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Dutch Railways
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Dutch Railways

RaymiiRaymii Member
edited March 2013 in General

Having some bad sleep lately. Combine that with the dutch railways (NS) not willing to give me API access, python and Beautifulsoup and you have a beautiful page with station train information:

http://vps17.sparklingclouds.nl/gvc.html

image

I'm parsing a page from their website, but not only to a more readable webpage, but also to JSON and CSV. This will be used for another project (as in, interactive web application)

What do you think of the design?

Comments

  • It is awesome! Could you make it so that it shows all the traffic between 2 stations?

    I was just talking on IRC how horrible the railways here are.

  • Really nice and clean layout. Maybe just shrink it a little bit. Or just make the Via entries smaller text, so that it doesn't make the table have some small rows and some big rows.

  • @Centaur
    This is a small version: http://vps17.sparklingclouds.nl/gvc.html - compared with a "normal" version: http://vps17.sparklingclouds.nl/gv.html

  • Why didnt you get api access from them :/ ?

  • Probably because NS are just faggots.

  • SyedSyed Member

    @djvdorp said: Why didnt you get api access from them :/ ?

    @Raymii said: Combine that with the dutch railways (NS) not willing to give me API access

    ????

  • @djvdorp @Syed I received no response on the requests and applications I sent...

  • I'm rather wondering why you are bothering with NS so much. They go on time, and when theres snow you know you can't go anywhere. Period.

  • Do you ever travel with the train? Even today with a nice sun and 15C they managed to be late for 15minutes.

  • joepie91joepie91 Member, Patron Provider

    @CraHeX said: They go on time

    Haha, NS, on time?

    There are a select few routes that do indeed run on time, but the majority of routes have major issues constantly.

    In summer, the equipment overheats, and there are delays. In autumn, there are leaves on the rails, and there are delays. In winter, there's snow on the rails or the equipment gets so cold that it stops working, and there are delays.

    Spring is the only time NS trains actually run somewhat on time.

  • @CraHeX said: I'm rather wondering why you are bothering with NS so much. They go on time, and when theres snow you know you can't go anywhere. Period.

    @joepie91 said: Haha, NS, on time?

    Most of the time the trains run on time, but "error handling", or, what we would call expected problems (cold in the winter, heat in the summer, leaves in the autumn) are not the best part of the NS and usually mean a total fsck of the entire train system.

  • @Raymii said: Most of the time the trains run on time, but "error handling", or, what we would call expected problems (cold in the winter, heat in the summer, leaves in the autumn) are not the best part of the NS and usually mean a total fsck of the entire train system.

    The NS is often not the limiting factor. Usually ProRail that creates the trouble. For example, when a switch is frozen, the NS train driver is not allowed to get out of the train and unfreeze it but has to call to ProRail, which in turn calls a contractor, which then goes to the scene to unfreeze the switch, which could take up to two hours. You see where it goes wrong here.

  • joepie91joepie91 Member, Patron Provider
    edited March 2013

    @mpkossen said: The NS is often not the limiting factor. Usually ProRail that creates the trouble. For example, when a switch is frozen, the NS train driver is not allowed to get out of the train and unfreeze it but has to call to ProRail, which in turn calls a contractor, which then goes to the scene to unfreeze the switch, which could take up to two hours. You see where it goes wrong here.

    ProRail is part of NS.

    EDIT: Officially it's some holding company construction, but in reality it's still part of the NS, just like Servex was (before it was renamed to NS Stations Retailbedrijf).

  • SyedSyed Member

    @Raymii said: @djvdorp @Syed I received no response on the requests and applications I sent...

    I meant that in reply to djvdorp.

  • @mpkossen said: The NS is often not the limiting factor. Usually ProRail that creates the trouble. For example, when a switch is frozen, the NS train driver is not allowed to get out of the train and unfreeze it but has to call to ProRail, which in turn calls a contractor, which then goes to the scene to unfreeze the switch, which could take up to two hours. You see where it goes wrong here.

    When it was all part of the government this was not a problem. My cousin is a uncle is a train engineer and he sometimes tells me that "in the early days" he would unfreeze switches with a gas burner. Now indeed he has to wait, and most of the time the prorail lad is late because of traffic jams.

    @joepie91 said: ProRail is part of NS.

    EDIT: Officially it's some holding company construction, but in reality it's still part of the NS, just like Servex was (before it was renamed to NS Stations Retailbedrijf).

    Political burocracy, costing money which we pay through price increases and only the staff board benefits from.

  • Meh, people are always complaining about the Dutch railways, but they are in fact performing very well. The Dutch railway network is the busiest network in Europe (twice the EU average), and still the punctuality is on par with that of the best. For example, both the Dutch and the Swiss railways managed to have 89.8% of trains arrive on time on workdays in 2011 (using a 3-minute norm). So I really don't get what the problem is. When you go somewhere by car you might get into a traffic jam and when you go by train you're sometimes a few minutes late. Take your pick and stop whining about it.

  • joepie91joepie91 Member, Patron Provider

    @happel said: Meh, people are always complaining about the Dutch railways, but they are in fact performing very well. The Dutch railway network is the busiest network in Europe (twice the EU average), and still the punctuality is on par with that of the best. For example, both the Dutch and the Swiss railways managed to have 89.8% of trains arrive on time on workdays in 2011 (using a 3-minute norm). So I really don't get what the problem is. When you go somewhere by car you might get into a traffic jam and when you go by train you're sometimes a few minutes late. Take your pick and stop whining about it.

    The problem with the Dutch railways isn't that there are delays, it's that there are delays for reasons that make no sense and don't happen for railway companies in other countries.

  • RaymiiRaymii Member
    edited March 2013

    @joepie91 said: The problem with the Dutch railways isn't that there are delays, it's that there are delays for reasons that make no sense and don't happen for railway companies in other countries.

    This. Even though @happel is right on the punctuality, what me and sven mentioned earlier still makes no sense.

    Ontopic, I've added some filtering: http://vps17.sparklingclouds.nl/hgl-alm.html - this page shows only trains going from station Hengelo to station Almelo. Was a request from @taronyu

  • @joepie91 said: ProRail is part of NS.

    Nope, the state owns ProRail :) NS has got nothing to do with it since 2002.

  • @Raymii said: Ontopic, I've added some filtering: http://vps17.sparklingclouds.nl/hgl-alm.html - this page shows only trains going from station Hengelo to station Almelo. Was a request from @taronyu

    Yeah! It always takes hours to load the official ns page D:

  • joepie91joepie91 Member, Patron Provider

    @mpkossen said: Nope, the state owns ProRail :) NS has got nothing to do with it since 2002.

    Then I do wonder why pretty much everyone working for the NS passenger transport department seems to disagree with that. Having worked at a railway kiosk for a while, I've had pretty extensive discussions with them about this, and it always came down to 'ProRail still being part of NS in practice'.

  • It took a while, but the code is now on my github @tayonru @joepie91:

    https://github.com/RaymiiOrg/ns-stations

  • taronyutaronyu Member
    edited April 2013

    ^ Had enough alcohol last night didn't you? :P

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