really? wtf, i thought France had journalism unions to stop that kind of thing
french journalism really depresses me sometimes. they're given exclusive access to a new train and manage to say nothing about what they think of the new train
the only useful titbit is that they made an app just for giving feedback. could have saved €100k by using google forms
just learned about these (prototype?) airport buses from the 80s, i believe all from the Serbian (then Yugoslavian) company Ikarus
LMFAO SOMEONE MADE IT A REAL THING
sweepthestrait.com
It is now possible to book all SNCF TGV trains six months in advance of departure (compared to three months previously).
@jonworth.eu
@pglux.bsky.social
www.bfmtv.com/economie/ent...
i am sure that it's just a coincidence that Trenitalia has had the same booking horizon for a while 🤔
Experimenting with using Replit to build a postal address validator peterkwells.com/2026/03/09/e... by @peterkwells.com
● UK address-validator.replit.app
● France french-address-validator.replit.app
One of these is based on #opendata and #openaddresses, the other not so much. Guess which is which
every now and then i toy with getting a poster made of this unece.org/DAM/trans/ma...
the "new" machines are minimum effort refurbs of the old ones because the SNCF is forcing the regions to replace the old machines
i suspect the fat machine will accept coins behind that bit of paper
The Times: "#HS2 to rewrite £2bn contract for trains that are now too long.
The government are in talks with Hitachi and Alstom as the cancellation of the line beyond Birmingham means trains are now too long and too many are on order.” 🆓 ⬇️
www.thetimes.com/article/95a1...
hmm looks like the winner is one of these transport à la française export consultancies www.ingerop.fr/notre-offre/...
not sure you'd get along 😅
i think this is basically a good thing
lots of state railways want to have their own bespoke trains and end up with huge delays as they keep changing specifications
"ask a state railway to keep the production line of a good train going and slap some stickers on it" gets you trains in 1yr not 15yrs
DON'T BUY TRAIN TICKETS IN ADVANCE!
On 1 April, the government is quietly changing the rules.
Off-Peak & Anytime tickets become non-refundable after 23:59 the day BEFORE you travel.
If you wake up & find your event cancelled, NO REFUNDS, even on £100+ tickets.
www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/far...
why is TF1 publishing insurance adverts
€800 fare is probably the first time the SNCF has ever charged the real cost for its trains à moindre vitesse services
I have a hypothesis: you can see whether countries have diasporas abroad by how skilled they are about treating foreigners by their bureaucracy. Malaysia, for example, has no diaspora abroad and comes up with the most bizarre and cumbersome ways to make sure only citizens can benefit from subsidies.
Good morning from Finnish Lapland 🇫🇮 at Santa Claus Village, the northernmost stop on the FlixBus European network 🚌
Over the next 100+ hours, I’ll be travelling exclusively with FlixBus all the way to Lisbon 🇵🇹 which is the longest journey you can book as a single ticket with them!
or maybe SNCF Voyageurs could try overcharging less on the "profitable" lines and then they wouldn't be as attractive to competitors 🤔
i always find it pretty disgusting the way they describe them as "vaches à lait". great for the milkmaid, not so great for the cow
i really quite like them. it's 3+1 rather than 3+2 so perfectly decent widths.
it's quite nice sitting as a group of three pals. and table seats of 6 are brilliant for families
not bothered, anything that would do the job. i secretly have a soft spot for AGCs but they're pretty low capacity
i struggle to believe that given that the nice-marseille ones have all been freed up
and when transdev needed to borrow some non-corail TERs there were loads.
and there's a big market in second hand electric medium distance trains
🤔
most of those units are pretty slow, though, and germany isn't suffering from a dire shortage of high speed trains (as far as i know)
🤷♂️ this is just because french people have been trained that connections are bad
hey french refurb workshops are the best in the world remember
so i am not suggesting that Toulouse goes from 7 fast connections to Paris to zero
i am suggesting it goes from 7 fast connections to ~40
currently they get 7 TGVs a day, 4.5 hours, 2.5 hours on the slow bit
=> those 7 TGVs could instead be 14 TGVs running Bordeaux -> Paris, taking them from 27 a day to 41 a day. conveniently about 3tph :)
loads of 160km/h stock everywhere. switzerland more or less just gave all its thurbos to MAV
Hey UK data, public services, and economic growth people,
DSIT has got a survey on increasing access to public data & - guess what! - it's another chance to point at addresses (/PAF) and other geospatial data
Here's why: peterkwells.com/2026/02/21/a...
Here's how: peterkwells.com/2026/02/21/h...
Help us improve Government Licensing guidance www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/blogs/digita...
UK Government preparing the ground to deprecate the Open Government Licence?
The link to CC Signals is disingenuous – that proposal advises *against* more restrictive licensing
#opendata #opengov #datapolicy
it was actually open to the public just no-one knew about it 🤦♂️
coming soon!
most tedious dataset my group has made...but hopefully the most useful
travelling through France with a bike would be a pain anyway :)
most TGVs don't accept bikes and those that do have a tiny number of spaces per train
TERs are much better but if they're a bit full and the guard decides to be cruel you might be left waiting for the next one four hours later
