Link via @HRCH - The Guardian reports on T&E’s research about rail booking problems https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/21/almost-half-of-eus-busiest-flight-routes-are-hard-or-impossible-to-book-on-trains-report

[jon@gruene.social]

@cycling_on_rails One further question here: what ARE these 30 most flown routes that T&E is using? I cannot find the list - it is not in the report. And I can find no link. Am I being dim? @alan @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm

[bovine3dom@masto.ai]

@jon they bought it from OAG which is probably why they aren't allowed to tell you

@cycling_on_rails @alan @stefanlindbohm

[jon@gruene.social]

@bovine3dom But then how can I verify if they are telling the truth? 🤨 @cycling_on_rails @alan @stefanlindbohm

[stefanlindbohm@mastodon.social]

@jon I was confused by the same. I guess most of them are decryptable from the lines on their maps. Even without internal ranking that is usable, but the full list would be nice.

@bovine3dom @cycling_on_rails @alan

[bovine3dom@masto.ai]

@jon you can't

i have some sympathy for them because the data was probably quite expensive, there weren't any great alternatives, and negotiating being allowed to release the data probably would have cost them a lot more

you might be able to guess from open source data on the number of flights a day but i suspect aggregating that data was beyond T&E's skillset

@cycling_on_rails @alan @stefanlindbohm

[jon@gruene.social]

@bovine3dom maybe. Or maybe they simply thought no one would ask? And I don't need the plane passenger numbers, just the 30 city pairs. @cycling_on_rails @alan @stefanlindbohm

[redjives@todon.eu]

@jon

Why would they need to buy that data? Isn't it just here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/transport/database

`avia_par` contains what you would need, no? It seems to only go up to 2024, but surely that is good enough.

@bovine3dom @cycling_on_rails @alan @stefanlindbohm

[jon@gruene.social]

@q Let's start with a question though: what do rail firms think of this? And is legislation forcing its use going to be in the forthcoming SDBTR (or, I presume, MDMS, or something else? @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm @HRCH

[redjives@todon.eu]

…also, this might be the sign that I should learn to use R’s eurostat package.

@jon @bovine3dom @cycling_on_rails @alan @stefanlindbohm

[stefanlindbohm@mastodon.social]

@q This is great! I’m not the right person to get into how exactly the barcode is constructed, but we are very interested in what is functionally possible. Is there a functional overview that we can read and give potential feedback on?

@bovine3dom @jon @HRCH

[bovine3dom@masto.ai]

@stefanlindbohm i guess the coolest thing for me as a user would be to be able to bundle arbitrary tickets together using something like Zügli into a single ticket, and have retailers use the same functionality to bundle tickets

reading the draft it seems to say that only one of the sub documents should be a ticket, with the legs just encoded as a kind of already trusted bit of the ticket?

afaik SBB has the best bundling system but i don't know where the trust happens for them

@q @jon @HRCH

[jon@gruene.social]

@q This comes back to a kind of bundler idea I was musing about with @stefanlindbohm but in there will be a business liability component too. Given SDBTR should now be out on 13 May, how this plays with the signing issue you raise here, Q, is going to be *very interesting*. @bovine3dom

[bovine3dom@masto.ai]

@q that seems very messy to me, fundamentally lots of these railways hate each other and they're supposed to trust each other to sign their tickets?

is there a very good reason for it? what are the limitations of "the barcode is a dumb container" approach?

@stefanlindbohm @jon @HRCH

[jon@gruene.social]

@q Perhaps. Let's see what SDBTR says about bundling first indeed. I hope there is no bundling *obligation*, but if there is (and I fear there will be) then we're going to need as pain-free a way as possible to do it! @stefanlindbohm @bovine3dom

[jon@gruene.social]

@bovine3dom Really? I think they trust each other, technically, enough. They don't trust each other's motivations or business practices. @q @stefanlindbohm @HRCH

[bovine3dom@masto.ai]

@jon maybe i have spent too long reading SNCF cheminots' thoughts about how only french (SNCF) trains and french (SNCF) railways and french (SNCF) working practices are safe and assumed that that applies to their digital teams too

i would love to be wrong

@q @stefanlindbohm @HRCH

[bovine3dom@masto.ai]

@redjives i haven't looked at it but "concatenate and filter 30 CSVs" may well be beyond T&E's competences

[bovine3dom@masto.ai]

@q i guess that's sort of fair but surely one could squeeze in 3-4 signatures and that would mean 3-4 retailers which would be enough for 99% of nerds

or they could trust Zügli

@stefanlindbohm @jon @HRCH

[stefanlindbohm@mastodon.social]

@q Not even a sole barcode but a full HTML frame with mandatory text in it as well

This thread is super interesting. I’ll have to re-read, catch up on the project and think about this.

It would be interesting if the bundling solution was executed through the barcode, but my hunch would be that a signed barcode, if a formal process is necessary, would not be enough and a separate process would also be introduced. Approval to bundle could also get interesting.

@bovine3dom @jon @HRCH

[bovine3dom@masto.ai]

@stefanlindbohm
@q the html needs to include a `<move>` tag as a security feature to prevent screenshots