[iRail] Launching spitsgids: providing you with a seat during rush hours

Tue Apr 19 16:01:05 UTC 2016

Pieter,

It all depend on what data source you have...

Going for an event when there is one, or to a touristic place when the
weather is likely to be in a full train.
Except if you have reservation information from the transport operator, it
is hard to guess when will those occure.
And remember that ticket are not for a specific time of the day, so you
don't know on witch train it is going to be used.

But the train occupation during the week, outside of school holiday is much
more predictable.
Most traveler have monthly or yearly ticket, so you don't know when they
use it, but most have the same schedule for each day of the week.
So it become possible to do crowd sourcing of the information (on seat
availability and train size*).
And it become possible to guestimate any time of the week, how crowded a
train will be (just checking the data we have from previous weeks).

For the train I use, I know how crowded they are and when, I also know at
witch station there is a lot of turnover (and a chance for those standing
to find a place to sit).
I also know that if other train taking parallel/alternate path are cancel
or delayed, or if previous train on the same line has been cancel, the
following will be fully packed.

So what is your new data source?
How will you get the information?

David Glaude

* train size is a funny factor... for weeks or month, we had for the same
line and train various size without any pattern I could detect. You just
know when you see the train that this is going to be an horrible journey.

2016-04-19 17:18 GMT+02:00 Pieter Colpaert <pieter at irail.be>:

> Hi David,
>
> How isn't it? I believe it is interesting: people going to the sea-side,
> festival events, etc. make trains very unpleasant.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Pieter
>
>
> On 19-04-16 06:41, David Glaude wrote:
>
> Summer is not the right time to evaluate how busy are the train...
> Le 18 avr. 2016 15:43, "Pieter Colpaert" <pieter at irail.be> a écrit :
>
> Hey all,
>
> iRail and TreinTramBus are happy to announce a new collaboration: we are
> going to estimate how busy your train is, and we're going to publish this
> as a new open data API for everyone!
>
> We need your help however... We want to hire a student to capture the
> know-how of TreinTramBus in code, and to code the necessary features into
> an API, and as well to get this feature in Railer, iRail.be and BeTrains.
> Open Summer of code (formerly iRail Summer of code) is the perfect event to
> hire, train and coach this student.
>
> Lacking the financial capacity, we thought we could crowd-fund this. Want
> to prove us right? Join us at <https://spitsgids.be>https://spitsgids.be
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Evelien and Pieter
>
> P.S. Datanews/Knack/Le Vif is already writing about us:
> <http://datanews.knack.be/ict/nieuws/treintrambus-en-irail-willen-overvolle-treinen-voorspellen/article-normal-692899.html>
> http://datanews.knack.be/ict/nieuws/treintrambus-en-irail-willen-overvolle-treinen-voorspellen/article-normal-692899.html
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