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by boultonmark 3880 days ago
Can someone from Captain Train explain where they have gotten the European Rail Timetable Data from? Because there is a huge issue in Europe over that data not being Open Data. The rail governing body the UIC collects each member train company's timetables and merges/cleans them into a dataset called Merits. If you ask the UIC as many Open Data campaigners and interested companies for that dataset they say "Only the Operators can have it". That dataset then goes to the company that supplies most of the European train companies journey planning Hacon (via a dept of Deutsche Bahn first). Hacon also won't license you the data. They too say 'it's the train operators'. And Deutsche Bahn will only license you the Hacon API (i.e not the raw data). Train Captain where are you getting this data from? Because you must be the only independent non-train operator in Europe to have it. And according to the rules I've encountered you shouldn't.
2 comments
breakingcups 3878 days ago
I know all Dutch timetable data for any public transport is available publicly. Even real-time streaming of bus & train positions for some public transport companies.
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gmac 3880 days ago
Just a thought, but I wonder if https://loco2.com have it too?
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joelhaasnoot 3880 days ago
Their blog about this recently is here: https://loco2.com/blog/more-powerful-rail-journey-planning

Reading between the lines it seems they license the Hacon API from Deutsche Bahn

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boultonmark 3880 days ago
Yeah it's the Hacon API like http://www.thetrainline-europe.com/ use. That is not the raw data but a journey-planning API. You need to spend 15k to become a licensed Deutsche Bahn partner and then pay Hacon per query. But the Captain Train post seems to be talking about them doing their own journey planning from raw schedule data. I just want to know how they got it when no-one else including Loco2 can get it.
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boultonmark 3879 days ago
Update from CaptainTrain in the comments in my reply to where do you get the data:

"It’s magic. :) To be honest, this is a strategic topic we can’t comment on. I’m sorry."

i.e they have it via a backdoor - someone is giving them it who shouldn't or they're scraping it.

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joelhaasnoot 3877 days ago
The backdoors aren't hard to guess BTW - one noteable source is reverse engineering the HaCon offline products.
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