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Comment by titanix2 | Hacker News Reader

> It doesn't need to open up the network to competition.

I think this is mandated by the EU. And it could be a good thing. I'm personally fed up to be treated like a thief when I forgot composting my ticket (which happen because there is not gate to access the rails) or when I could not buy it in the first place (some station doesn't have have vending machines).

Also the price lottery for TGV tickets is infuriating (price goes from 14€ to 140€ for the ride I take the most) and the commercial strategy of the SNCF is to offer cheap TGV which lacks any confort to kind of punish you not buying the more expensive option.

But actually I would even be happier if we import all the working staff from Japan and make them the whole thing working smoothly under a join JR-France company.

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For english speakers, "composting" here means punching a ticket. I never understood where the word came from, and I'm a native French speaker.

Apparently the meaning doesn't come from the verb but from the italian word : "compositore" (according to wikitionary [1] and the larousse dictionary [2])

(again in [1]) "compositore" from italian is equivalent to "compositeur" in french which can mean "a person that writes music" but can also mean "a typographer or compositor".

[1] : https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/composteur

[2] : https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/composteur/17...

Funnily enough the word we use for stamping tickets in Italian is vidimare which comes from vidimus (seen) in Latin, so it's actually closer to visa in etymology.

For ESL speakers, "composting" to us means "put in a bin with a bunch of dead vegetation and let it rot". It can also refer to throwing something away in a bin that is destined for a compost pile (for instance, food scraps).

I was wondering why the OP would be treated like a thief for not throwing his ticket away to be composted.

Wow, thanks for that. I can't find a definition in an English dictionary that was able to make sense of that. It appears to have etymology in Old French composte which comes from Latin "composita" or "compositum" which means something like "something put together".

Even crazier I can't figure out how we arrive at the modern meaning of decaying vegetables to make soil...but I can arrive at how we got to "composite" which seems to have different but similar roots.

> Even crazier I can't figure out how we arrive at the modern meaning of decaying vegetables to make soil...

The etymology I see all mentions "composte" as "mixture of leaves, manure, etc., for fertilizing land", which suggests that it started as people using a *composita of manure and plant detritus together to ferment for fertilizer and the word sense shifted from referring to the specific mixture to the general composting process.

Ahh, that makes sense.

Thanks for having filled the "exercice left to the reader" as I didn't know the correct word!

> I think this is mandated by the EU.

Not really, the EU is democratic, and generally there's skeptisism in the EU about a liberal rail market.

The Fourth Railway Package explicity allows tracks and trains to be owned by a single holding company. The main point of the package was things like harmonising safety standards across europe (so if you wanted to run a train from london to warsaw you wouldn't need to get safety certification from UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Poland).

It will mean that a given EU government can't use the rail industry as a way of hiding state aid to people/industries. If SNCF are good, that's fine, they continue. If DB come along and say they can run France's network for half the cost, then DB get the job.

> I'm personally fed up to be treated like a thief when I forgot composting my ticket

That's because you're not traveling with a valid ticket. Try driving off from the petrol station without paying, or boarding a plane without showing a boarding pass.

> Also the price lottery for TGV tickets is infuriating

It's demand led, like planes.

> the commercial strategy of the SNCF is to offer cheap TGV which lacks any confort to kind of punish you not buying the more expensive option.

So buy the more expensive one if you value the comfort.

>That's because you're not travelling with a valid ticket. Try driving off from the petrol station without paying, or boarding a plane without showing a boarding pass.

that's not even remotely close. I don't know exactly how it is in France but in Italy (and I suspect it's similar) I may have a monthly ticket clearly stating the validity FROM-TO, having my name on it and yet still if i don't time stamp it at the start of month i'm treated like a thief because bureaucracy says ALL tickets must be timestamped. WHY? how could i cheat with a named monthly subscription ticked? Ticket controllers not having to fear for their job don't even try to think and treat passengers with respect.

Now that we have a private Operator the situation is a little bit better but still until we have laws that dictate nobody must do any effort to maintain the job it's not gonna be pretty.

Now You may ask Why I don't simply time stamp it at the start of the month. Maybe i'm late and I miss my train But most of the time and in many stations the stamping machines do not work. courtesy of the same guaranteed monopoly Company.

I suppose that government subventions are split as a function of the number of passengers...

Does that monthly ticket has a start date printed on it before you compost it?

Of course it does. it's a monthly ticket valid from first of the month until end of the month. And even for the tickets without a date Why should the passenger be penalised when there are no working stamping machines in the train station? how is that the passenger problem?

> Of course it does

Dunno about France (OP gave no indication he was talking about a period ticket), but in the UK monthly tickets last a month from the time they begin (which is printed on the ticket at time of purchase). Most train tickets I've bought on the continent are undated - if you don't composte them then you could use them time and time again, which would be theft of service.

In the UK we have carnets which must be dated (albeit with a pen rather than a machine) before boarding the train. They give very little discount and users are often accused of fraud.

> Why should the passenger be penalised when there are no working stamping machines in the train station? how is that the passenger problem?

It's the passengers problem as they presumably can't board the train without a valid ticket. I'm not sure how competition or changing ownership would help, what you need are strong laws making the train company liable if it's not there.

Again in the UK we have "penalty fares", which are on the spot "fines" for "honest mistakes". Sadly the same doesn't apply to train companies, when they deny boarding despite a valid ticket, or you get threatened with legal action despite a valid ticket, you have to fight it, but they don't get fined.

> I'm not sure how competition or changing ownership would help

Competition always helps. It would be as simple as putting a stamping machine inside the train like they do on the buses. I mean it doesn't cost anything and the only reason it is not being done is the same reason machines in stations do not work. The train company has a monopoly and they don't care to try offering a decent service.

The JR service comes at a cost. Shinkansen tickets are vastly more expensive than TGV.

Yes it's a bit more expensive but the trains themselves are way more confortable, most of the time on schedule and drive at full operational speed all the time because they rails are made for it. With TGV on the other hand you have a few sections which are standard rails and thus you the train drive at a normal (low) speed...

More comfortable than the TGV? The train I'm most familiar with is the Thalys, the high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris, and I'm not sure if it's more comfortable than other TGVs, but it's always a joy to travel in.

I recently went to London in the Eurostar, and they'd managed to make the train experience feel like a plane. Very disappointing.

Having recently used both the TGV and the Tokaido Shinkansen, I'd say the Hikari line is much more comfortable than any of the TGV trains.

Regarding the Eurostar, it works like that because the UK is not in Schengen. As such, border control needs to happen. Not to mention the potential issues with terrorism. And the Eurostar is net inferior to any of the Shinkansen trains.

Can confirm, I've been on the TGV and also a few bullet trains in Japan - the bullet trains were practically luxurious in terms of comfort and space, and the service was fantastic.

I also found the bullet trains to be great value, especially when compared to the expensive, uncomfortable, over-crowded, slow, dirty, late trains here in the UK.

The border checks absolutely added to the plane feeling of the experience, but Eurostar seats are also significantly more cramped than those of the Thalys.

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