Recent content by WhiteJoker

I'm curious as to why you'd think that. As far as I know NS has maintained that the closure is due to the carriages needing an overhaul and DB's unwillingness to fund that. As to hinderance: The Amsterdam - Berlin IC trains are being used as national trains as well, replacing a normal train...

Surprisingly some people (and a newspaper) in the Netherlands are complaining Abellio (which is part of the Dutch national railways) are spending Dutch tax payers money by giving away those tickets. They seem to forget that those entities are completely separate and the fact that the NS is fully...

Ah ok. Thanks for the explanation. I decided mostly on the day itself where I wanted to go. So that would make it more expensive. I'm a bit undecided if I mind if public transport is subsidised. I could argue that people who never use public transport are also paying for public transport, but so...

Can anyone tell me why the rail fares are this high in the UK? I live in the Netherlands, but when I did my internship in London I thought the prices where outrageous, let alone complicated as hell with off-peak, peak, anytime and other limitations. I live in a small village in the east of the...

By cutting the train service. If you lower your income, you must lower the costs as well. That can only be done by scrapping trains other cost cutting measures. Which I would be against. I'd rather have more subsidy, to lower the fares. Either that or Britain has to invest in more asphalt.

Not having read this thread completely, but just wondering how the offspring of our national pride (Dutch national railways) is doing across the pond. I know they get a 7 out of 10 from 77% of the travelers in The Netherlands this year with 90.9% of the trains running on time. How would you rate...

I agree that it's not impossible, I know Google has excellent results with their geocoder. Even OpenStreetMaps have similar results with open maps, so they actually can use a lot of expertise from outside sources. Especially when you combine that with the knowledge TfL has of London. From...

Well from a developer perspective it's not quite as simple. Say for instance you entered 20 High Street, London. I'd imagine there would be quite some hits. You'd need something specific for it to match to the correct position. That could be a borough or a postcode. I do agree with you though...

Cool! You're referring to 2theloo which is a commercial initiative. Most bigger shops have paid toilets as well. I don't think we have lots of free toilets anymore. Though prices can vary between 10p to 50p. Or eurocents in our case.

From what I've read they used sugar to keep it from setting. Apparently that delays the chemical reaction and if used enough it'll keep it from ever setting. I can imagine that the local supermarket has run out of sugar now.

They replace "just" 4, but you bring valid points. The press release mentions other works as well. It just doesn't get mentioned in the BBC article.

43 weeks sounds like a lot to me honestly. Surely they can replace a few escalators more quickly. I know of stores refurbishing the whole store including replacing the escalators (one of which had all 8 replaced) in a week or 4. Ok. I have to swallow my words. The press release from TfL...

Don't know if it's valid in the UK, but in the Netherlands you can claim it by printing it, seal it in an envelop and physically mail it to yourself. The date stamp from Royal Mail will dispute claims that you stole it yourself.

Not only in the UK it's rare to see fare inspectors, I take busses all the time in The Netherlands, and I've seen them only once. Though I have to admit that one was done thoroughly. They took the bus to a separate stop, unloaded all passengers one by one, and everyone who could not produce a...

Well truth to be told, I would want to be compensated as well if my job got significantly harder. They get more passengers, especially if other modes of transportation fail. It would be far harder to navigate the streets of London during the Olympics as roads are busier, not even mentioning the...