bovine3dom

bovine3dom, 1 day ago

@jon I feel a bit rude asking, but do you think it's against the rules to combine two of these pass journées to travel in three departments on a single train ? I know you got told off once for splitting tickets. I'm wondering if the rules might be different for "all you can eat" tickets.

Marseille <-> Nice in a day for two adults is 4*~€40=€160 with four singles or €35+5+20+5=€65 with an 06-83 and a 13 pass journée, so it's a big potential saving.

bovine3dom, 12 days ago

@jon the really annoying thing is that soon there will be no SNCF trains running on the line for a year or so because of work on the line going up to Breil from Nice but Trentitalia trains will still be running. But there's no sane way to buy tickets for them...

bovine3dom, 12 days ago

@jon Last time I looked there was a special section in the local trentitalia rules saying that if you got on at one of the stations in France you were allowed to buy a ticket from the guard, but no details on what tariff you could expect to pay.

I'll try to dig up the PDF

bovine3dom, 12 days ago

@jon https://www.trenitalia.com/content/dam/tcom/allegati/trenitalia_2014/area_clienti/trasporto-regionale/tariffa-39/Tariffa_39_13_Piemonte.pdf bottom of page 5 here lists the stations in France that you're allowed to board from and buy a ticket from the guard. Maybe the document also explains how much the ticket should cost but my Italian isn't good enough to work out how distances outside of Italy are measured

bovine3dom, 12 days ago

@mario @jon systematic checks at Menton Garavan coming from Italy, documents of each passenger were checked every time I have been through. I get the impression that there are fewer checks at Breil-sur-Roya coming from Italy, but I only pass through there a couple of times a year.

Migrants anecdotally seem much reduced in number compared to this time last year.

bovine3dom, 12 days ago

@jon Thanks, that's good to know. Very frustrating that they won't make these things more human friendly. They've already tunnelled through the mountains, selling us tickets should be the easy part

bovine3dom, 12 days ago

@jon @wrzlbrnft @partim Vievola isn't served by any French trains, I don't think a ZOU pass would cover your travel to Tende

I know during ski season there is a Limone <-> Tende navette train but I think you have to buy a special ticket for it

bovine3dom, 11 days ago

@jon by cosmic coincidence the mayor of Breil was on the telly this morning saying that everything will be fine when there are no SNCF trains because there will be buses ... and Italian trains! https://www.bfmtv.com/cote-d-azur/replay-emissions/bonjour-cote-d-azur/fermeture-de-la-ligne-nice-tende-le-maire-de-breil-sur-roya-veut-rassurer_VN-202405070316.html

Is it possible that he just doesn't know how stupid the ticketing situation is?

bovine3dom, 11 days ago

@michael_h @jon They're doing work on the tunnel between Sospel and L'Escarene. The SNCF is using that as an excuse/opportunity to not run any trains at all and refurbish them. Won't be any TERs running until that's done. September 2024 - December 2025 planned.

Trenitalia trains will still be running. In fact they might run more as they've been planning on running one of their new "touristic" trains on the line, IIRC

bovine3dom, 11 days ago

@michael_h @jon even fixing the timetables would be great. The first train from Nice gets to Ventimiglia at 06:31 and the first Italian train to Limone leaves Ventimiglia at 06:18. The next one leaves at 10:39...

bovine3dom, 11 days ago

@jon @michael_h I really get the impression that they view the line as a burden rather than the huge opportunity that it is. A fast direct train from Nice to Limone could be a big hit with skiiers, for example.

Instead we have a line that is so badly maintained that it has (if memory serves) a 10km/h speed limit on sections. Sections that they aren't even going to upgrade during the closure...

The timetable's so bad that when the tickets were free after Tempête Alex the trains were still empty

bovine3dom, 11 days ago

@quixoticgeek @michael_h @jon yes, but luckily the station in question is Italian so there's a tiny chance that it might get fixed!

bovine3dom, 11 days ago

@quixoticgeek @michael_h @jon while we're here I'd like to complain about how colossally stupid it is for the signs in France at the station to all say Ventimiglia but for the signs on the trains to all say VINTIMILLE

So many needlessly distressed tourists panicking that maybe they somehow got on the wrong train

bovine3dom, 20 days ago

@jon for me, the carte avantage and carte zou (région PACA) work together just fine. I have loads of other complaints about SNCF Connect but this isn't one of them.

It's even pretty good at working out which discounts/tariffs to use if I have multiple travellers with multiple cards (PACA does cheap group tickets).

My test journey is Nice <-> Paris via TER to Marseille then TGV inOui. It uses the Zou discount for the TER and the Carte Avantage for the TGV.

bovine3dom, 20 days ago

@jon yes, sorry, I thought that went without saying. I was/am trying to understand how the hell they made it work for some combinations of cards but not others

Their system isn't just "only use the first card", it's "only use the first card as a fallback with some crazy opaque conditions if the average daily chance of precipitation is above x%, otherwise check all cards"

bovine3dom, 7 months ago

@jon about five years ago I had a fascinating conversation about forecasting train delays with someone from Trainline at a programming conference, so five years ago at least one guy was trying to solve a hard problem.

Your problem is much easier IMO:

1. run a job looking for routes where the route by car is ~5 times quicker
2. tell a human to Google those routes and then phone up whichever transport operator is running the real routes and badger them to integrate with you

bovine3dom, 10 months ago

@Edent I'd love a retrospective on the NHS COVID App. It must have been a crazy time. Was picking the Isle of Wight a conscious Day of the Triffids reference or was it just a happy coincidence?

bovine3dom, 11 months ago

@jon I once overheard an SNCF staff member tell an irate customer (train delayed by an hour, very little information given) that next time she should fly to Paris rather than take the TGV...

And today in Nice, at the ticket office, about 1/3 of tourists were angrily turned away by staff after queuing for 30 minutes because they needed TGV not TER tickets.

I won't be surprised if we get a third set of offices/machines when Marseille->Nice is taken away from the SNCF in 2025