

Simplicity, or why Japan kicks Dutch Rail’s ass - micheljansen
http://micheljansen.org/blog/entry/955

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smcl
While the link is down I'm going to rant about the british rail system :)

Can anyone suggest any reason why it costs me upwards of £25 if I want to take
the train from Edinburgh to visit my parents in Montrose (distance is 59
miles), while I can fly to Stockholm, Berlin, Paris (ie completely different
countries, thousand miles or more) for the same price or less?

This is including the weird charges tacked on at the end by Ryanair, easyjet
and the like.

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goatforce5
The world is smaller than you think!

Stockholm is 823 mi, Berlin is 712 mi and Paris is 541 mi from Edinburgh.

<http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=EDI-TXL,EDI-CDG,EDI-ARN>

And the reason why you can get cheaper flights is because the budget airlines
sell excess capacity at deep, deep discounts as a marketing measure. Most of
the people on those flights aren't paying less than 25 quid.

If you're flexible with your dates and times and/or can plan trips way in
advance, the budgets are great. If you're not able to secure one of the 1 quid
flights, you may well find a traditional carrier offers better fares.

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smcl
Oops, I got the distance by looking at google maps and gauging the approximate
distance using the scale at the bottom left - then used the wrong units from
what I intended. I would have fit in perfectly in the Mars Climate Orbiter
team :D

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wynand
It also doesn't help that until recently, the Dutch freight trains weren't
well coordinated with the commuter trains, sometimes leading to unnecessary
delays.

Standardization seems like the easiest first step to pull off. For a given
route, a train should always stop at the same platforms, be the same length at
a given point in the day (that is, morning trains might be longer to deal with
more traffic, but then they should always be equally long) and should stop so
as to align its doors with painted cues on the platform.

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pilom
Is it down for anyone else?

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Concours
It looks down from here:
[http://www.websitecheck.org/http://micheljansen.org/blog/ent...](http://www.websitecheck.org/http://micheljansen.org/blog/entry/955)

