With legislation on rail ticketing due from the European Commission this spring, how can policymakers - who never normally see the problem - be shown it in a fun way?

[nico_niko@mastodon.social]

@jon
That's a great and fun idea :). The winning team should of course get an interrail ticket each. I'd be happy to contribute to croud fund the costs of setting this up.

[q@glauca.space]

@jon I’d like to think I’d be pretty good at that, but in reality I’m probably hopelessly useless once Bahn.de no longer works

[jon@gruene.social]

@q You're not going to be alone in that And one of the things I am going to have to include is things where bahn(dot)de cannot plan you a route!

[tristramg@mamot.fr]

@jon ok, fair enough I’ll still worry that they’ll come up with a technical solution that will never work, but at least if they acknowledge the current situation it will be a progress

[samueljohnson@mstdn.social]

@jon I laughed. Cute idea. FWIW

(To make playing easy, fast and to maximize participation)

Collect actual experiences in a database. Number them. Allocate points according to criteria you decide.

Assign routes to participants randomly.

Press play = reveal results.

Repeat with player with worst score being eliminated.

[tristramg@mamot.fr]

@jon by the way, I’m trying to find out if the Barcelona>Corodova the 02/08/26 at 15:16 will ever run (it disappears if you look on a shorter horizon) and whether I should buy a SpainPass.
Can you hold the competition soon?

[maartje@blahaj.social]

@jon do you need volunteers? i am in!

[jon@gruene.social]

@maartje You were one of the people I had in mind as a participant, yes

[maartje@blahaj.social]

@jon @q just add "bahn.de got deleted by an intern who pushed test content again it is down, find a way through germany"

[q@glauca.space]

@jon @maartje through Germany that’s fine, the Germans published NeTeX is in enough places. the bigger problem comes from other countries where the only sensible access to their data is via the Bahn

[moof@cupoftea.social]

@jon Put me down for helping out or participating…

[partim@social.tchncs.de]

@jon @q Easy: Make them use a Linux laptop without the ability to change the browser ID string.

(I don’t actually know if the fixed that one yet.)

[partim@social.tchncs.de]

@jon Excellent idea. You’d have to hold it in Inari, though.

(Yes, that was a timetabling championship. I guess ticketing is the new timetabling.)

[maartje@blahaj.social]

@jon next level should be "here are a bunch of ticket machines you have 30 seconds to book a journey"

[jon@gruene.social]

@maartje Like that old TV show "supermarket sweep" - ticket machine sweep. Platinum level: Paris terminals

[moritzkraehe@zug.network]

@partim @jon @q What do you mean? I'm (often) on Linux and I've never had any issues with bahn.de?

[maartje@blahaj.social]

@jon you need a ticket from TER station to TGV over RER to TGV to TER in other region, you hold 1 local 1 national discount card you have 1 minute

[partim@social.tchncs.de]

@moritzkraehe For a while, either searching or booking a ticket lead to an error claiming you are a bot, even if you were logged in and everything. Looks like at least right now this isn’t the case.

@jon @q

[andibarth@muenchen.social]

@moritzkraehe @partim @jon @q I said the same, and since then I regularly run into issues when searching for connections. As in "you clicked too fast, and now we're not showing you anything anymore".

[ysegrim@furry.engineer]

@partim @jon Had to think of Inari as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trains%27n%27Roses