Even #CrossBorderRail trips that should be SIMPLE are often hellish to purchase.
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@NiklasMM @jon @corentin So basically nothing has changed in 30 years, besides the trains being newer and a bit faster.
Jon being the cross-border rail guy, I wonder, is FR-ES rail travel still “disembark and embark the new train at the border” like it was in the 1990s when I did my traditional student interrail?
@yacc143 Depends on the border. Irun-Hendaye and Cerbere-Port Bou is still get out of one train and into the other. But there is a new high speed line Perpignan - Barcelona, no changes needed, but it has only 4 or 5 trains a day on it each way as railways can't be arsed to do better. @NiklasMM @corentin
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Even #CrossBorderRail trips that should be SIMPLE are often hellish to purchase. Trying to get a ticket 11th April, Paris-Stuttgart, is a case in point as I explain here:
https://jonworth.eu/paris-stuttgart-and-stuttgart-budapest-two-railway-worlds/And thanks to @corentin who helped me solve this!
@jon so i guess it's just the classic thing of there being no single seat available, but plenty of seats if you're prepared to move?
another thing the UK approach of "let's not make split tickets illegal" solves because retailers are already searching for split journeys so find them naturally
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@jon so i guess it's just the classic thing of there being no single seat available, but plenty of seats if you're prepared to move?
another thing the UK approach of "let's not make split tickets illegal" solves because retailers are already searching for split journeys so find them naturally
@bovine3dom @jon Yes that was my guess too.
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@jon so i guess it's just the classic thing of there being no single seat available, but plenty of seats if you're prepared to move?
another thing the UK approach of "let's not make split tickets illegal" solves because retailers are already searching for split journeys so find them naturally
@bovine3dom @corentin I am not sure there are *that many* seats available, but yes there seemingly are some. So ticket splits would indeed solve this, yes.
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Even #CrossBorderRail trips that should be SIMPLE are often hellish to purchase. Trying to get a ticket 11th April, Paris-Stuttgart, is a case in point as I explain here:
https://jonworth.eu/paris-stuttgart-and-stuttgart-budapest-two-railway-worlds/And thanks to @corentin who helped me solve this!
@jon Is your solution actually allowed though? You now have a split ticket within the French section, which is disallowed, no?
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@stefanlindbohm @jon @corentin can he get off at Strasbourg and immediately get back on ? I'm guessing he has to move seats too ?
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@stefanlindbohm I am taking an inOui Paris-Strasbourg 30 mins earlier, and changing onto the cross border TGV there. So I am compliant. The reason however was this was cheaper - I'd have just explained my ticket split if I had needed to! @corentin
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@stefanlindbohm @jon @corentin how is disallowing spliting tickets even legal?
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@stefanlindbohm I am taking an inOui Paris-Strasbourg 30 mins earlier, and changing onto the cross border TGV there. So I am compliant. The reason however was this was cheaper - I'd have just explained my ticket split if I had needed to! @corentin
@jon Ah right.
What I’m thinking is that, from the POV of the rules, maybe the error is that it SHOULD have said ”sold out”, because on that section it is sold out when no seats are available all the way through (because splitting is prohibited).
Assuming what your DB contact saw was seats free that weren’t actually free all the way.
My hypothesis would be that DB’s systems aren’t built to show sold out based on a specific section, but only once literally everything is out.
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@stefanlindbohm @jon @corentin how is disallowing spliting tickets even legal?
@orangerkater @stefanlindbohm @corentin It is in SNCF's terms. 1 train, 1 titre de transport.
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@jon Ah right.
What I’m thinking is that, from the POV of the rules, maybe the error is that it SHOULD have said ”sold out”, because on that section it is sold out when no seats are available all the way through (because splitting is prohibited).
Assuming what your DB contact saw was seats free that weren’t actually free all the way.
My hypothesis would be that DB’s systems aren’t built to show sold out based on a specific section, but only once literally everything is out.
@jon And what us as retailers should theoretically do is to propose the solution you ended up with in this case.
(I have some ideas for marking a train/section as sold out in the journey planner and then re-running the search to find alternatives. Hopefully that should work, but this is a project way in the future for us still.)
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@orangerkater @stefanlindbohm @corentin It is in SNCF's terms. 1 train, 1 titre de transport.
@jon @stefanlindbohm @corentin well, I would certainly hope that someone with time und money challenges this stupid clause in front of a judge. This seems really just to the disadvantage of the traveller, thus EU customer protection should kick in.
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@stefanlindbohm @jon @corentin can he get off at Strasbourg and immediately get back on ? I'm guessing he has to move seats too ?
@quixoticgeek I haven’t read up on the specifics, but I assume it doesn’t matter whether you physically passed through the outside of the train :). What’s disallowed would be having separate tickets for the same train.
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@quixoticgeek I haven’t read up on the specifics, but I assume it doesn’t matter whether you physically passed through the outside of the train :). What’s disallowed would be having separate tickets for the same train.
@stefanlindbohm @jon @corentin what sort of sadomasochistic arseholes came up with that rule ?!?
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@jon @stefanlindbohm @corentin well, I would certainly hope that someone with time und money challenges this stupid clause in front of a judge. This seems really just to the disadvantage of the traveller, thus EU customer protection should kick in.
@orangerkater @stefanlindbohm @corentin The forthcoming EU SDBTR regulation might, if done right, render it superfluous. We'll see.
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@jon Ah right.
What I’m thinking is that, from the POV of the rules, maybe the error is that it SHOULD have said ”sold out”, because on that section it is sold out when no seats are available all the way through (because splitting is prohibited).
Assuming what your DB contact saw was seats free that weren’t actually free all the way.
My hypothesis would be that DB’s systems aren’t built to show sold out based on a specific section, but only once literally everything is out.
@stefanlindbohm @corentin You might be right here, but I don't know. Ticketing for these cross border FR-DE TGVs and ICEs is such a mess it's hard to know. Total mess of compulsory reservation bundled with a ticket from SNCF, not bundled in Germany, giving you a theoretical Flexpreis that then needs a separate reservation.
And each of the two firms has its own contingent of tickets.
There must be somewhere else that's less messy we could find to prove the point?
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@stefanlindbohm @jon @corentin what sort of sadomasochistic arseholes came up with that rule ?!?
@quixoticgeek @stefanlindbohm @corentin Well the one time I was caught out with this - a TER from Lyon to Ravières, where I had a ticket to the border station (Tournus) between Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes and Bourgogne - I told the train manager "well what happens if I get off in Tournus and get on again" and he acknowledged I had a point and did not fine me
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@stefanlindbohm @corentin You might be right here, but I don't know. Ticketing for these cross border FR-DE TGVs and ICEs is such a mess it's hard to know. Total mess of compulsory reservation bundled with a ticket from SNCF, not bundled in Germany, giving you a theoretical Flexpreis that then needs a separate reservation.
And each of the two firms has its own contingent of tickets.
There must be somewhere else that's less messy we could find to prove the point?
@jon Haha indeed. Do they have separate allocations for tickets? I thought reservations were hosted in SNCF’s system which DB connects to. Maybe both are true.
But it shouldn’t be possible to buy a cross-border Flexpreis if reservations are unavailable even from DB. They do link as mandatory in the system despite being presented as separate products.
Maybe Copenhagen - Hamburg or the NL/BE ICE’s in summertime when reservations are compulsory would be slightly easier to debug?
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@quixoticgeek @stefanlindbohm @corentin Well the one time I was caught out with this - a TER from Lyon to Ravières, where I had a ticket to the border station (Tournus) between Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes and Bourgogne - I told the train manager "well what happens if I get off in Tournus and get on again" and he acknowledged I had a point and did not fine me
@jon my problem with this is that 1) you have to be very privileged to know which rules you can break and which rules you can't and 2) retailers with a more or less "at will" relationship with the SNCF can't break any rules because the SNCF will have a tantrum and refuse to sell them any tickets
and as we know from IDF they will occasionally crack down on people getting off trains when they get bored
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@jon my problem with this is that 1) you have to be very privileged to know which rules you can break and which rules you can't and 2) retailers with a more or less "at will" relationship with the SNCF can't break any rules because the SNCF will have a tantrum and refuse to sell them any tickets
and as we know from IDF they will occasionally crack down on people getting off trains when they get bored
@jon (i am particularly bitter about "knowing which rules you can break" because Ouigo used to demand you turned up half an hour before departure which everyone ignored except me so i wasted half an hour of my life at a railway station for no reason feeling like an absolute tool for doing what they told me to do)
