This is unbelievable. Do you think, if I decided to catch coaches/buses everywhere, I could get back some of the money they get from me?
The fact that a publicly-funded organisation refuse to allow access to data because they have been criticised is absolutely scandalous. They get our money for free then dare to get shirty about the people who are funding them?!!
The railway service in the UK is appallingly bad, the majority of the rest of Europe appear to have worked out how to actually make trains work, and yet they have the cheek to do this. Unbelievable.
I'd like to write an app that tracks lateness round the UK and name + shame operators who are doing poorly. I strongly suspect official results are somewhat skewed by averaging/etc., and by focusing on hotspots/representing the data differently you could get a more accurate picture. Doing so would be critical of the rail operators - would they refuse me a license? Would I have to pay for the privilege of determining how effectively my (+ the rest of the people of the UK's) money was being spent?
It's like handing over £50 to somebody and them charging you for the privilege.
£5bn a year and we still have to pay for tickets - must be nice to be in a business where you get money for free THEN GET TO CHARGE FOR YOUR SERVICE ON TOP OF IT.
It's hardly unusual for entities that receive government money to also charge for products/services produced using that money. Three examples I can think of just off the top of my head include 1) the health service in places like France where there are subsidised usage fees, 2) farmers in the EU who get large subsidies from the CAP or the equivalent in the USA, 3) application fees in patent offices.
It is definitely super annoying that this data is not free, but the reality is that it does cost a bit of money to gather and aggregate.
Furthermore, though I frequently take the train, I do consider it unfair that general taxation revenues are used to fund the train services -- especially considering that if you look at the stats they are principally used by the wealthy. Charging for data goes some way to shifting the cost burden of rail back onto the rail travellers themselves, as the person ultimately paying for this data is the traveller that uses the train time app/website.
I'm not contesting that entities which receive government money shouldn't charge also if the economics implies it, rather focusing on the fact that they take a vast amount of taxpayer money which then helps fund greedy companies who deliver giant bags of fail and on top of it all charge for information which, let's face it, is something of a paltry cost to provide, really, certainly as a proportion of the funding they receive.
We might not all use the services, but we are all certainly entitled to investigate and examine how our money is being spent - standing in the way of providing data for what appear to be money-grabbing reasons certainly does not help redistribute the cost to rail users I don't think, and actively gets in the way of highlighting less effective rail operators.
"It is definitely super annoying that this data is not free, but the reality is that it does cost a bit of money to gather and aggregate."
Gathering and aggregating I'm not sure about, but I think the bigger cost is probably the frequency and number of connections to the feeds, which doesn't need to be as costly as it is. Fourth paragraph is most relevant: http://www.lyonanderson.com/post/2670466085/youre-asking-for...
The entire spec for the magstripe on their tickets, and a preliminary spec for the new 2D self-print and phone tickets that are being introduced.
Edit: I have yet to obtain a valid 2D ticket myself, but the promotional image released is at least similar to what the spec describes, and the pre-amble is a match.
Please don't do anything illegal. It's not good for you (obviously!), and it eliminate any legitimate moral ground in the debate. We're trying to do what's right + good here, not to be underhand + malicious.
I'm pretty sure I obtained these documents legally, their webserver should have asked me for a password for the files but for some reason it did not (has since been fixed). They're under copyright though so I can't disseminate them.
The Government want to change that, they don't think that every taxpayer should be paying part of every train user's ticket. The rail companies will get less dependable, probably less overall money. I hope they still go ahead with the long term things, they said it would take 40 years (note: read the article a year ago) to break even on the cost of making it all electric.
The fact that a publicly-funded organisation refuse to allow access to data because they have been criticised is absolutely scandalous. They get our money for free then dare to get shirty about the people who are funding them?!!
The railway service in the UK is appallingly bad, the majority of the rest of Europe appear to have worked out how to actually make trains work, and yet they have the cheek to do this. Unbelievable.
I'd like to write an app that tracks lateness round the UK and name + shame operators who are doing poorly. I strongly suspect official results are somewhat skewed by averaging/etc., and by focusing on hotspots/representing the data differently you could get a more accurate picture. Doing so would be critical of the rail operators - would they refuse me a license? Would I have to pay for the privilege of determining how effectively my (+ the rest of the people of the UK's) money was being spent?
It's like handing over £50 to somebody and them charging you for the privilege.
£5bn a year and we still have to pay for tickets - must be nice to be in a business where you get money for free THEN GET TO CHARGE FOR YOUR SERVICE ON TOP OF IT.
Sorry, angry, but legitimately so I think.