🌺 Cat PöñíçkøvāFour mains and four USB ports for three seats, someone took this really seriously. (All while most other cd carriages have often just like one plug per 4 seats if any.)
Alon@pony ICEs are one plug per two seats.
@Alon with Czech railways it usually depend on the mood and supplier of whoever did the retrofit, when it’s new long distance ish rolling stock, it tends to be a plug per two seats as well, however, shockingly enough, commercial open access ops almost always go for a plug per seat because it doesn’t cost much more and people like it
@pony @jon Proposal: abolish first class, make second class better. In exchange for FDP's support for this plan, pass a YIMBY law, reduce every C2 language requirement to C1, require government offices to speak English, and, I don't know, announce a new nuclear plant somewhere (it doesn't need to actually go through with how high the construction costs are, but eh, it's FDP).
Diego
Birds or Trains?@bklyngap @DiegoBeghin @pony @jon Regional trains here are generally underfull, except specifically when they're either ersatz intercities for D-Ticket holders or ersatz commuter rail to suburbs beyond the S-Bahn. So usually first class is just charging more for the same service...
@bklyngap @DiegoBeghin @pony @jon I don't know. I don't fully get what the point of it is - can't tell if it's just a more straightforward way of doing market segmentation than airline-style yield management or RENFE-style differential pricing for different speed classes. So it boils down to extra revenue vs. fewer seats, and I think that depends on the railroad. I think the first class fare premium on the TGV is on the low side?
@Alon @DiegoBeghin @jon @pony yeah the pricing model itself seems to depend on the RR. A low premium for TGV seems silly given their general ticket structure.
@DiegoBeghin @Alon @jon @pony I sorta have to assume that JR gets the business model right with no yield mgmt, reserved, unreserved, business-travel class (green car) and a high end first only on under capacity routes…
@Alon @pony @DiegoBeghin @jon that being said you couldn’t do 5 abreast in Europe, so I’m not sure how you translate it.
@jon @DiegoBeghin @pony @Alon and on the US side I have to assume Acela first exists solely as a loss leader to capture politically influential VIPs.
@bklyngap @jon @DiegoBeghin @pony Where were you when you read Paul Krugman's blog post mocking George Will for riding the Regional business class after writing about how trains are a plot to make Americans more amenable to socialism?
@pony @DiegoBeghin @Alon @jon hahaha — regional business actually has a point now! You can pick your seats (which is worth a lot sometimes).
@bklyngap @pony @DiegoBeghin @jon We get that here with only a few euros' extra charge (and they still don't indicate the direction of the train's travel, so I accidentally booked backward-facing seats on the train to Munich; why is Europe).
@pony @Alon @DiegoBeghin @jon lol Germans really do hate the concept of customer service don’t they?
@bklyngap @pony @DiegoBeghin @jon That's not Germany, all of Europe operates under the assumption that passengers are indifferent about the direction they're facing. They let you pick exact seats here, and on the TGV they don't but let you say whether you want a loud car or quiet car and whether you want a window or aisle seat, but somehow direction of travel isn't believed to matter here.
@Alon @pony @jon @DiegoBeghin I thought I could pick when I was in Italy but maybe I’m misremembering
@Alon @bklyngap @DiegoBeghin @jon i think that's more of incompetence. behold the czech railways seat selection with big "direction of travel not guaranteed" (that's kinda funny in the context)
(also some untranslated bits because they didn't do a great job, all while the czech railways eshop being honestly one of the better ones in europe, however sad that is)
(also some untranslated bits because they didn't do a great job, all while the czech railways eshop being honestly one of the better ones in europe, however sad that is)
@Alon @DiegoBeghin @bklyngap @jon (though apparently on some trains they got the courage to say which direction you'll be facing)
Jon Worth@Alon @bklyngap @pony @DiegoBeghin Except Spain and the newest TGVs on the line to Bordeaux. BUT given ICEs reverse a lot due to terminus stations I’m not sure what you could do about this.
@jon @bklyngap @pony @DiegoBeghin They can still say which car is at which end of the train. The reversals are all scheduled, so if the train reverses at Leipzig, they can still indicate which end is which at seat selection (and at any case, I was on trains that didn't reverse at Leipzig but went via Halle).
@Alon @bklyngap @pony @DiegoBeghin This info is in DB Navigator, generally. Although the way it is presented is unnecessarily complex. And then there's a good 20% chance the train is running reverse formation anyway 🙂