timed, intercity train, with a total journey time of about 3:00, or £65 for a drive down in my own car whatever times I want with a total journey time of about 3:30.

      • spxcxlxxs•1m

        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

        • toephu2•1m

          Wait until you try high speed rail in China. They're 10-15 years ahead of Japan.

          • lmm•1m

            They are not. Everything is prebooked with airport-style "security" scanning. You can't even go onto the platform until your train arrives. And the experience is not quite as polished in various ways.

            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.

          • elpalek•1m

            Can you please elaborate on the Chinese advantage?

            • dangus•1m

              The network is massive and the average and top speeds are very fast.

              China has more high speed rail than the rest of the world combined.

              • elpalek•1m

                China's land area is approximately 25 times of Japan, def has a bigger network. But the top speed is comparable in current generations[1] except the Maglev.

                1. https://www.railway-technology.com/features/the-10-fastest-h...

                • dangus•1m

                  Comparable and essentially identical for sure, but 30 km/hr slower is slower.

              • tirant•1m

                Compared to their size, Spain and Japan have a largest high speed network than China.

                And tickets, specially in Spain, are very cheap.

                • dangus•1m

                  I would think that the vast amount of central/Western land in China that is sparsely populated might skew this statistic quite a bit, where Spain and Japan don't have that at the same scale.

      • prmoustache•1m

        I have lived in Switzerland for year and my very limited experience with trains in Scotland has been great. Trains were on time, and personel at the railway stations were very polite and helpful with us.

        But maybe we were just lucky.

      • moomin•1m

        America has much more serious problems with rail, but the UK experience still isn't great. The broad root cause is that back in the day we had the genius idea of paying multiple private companies to run trains on shared lines. We set up metrics to measure their performance that, bluntly, do not work. They underinvest and when there's any sign they're not making money, they hand the contract back. All in all, we get all the disadvantages of a nationalised system with all the disadvantages of a privatised system with a couple of original problems thrown in for good measure.

        But the train near my house still runs.

        • tonyedgecombe•1m

          >The broad root cause is that back in the day we had the genius idea of paying multiple private companies to run trains on shared lines.

          Train travel has doubled since the privatisation.

          The main problem is we don't know how to build out infrastructure in a cost effective manner (see HS2 and the electrification of the Great Western Main Line). This isn't surprising as we do it in a stop/start manner rather than a continual process.

        • graemep•1m

          The infrastructure privatisation was reversed a long time ago, and most of the delays, in my experience, are due to problems with tracks.

          The biggest problems recently (for me) have been strikes and inadequate services. The rot really goes back to pre-privatisation (it was not great in the 1990s) and arguably started with the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, based on the decision not to subsidise rail in the face of increasing road use.

    • amiga386•1m

      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 regional service franchise. Government sets the rules of the franchise, e.g. customer compensation, punctuality targets, etc. TOCs have no control over the network. They lease trains from ROSCOs. They pay and schedule drivers, guards/ticket inspectors, ticket desks, customer support, station staff (they're also responsible for running most stations), and get money in by selling tickets to the public.

      - Rolling Stock Companies (ROSCOs), who own (commission and maintain) the trains and lease them out to TOCs for exhorbitant prices. ROSCOs extract most of the value of the railway. ROSCOs exist because trains are so expensive that neither government nor TOCs can afford them.

      Many of these TOCs are other countries national rail operators in disguise, e.g. the Scotrail franchise was recently run by Abellio which was actually the Dutch national railway company (NS). So all profits (not that there are many) leave the country and subsidise other countries' rail networks.

      The current government has committed to taking back ownership of all TOCs at the end of their franchise terms, so in future both Network Rail and all TOCs will be publicly owned.

      But at the same time, that might not make anything cheaper; most of the value is sucked out by ROSCOs, so unless the government commits to buying its own trains too, the ROSCOs will just charge more for the same trains if they see the government finding any efficiencies, ensuring tickets don't get cheaper.

      Some fuming about ROSCO dividend payments: https://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rail-rolling-stock-company-turns...

      And to add to that, much of the cost (or cost savings) the TOCs were pursuing were effectively industrial relations - can they get away with having driver-only or driverless trains, in order to have just 1 or 0 paid staff member per train? Unions say "no". Union members start working to rule and suddenly you have no trains on Sunday, even if you're the government.

      So... it's tricky.

      • blibble•1m

        there is no doubt that the early ROSCO deals were outrageously tilted against taxpayers/passengers (they pay £1 for old BR trains the state paid for, then we pay them to rent them back)

        however the newer ones are significantly better

        funding the capital cost of a billion pounds of new trains isn't free (even for a government), and there is risk on that investment

        they also maintain the trains (to varying levels of quality)

      • stephen_g•1m

        > 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.

        • amiga386•1m

          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.

          • stephen_g•1m

            Not so! What you say is true for a country that has not achieved monetary sovereignty, or for a country who has given it up (like the Eurozone countries), but the UK, like the US, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, etc. originate their own currency (only issuing bonds in their own currency, which their own central bank issues, and not having any pegs to other currencies).

            There is nothing that the private sector can afford in the UK that the UK Government can not afford!

    • blibble•1m

      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

      • reitanuki•1m

        Maybe commuting can be a good deal sometimes, but for a 5 hour trip for 2 people with railcards, we were looking at £160ish when booked in advance (!) or £400ish if not.

        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.

        • blibble•1m

          I think it always helps to remember the railway in the UK is operated for the benefit of commuters

          I am a heavy rail user, and I never, ever use it for leisure trips

          (the RMT/ASLEF strikes saw to that)

      • Symbiote•1m

        It's expensive for irregular users.

        If I want to visit friends in Derby, coming from London, that's £81. For no good reason, a return ticket is £84.

        If I need to travel at peak times, that's £123.

        Booked months in advance it might be £20, roughly what a bus ticket costs.

        • protocolture•1m

          Thats crazy.

          But maybe you guys need to adopt the inter suburban mindset.

          Those charges are what an Australian in NSW would expect to pay for a long distance rail service. Something with food service. I remember paying 120 bucks for a Casino to Newcastle years ago.

          But the NSW intersuburbans run on the same ticketing and pricing system as the suburban lines. Newcastle, which seems to be roughly the same distance from Sydney as Derby is from London, costs like 6 - 12 bucks. Walk on walk off, like any other train.

          The biggest issue they have is that the new rolling stock is garbage. The older trains were costing too much to maintain but they were quite comfortable for 12 bucks.

          Brisbane to Gympie is pretty cheap too tbh. Same deal, slightly different schedule but run as an intersuburban rather than another rail class.

        • blibble•1m

          the return is 30p/mile, which is still considerably cheaper than driving

          (HMRC rate is 45p/mile, which constitutes insurance, capital cost, wear, petrol, etc)

          the single pricing is because they don't want to sell singles at all, but remember that return lets you come back upto a month later (your choice when)

          • Symbiote•1m

            So two in the car is cheaper, and with the sunk costs of car ownership most people will find it cheaper to drive alone.

            Very often I don't want to return. I can fly to Manchester, visit family, take the train to Derby, visit friends, continue to London and fly home.

            I can't book advance tickets as the plane might be late, and I can't use a return journey ticket.

            It's all ridiculous, and I don't understand how anyone can defend it.

            Here in Denmark I can travel tomorrow (leaving at 02.35 if I want to, good luck trying that in England...) to Århus for about £50, any time of day. That's 300km, London to Derby is only 200km.

            Booked in advance I can roughly halve the fare, but I don't feel punished if I'm unable to commit to that.

            • blibble•1m

              > It's all ridiculous, and I don't understand how anyone can defend it.

              it's a ultimately a difference in philosophy

              UK governments over the past 30 years have decided that passengers should pay to run the railway, rather than the taxpayer out of general taxation

              if you look at the distribution of earnings of those who use the railways you could even call this a progressive policy

              meanwhile most European countries chose the other way round

        • nprateem•1m

          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.

          • curiousObject•1m

            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?

            • devnullbrain•1m

              I believe the PC is hinting about station barriers. Major stations need you to scan a ticket (or con a guard) to get off the platform or out of the station. Minor stations sometimes don't - and if it's your station you'll know.

              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.

              • lozenge•1m

                The real reason is the government has set return fares and let private companies freely set the price of single fares.

    • secondcoming•1m

      All the train drivers recently got massive pay increases so we can expect efficiency and cost to improve sometime soon!

    • jdietrich•1m

      Only 2% of all journeys in the UK are made by train. Only 8% of people in England use trains at least once per week.

      The professional-managerial class grossly over estimate the social and economic importance of passenger rail, because the network was built to serve their needs.

      https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66c5c0b6cbe60...

      https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a815d8e40f0b...

      • crazygringo•1m

        Well yeah, you're not going to take a train to the corner store. Your PDF notes that 29% of trips are made on foot.

        2% of trips by train is a lot higher than the number of trips by airplane... And again, 8% of people using trains once a week is a lot higher than they use planes...

        ...And yet I don't think anybody "grossly overestimates" the social and economic importance of airplanes.

        People use trains to visit family, go sightseeing, and so forth. They're a hugely important part of infrastructure, even if most people don't use them daily.

        • salynchnew•1m

          If walking down to the corner shop is considered a "journey" then 2% of all journeys being made by train is a massive number.

      • Doctor_Fegg•1m

        Now try closing the railways of south-east England and see how well the roads hold up without them.

  • dlcarrier•1m

    Where I live, in the US, the income from light rail fair payers is a laughably small portion of the operating budget, so all rides are effectively discounted by 90%+. The fares really only exist to keep homeless people from sheltering on the trains, but they do that anyway, without a ticket.

    Somehow the prices are still high enough that it's cheaper to buy a cheap used car and drive it instead.

    • bryanlarsen•1m

      > Somehow the prices are still high enough that it's cheaper to buy a cheap used car and drive it instead.

      City streets and roads are paid for through property taxes, so they are subsidized 100%.

      • colechristensen•1m

        Gas taxes and toll revenue account for about 1/3 of road infrastructure spend these days. This is significantly less than years past as the fixed gas tax hasn't kept up with inflation or adjusted upwards enough to match efficiency gains.

        • bryanlarsen•1m

          I was careful to say "city road & street" because those aren't generally subsidized by gas taxes, usually only inter-city roads and highways are.

          • colechristensen•1m

            And still, you're incorrect.

            My state gathers money for a highway fund from gas taxes, vehicle registrations, vehicle sales taxes, etc. They have a program called "Municipal State Aid Street" where they reallocate some highway funds for city and rural streets. There's even a map. [1] I'm quite sure that everywhere has some similar program.

            There's this public transit chauvinist myth that roads are, "100% subsidized" as you say, and it's wrong. Stop making things up or just accepting vague collective wisdom. Roads are paid for in significant portions by road users. Not 100% because that would be an undue burden on the poor.

            Trains, despite being crazy expensive and heavily subsidized, are more expensive to use than owning a car for a lot of people or they are enormous money sinks that are paid by non-users. They can be incredibly useful and a worthwhile investment, but I've definitely run the numbers in the past and found the train to be more expensive and much more unpleasant than driving (for me it was a Caltrain+BART commute).

            1. https://mndot.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?i...

          • bombcar•1m

            The street in front of a house is often installed by the developer of the neighborhood, maintenance provided by the city or county.

            But bigger roads in and out of town often have federal and state co-payments when built, depending on what and where they are.

            Bridge replacements, for example, often involve federal funds.

      • Tade0•1m

        You could say the same about rail infrastructure, but you cannot use private vehicles there (legally).

        • bombcar•1m

          You actually can, but the hassle is expensive. You have to coordinate it with the railroad and the controller and you have to provide a locomotive and an engineer and on and on and on, but you can do it.

          • toast0•1m

            For heavy rail, yes. For light rail, that is more likely to have been built with local funds, is this actually a thing --- I'm sure if you work with the film commission, but I would be surprised if any light rail systems have a plan for private vehicles.

            Amtrak will pull your private rail car in the right conditions, too https://www.amtrak.com/privately-owned-rail-cars

            • bombcar•1m

              All light rails either operate like heavy rail (controlled from a central control area, receive clearances and obey rail signals) or they are just busses on tracks and operate by the rules of the road. Some are both.

              The second are easy, and you just need permission in general. The first you need communication with the central office.

              This is all done for maintenance vehicles for the tracks, which are often contractors.

            • Tade0•1m

              Over here we only have rogue motor trolley riders like these guys:

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B4MI08HWro

              At the time of making the video this line had been closed for over 20 years, which is why it's so overgrown and why nobody bothered to disturb the riders.

      • timewizard•1m

        Roads allow goods and services to be imported and exported from an area. The subsidy brings public benefit.

    • WaxProlix•1m

      > Somehow the prices are still high enough that it's cheaper to buy a cheap used car and drive it instead.

      Cars are even more heavily subsidized, maybe?

    • brewdad•1m

      A monthly transit pass costs me $100 where I am in the US. Also, as long as you use the same payment method every time, the system tracks when you've reached the daily max and monthly max and stops charging you for the remainder of the period so you don't even need to buy the pass ahead of time. It couldn't be easier and there isn't a reliable used car you could drive for cheaper.

      I still own and use a car because there is enough friction in day to day errands that transit isn't a great option for. For trips to downtown or the various arenas, it works wonderfully though.

    • TulliusCicero•1m

      > Somehow the prices are still high enough that it's cheaper to buy a cheap used car and drive it instead.

      Cars benefit from enormous subsidies that are typically even greater than for public transit.

      This obviously true for the monetary value of building all the roads and highways a city has, but it's even more true in terms of land usage. Cars in US cities tend to be allotted far, far more land than space reserved for walking, biking, or public transit. Since land use is mostly zero-sum, this is an extraordinary amount of investment that cars receive as a mode.

      And of course, it's not just the roads. Mandatory parking minimums in zoning codes in most cities require businesses to allocate huge amounts of space for free car parking. This is a large de facto subsidy that also inhibits every other mode.

    • PaulDavisThe1st•1m

      I love trains. But ... the New Mexico Rail Runner (Santa Fe <-> Albuquerque, though technically the southern terminus is Belen) is estimated to have a subsidy of US$28,000 per rider per year.

    • dbspin•1m

      Find this curious. Surely factoring in the cost of tax and insurance greatly increases the cost of the used car? I'm based in Europe so perhaps things are radically different in the US.

      • bombcar•1m

        Insurance on a beater can be quite low if you’re not a young male or bad driver. Like $1-200/yr.

      • add-sub-mul-div•1m

        The difference is that in America we have politicians who cultivate a fear of cities, public transportation, and not owning a bigger car than you need.

        • __MatrixMan__•1m

          ...there's also the kind of housing uncertainty where "maybe I'll have to live in that car for a bit" is often a consideration. You might get away with living on the train for a little while, but a car is a much better bet.

          • gnarlynarwhal42•1m

            "often" seems slightly hyperbolic...

            • __MatrixMan__•1m

              Maybe I've picked up some bias from the years I spent where my bicycle commute took me through the homeless camp. I'm lucky to have had very few times where I wasn't sure where I'd be sleeping that night, but it's still something that I consider quite often.

      • hansvm•1m

        Trains and buses in the US, where they exist, have ticket prices on par with the amount of gas a single person would use driving a used car. For very long trips they're a bit cheaper (up to 2x). For very short trips they're often a lot more expensive (up to 5x). For trips more than an hour or two, the one-way cost usually has no significant discount on a round-trip ticket, and you can pay 10x more if you don't buy well in advance and go on the cheapest days.

        The effects of that vary. Relating to TFA, if you were making this trip 6x per year, could plan the dates, were always travelling alone, and didn't need any transportation anywhere the rest of the year beyond what walking and biking could provide, you'd expect the train to be about break-even with gas+maintenance. It wouldn't be worth having the car.

        As soon as any of those assumptions change though, that logic goes out the window.

        Suppose you have to get to work (and that rent/housing is enough higher near work that it's worth commuting _somehow_ by a substantial margin). The markup for short trips is very high for public transit, Uber, and all your other normal alternatives. You'll be money ahead on a decent used car (clean, no body damage, new enough to easily last 100k miles even if you know nothing about cars) in a year, even counting the entire purchase price, taxes, insurance, and everything else.

        Under the assumption you have a car already and only have to consider unit costs (depreciation, gas, maintenance), trips like TFA can start to make a lot of sense to drive, depending on your personal preferences. Every long bus trip I've taken in the US has been so rattly and bumpy that I couldn't sleep or type anyway, and by the end of a trip they've been so full that I couldn't type anyway (tall, broad shoulders, the geometry doesn't work out in narrow seats with so little space to the seat in front of me that I already have to angle my legs just to fit). I'd much rather listen to my own music or a cooking show or something, keep the temperature exactly where I'd like it, have the flexibility to carry a few extra items, and get to my destination in half the time without stopping 20 places to pick up more passengers. When the money's a wash, I'll pick the car every time.

        If you're willing to make tweaks to your life to save money/fuel/..., it's also worth looking at the possibility of carpooling. If you can go with one other coworker, you're already a lot of money ahead on the train. If you additionally didn't know your return date in advance (variable length job, which you're staying at for a small but undetermined number of days), the difference in ticket prices would be enough to completely pay for insurance and taxes for the year, on top of depreciation, gas, and maintenance. Those 6 trips would justify owning a used car for any other part of your life where the unit economics made sense.

        If you work remotely, live in a nice climate close to groceries, or have any number of other nice properties to your life, a car doesn't necessarily make sense. Our infrastructure doesn't often make the alternatives pleasant though. E.g., I was pretty adamant about biking through college. The city wouldn't plow the bike paths till days after any major snowstorm though, the snow was always falling into the edges of the road, and there was a zero percent chance I was going to bike out in the middle of an icy 45mph road in front of pickup trucks who think it's sane to tailgate in those conditions. 6+ months each year, the only non-car option was walking. I did that a couple winters, but 5 miles each way is a bear when you're trudging through snow, and the one semester I had an evening class I always thought long and hard about whether I'd stay at school an extra 8 hours or add an extra 10 miles to my day.

        Details vary, but _most_ Americans are in some sort of similar situation where cars are the only realistic option if you can possibly afford it. Trudging through the snow when it's <-10F the entire month of January is fine if you're young and single, but I wouldn't want to carry a kid to their doctor in that environment. Tons of people just live too far from town for non-car options to be practical. Roads poorly designed for rain and pedestrians limit the safety and practicality of biking in other huge swathes of the country. And so on.

        Mind you, I'm not against public transport or anything. The BART trains here in the Bay are something I use a few times a year, and they're perfectly fine. You can even get work done on them if you'd like. My point is that cases where trains and buses are the best option (or even any option) are so rare that for most Americans you can assume that the cost of insurance and taxes for a car have already been taken care of, so that only the unit economics of a given trip play into whether you'd drive or not (when considering it financially).

    • comte7092•1m

      > Somehow the prices are still high enough that it's cheaper to buy a cheap used car and drive it instead.

      I find this claim to be incredibly dubious.

      More convenient? A practical necessity? Sure.

      Cheaper? Gonna need to see some receipts.

      Edit: since at least one person appears to be grumpy about my comment, here is an example of a large system with light rail:

      https://www.dart.org/fare/general-fares-and-overview/fares

      For less than $200/month you can ride however much you want, with reduced price options for local fares and other groups of riders like low income, etc.

      If you have a problem with my comment, please explain how you can but and operate a used car for less than that price when you factor in gas, tires, maintenance, insurance, etc. it’s just BS.

      • eigenspace•1m

        Car owners live in denial about the costs of their vehicles. They often believe their only cost is gas and maybe insurance.

  • sidewndr46•1m

    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 as a potential compensation.

    • aredox•1m

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

      • ivanjermakov•1m

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

  • bobnamob•1m

    Ironic read given I'm currently sat on a half hour delayed, hopelessly overcrowded (due to 2 prior cancellations) Avanti west coast service.

    I'll be happy to claim my delay repay on my employer's dime for the 5th time this year. My only regret is that I booked off-peak

    • bobnamob•1m

      Oh it gets so much worse. Train is now parked up just outside Manchester with zero power. Another 10mins is worth £35 at this point

      • eszed•1m

        Did you get there in the end?

        • bobnamob•1m

          Yeah, 56 minutes late in the end. I would have happily traded another 4 minutes for £35. Next time I'll sabotage a door or two

          (For the benefit of British transport police, the above is satire)

        • Cyphase•1m

          Zeno's train ride.

  • cammikebrown•1m

    I missed seeing Mt. Fuji from my Shinkansen window seat because the train was ahead of schedule and my alarm went off after we had passed it.

  • sksksk•1m

    I expense all my work travel, and get to keep delay repay payments for myself.

    My number one trick to getting the payments: get the tightest connection possible.

    For the journey I take frequently, the train arrives into the main station at 8:52pm, my connection is at 9pm; picking up just 8 minutes of delays means I'll miss the connection. The next train is at 10pm, which triggers delay repay.

    • joshstrange•1m

      Maybe I've underestimating the amount of money we are talking about but I'd much rather be where I'm headed on time than travel for free, especially on a regular basis.

      • sksksk•1m

        Depending on when you travel, it can be very expensive. If I want to travel at peak time (arriving into London before 10am, and out before 7pm), then we're looking at around £400

      • declan_roberts•1m

        GP's comment sounds like hell for a few bucks. I'll avoid making any other observations.

  • diffuse_l•1m

    This reminds me that I once worked in one city, and attended university in another city.

    At some point, there were train lines works that lasted for a few years, which meant that almost any train ride was delayed. You got a ticket back for half an hour delay, and two for a full hour.

    In addition, my workplace paid me a set amount of money to cover ttain travel expenses for each work day.

    I think that for most of my studies I effectively didn't pay for train travel, and had time to work while on the train.

    You did have to wait in line to get the ticket after the train ride, and the train officer wasn't too happy about giving out tickets, bit it usually worked...

  • weinzierl•1m

    In Germany you can use

    https://bahnvorhersage.de

    It is meant to be used to find reliable connections, but of course you can use it to save money as described in the article.

    Here is the 38c3 talk about the project from one the creators:

    https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-wann-klappt-der-anschluss-wann-n...

    • probably_wrong•1m

      The talk is great and I can definitely recommend it.

      The website doesn't seem to work in any of my browsers.

  • stego-tech•1m

    This seems the perfect setup for malicious compliance of arbitrary RTO policies.

    * You may very well be more productive on a quiet train than a noisy office

    * Inconsistent WiFi coverage could let you focus on work instead of video conferencing meetings

    * Arriving late means you don’t have to stay long - not your fault the train was delayed, after all!

    Your employer gets the badge data showing you technically showed up, you have the receipts on why you were late, and you get a partial or full refund on the delayed train fare for good measure.

    • thi2•1m

      Does it work that way where you are from? Here in Germany it is entirely the workers responsibility to arrive on time, being repeatedly late can lead to being fired. Usually everyone knows how bad the trains are and it's not enforced strictly but thats just the employers good will.

      • stego-tech•1m

        I'm from the States, but it generally varies from employer to employer and role to role. If you're sitting on a support queue in a specific time zone then yes, there's often an expectation of consistent hours; for more general office work (especially since COVID), there's often an understood degree of flexibility in most cases.

        As for transit delays, yes, those are also often excused within reason so long as there's not a recurring pattern. Still, hybrid work policies give workers wiggle room to reasonably challenge these requirements, especially if they're already completing all assigned work from home without issue, and that's the main point I was trying to make with my comment.

        Labor is ultimately a negotiation, and this is one such tactic to take if it's available to you.

    • •1m
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  • celticninja•1m

    There is a slightly less ethical way to do this, you buy a ticket that mows you to travel at any time of day. Then when you have made your trip log on to realtimetrains to find a train on your route that was delayed and then claim that as your journey.

    Now your ticket is sometimes scanned when you enter or leave a station but this is rare and even less likely to be scanned on the train by a conductor.

    Anyway that is something that someone could do

    • ColinWright•1m

      I know people who have done this, but in my mind this is not simply slightly less ethical, is is active fraud.

      • rtkwe•1m

        Reminds me of the "Chase Infinite Money Glitch" micro fad from last year. Turns out fraud really is pathway to many forms of free goods the law would consider illegal.

        Wonder how many people wound up getting hit with check fraud charges off of that...

      • celticninja•1m

        Your mind is correct.

    • switch007•1m

      IANAL but that is 100% straight up fraud. It's the most common accusation I believe regarding delay repay (and the train companies allege it is indeed fraud)

      Do not mess with the railways and their revenue in England.

    • edh649•1m

      You could do, but might be caught as 2 were in 2016

      https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/commuters-ordered-to-repa...

    • bonobocop•1m

      The DR system doesn’t look at ticket scans alone. It also builds a profile per customer based on a number data points.

      It will flag up quite quickly if you are “sniping” delayed trains at different times.

  • ralferoo•1m

    This reminds me of many years ago when I was backpacking around Australia. For whatever reason, I was wandering around a smallish town around 10am on a Sunday morning and ordered food from either McDonalds or Hungry Jacks (aka Burger King).

    I was the only customer, and after a few minutes, she called me over and gave me my money back. I asked why, assuming that they'd just discovered they'd run out of ingredients, but no, she said it was because it had taken too long to prepare, so it was free. This is something I'd never experienced in the UK before, and in fact McDonalds in the UK can sometimes take 10 minutes - compared to back home, it hadn't struck me as being particularly slow.

    It occurred to me that I was probably their first customer of the day and that anyone else who rocked up on a Sunday morning on other weeks as their first customer would probably also get their food for free as e.g. fries would be cooked on demand instead of being ready.

  • isaacremuant•1m

    Until there's better transparency of the train system in London, I'd say that most of the excuses they give are iterative bullshit and cost saving measures.

    We need the peasants to go to work but we don't need to offer these low traffic route on Sundays so we won't and we'll call it "Planned engineering works" every time, every year.

    If someone has detailed transparency on what they are instead of blind authoritarianism like in the train forums/Reddit please be my guest.

    I wonder if they have re-enacted their refunds page which was down for months "due to cyber security incident".

    Such a scammy, partially tax funded service that costs an insane amount.

  • killingtime74•1m

    I guess this only works for people whose time is worth nothing

  • vander_elst•1m

    Any insights why trains are pathologically late? It's easy to blame incompetence, but I think it's too naive, I wonder what are the causes connection are late day after day, year after year. Why is it so difficult to create a reliable model for something we have been working for dozens of decades and we have a good control of?

    • Philpax•1m

      Organisational culture / funding / quality of infrastructure. Compare Swiss trains to German trains: geographically colocated, but the former is known for extreme timeliness, while the latter is known for extreme tardiness.

      If you want good service, you need to invest and keep investing - it's not a one and done thing, especially as the city and population change around your network.

  • switch007•1m

    I'd heavily caution people against this. The railway operators are both litigious and invested in fraud detection technology. And they love going on fishing exercises

    Consistent 100% delay repay will absolutely get flagged

    • monkey_monkey•1m

      What's fraudulent about this?

      • bonobocop•1m

        I don’t think it’s fraud on the DR side if you actually take the trains and intend to travel.

        If you didn’t actually intend to travel, then claiming DR is fraud.

        • Nextgrid•1m

          I wonder how this works if you intend to travel should the train be on time, but become aware of the delay (or likelihood of it) and change your plans - what counts as proof of intent?

          It would be better if the law was changed so that any transport company selling a ticket is forced to refund if they couldn't fulfil their obligation, regardless of whether the ticket was used or intended to be used. Can't provide the service? Then don't sell it!

        • underyx•1m

          What’s fraudulent about traveling without intending to travel?

          • bonobocop•1m

            Claiming delay compensation if you don’t have intent to travel is the fraud part.

            Easiest example is if you have a season ticket, but you have the day off. You weren’t going to take the train to work that day, so no intent to travel. If you claim DR, then that’s fraud for the compensation.

            • underyx•1m

              But you end up hundreds of miles away from home, who could possibly argue that you moved halfway across the country without intent?

      • switch007•1m

        I didn't claim it was fraudulent, as IANAL (but I probably agree that it isn't). I should have put "fraud" in quotes as they are not too strict when claiming that. "fraud"/"abuse"/"irregularity" detection systems

        It doesn't have to meet a legal definition of fraud for them to be able to shake you down either. They do plenty of fishing exercises and allegations without much of a strong case, hoping you'll pay up.

        The government is very very hands off when it comes to the railway - law unto their own (except for the operators owned by the government - no escaping blame there!).

        A lot of railway legislation offences are strict liability offences - ie there is no excuse and no proof of intent required. It is from there comes a lot of their bullying behaviour and a belief of what they say goes.

  • •1m
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  • yapyap•1m

    Wow, the train system actually giving you something when it’s late seems great, NS should take notes.

  • apexalpha•1m

    I did something similar in the Netherlands.

    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.

    • shmeeed•1m

      >The trick is that when you travel on a business card your company pays, but you get the reimbursement when delayed.

      TBH that sounds just like fraud to me, and on discovery could (probably, IANAL) justify immediate lawful termination. It's a nice loophole though, if you don't give a f*.

      • apexalpha•1m

        My company has an enterprise arrangement with the train company. All employees have a business card.

        This is the correct and legitimate use of said system.

        • shmeeed•1m

          That's interesting to know, and I apologise for my premature judgement.

          The reasoning goes that it's a compensation, not a reimbursement. It seems to depend on company policy though, and whether you're travelling on paid time or not.

          • apexalpha•1m

            No need to apologise.

            But you are correct, it is seen as compensation. The train company makes a lot of money selling first class tickets and wants to prevent these people from taking a car again.

    • huskyr•1m

      Seeing the rates here for other countries at least it's a better deal: 50% for delays of 30-60m, and 100% for delays of an hour or longer.

  • nextts•1m

    Until you get stuck somewhere and you need a hotel or taxi. Unless they reimburse that?

  • brainzap•1m

    ccc has a talk about predicting on deutsche bahn which trains will be delayed

    but: being stuck in a train for 3 hours is not worth 50 euros

  • more_corn•1m

    You guys get trains?

  • m463•1m

    "Sure, there were some pretty brutal ‘all-dayers’."

    lol - fast or cheap, pick one.

  • satyamkapoor•1m

    Omg! Wait till you see the German railways reliability.