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Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

Is this actual train journeys, including time traversing stations, or is it concatenated journey times? I think it might be the former, as Bristol to Paris was 4h40, Bristol to Reims was 5h52, but Paris to Reims was 46 mins. Similarly, Brussels to Cologne/Koln 1h48, Brussels to Berlin 6h05, but Berlin to Koln 4h02. Not much different, but still enough to pique my curiosity.

FWIW the city straplines/blurbs were in English for me but the discount details [adverts?] were in French.

Seems to be based on https://github.com/juliuste/direkt.bahn.guru, the issues of which note quite a few missing stations.

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I suspect the time traversing stations is an arbitrarily small wait time rather than actual typical connection intervals. Looks like they map based on the fastest train (even when that's once a day and the others take about 50% longer) and the assumption that if I walked from the station instead of boarding the train I could still get ~9 miles away by walking across open fields seems generous...

I notice if you look at Madrid it includes all of Spain and none of Portugal, and similarly from Lisbon. I assume this is because the schedules don't line up, because it wouldn't really make sense in terms of physical distance.

There are hardly any connecting trains between both countries.

The connection to Vigo happens a few times a day, with regional trains, and to Madrid it is at most twice a day, if it runs.

Then the regular CP strikes, delays and canceled trains.

It isn't by chance that most families have cars, if we rely on trains and bus alone, better have enough time for travelling by land.

About 20 years ago I was in Portugal and remember it was a TGV project that didn't take off. It was supposed to connect to Madrid I believe. I imagine that politics and money created this issue.

That keeps being discussed and filling pockets from politicians and their close friends.

We could already have good connections with Alpha Pendular trains, it would be a matter to extend and improve existing infrastructure, not build a new one from scratch.

Same goes for the never ending story of the new Lisbon airport, it will make very happy everyone involved into its construction.

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