Re:A Twitter Data Scientist Hacks San Francisco's Subway Fares
by ColinWright on Tuesday February 25, 2014 @03:39PM
(#7300318)
In the UK train fares are not a metric. Specifically, sometimes travelling A to B then B to C is cheaper than getting a ticket direct from A to C. For example ...
Just about two years ago I had a return journey from near Liverpool in the North West of England to Exmouth, in the extreme South West. The simple return ticket was about £115. However a return Liverpool to Cheltenham was about £50, and a return Cheltenham to Exmouth was about £45, so I saved about £20, and didn't even have to change trains.
It's against the terms and conditions to scrape the official web sites for fare and timetable information, so clearly I wouldn't write a script to do that and then search for optimally priced combinations, even though I spend about £9000 every year on rail travel and could save about £3500 a year.
Just about two years ago I had a return journey from near Liverpool in the North West of England to Exmouth, in the extreme South West. The simple return ticket was about £115. However a return Liverpool to Cheltenham was about £50, and a return Cheltenham to Exmouth was about £45, so I saved about £20, and didn't even have to change trains.
It's against the terms and conditions to scrape the official web sites for fare and timetable information, so clearly I wouldn't write a script to do that and then search for optimally priced combinations, even though I spend about £9000 every year on rail travel and could save about £3500 a year.