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

[partim@social.tchncs.de]

@bovine3dom @cycling_on_rails @redjives This looks weird. Departure and arrival country look flipped from departure and arrival airport.

And if you have them, IATA codes would be nicer than ICAO codes.

[bovine3dom@masto.ai]

@redjives @cycling_on_rails

i started with duckdb because people always tell me it is good and i want to understand why. then as usual i went back to clickhouse-local when basic features like `limit by` were missing

biggest_aviation/readme.md at master · bovine3dom/biggest_aviation

wrangle eurostat data to get biggest cross-border aviation routes - biggest_aviation/readme.md at master · bovine3dom/biggest_aviation

GitHub (github.com)

[bovine3dom@masto.ai]

@partim sorry, yeah, it's undirected and i knew that could happen but i decided i didn't care. i didn't want to group by them because god knows how basel is listed

i only have the codes i was given but a join would be trivial (i was considering making a map before my stomach reminded me that i hadn't had lunch yet)

@cycling_on_rails @redjives

[cycling_on_rails@mastodon.social]

@bovine3dom @redjives Hum looks like cn_dep and cn_arr have been swapped.

Interesting that Madrid-Rome is top 1 (of international routes). When high-speed rail tunnel through the Mediterranean? A good one for @jon 's #BullshitMeter

[cycling_on_rails@mastodon.social]

@bovine3dom @redjives For the license I guess https://commission.europa.eu/legal-notice_en applies (linked as "Legal Notice" from the Eurostat website)?

"Unless otherwise indicated (e.g. in individual copyright notices), content owned by the EU on this website is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. This means that reuse is allowed, provided appropriate credit is given and changes are indicated."

[partim@social.tchncs.de]

@bovine3dom @cycling_on_rails @redjives Might be worth doing the code mapping – everyone remotely involved with aviation will know the IATA codes for these airports by heart and basically noone outside a cockpit will know any of the ICAO codes.

[cycling_on_rails@mastodon.social]

@bovine3dom @redjives ...which of course doesn't say much as the Eurostat data is on a different domain. And the notice only applies to "content owned by the EU", which is impossible to know as a passerby.

[partim@social.tchncs.de]

@bovine3dom @cycling_on_rails @redjives And for bonus points, collapse all airports of a metropolitan region (i.e., all the London airports into LON). No idea if these datasets are available freely. IATA can be a wee bit greedy.

[bovine3dom@masto.ai]

@partim @cycling_on_rails @redjives grouping by nearest big city seems to help. apparently i need to exclude more of north africa and south america

[cycling_on_rails@mastodon.social]

@bovine3dom @partim @redjives So many flights to Barcelona and still only 2000 pax/day/direction across the border on the high-speed line. 🫣 #CrossBorderRail

[moof@cupoftea.social]

@q @bovine3dom @stefanlindbohm @jon @HRCH The problem there becomes one of certificate management though.

If I set up Trainseller.com and manage to get a license to sell DB and OBB tickets, and bundle them together… The various scanning machines that all the companies use still need to be updated with Trainseller.com’s signing certificate, or my certificate needs signing by the various operators individually, and that be bundled on the ticket… What is your proposal to make that viable?

(And of course, you need to deal with revocations and the like)

You've made two attempts at this famous for being a pain to deal with.

How do you solve this at a European scale, when there could be thousands of resellers that need certificates managing?