France

France, Quick takes

8am on the slow train to Paris

It’s just past 8am. I’ve been on the slow train to Paris Bercy from rural Bourgogne for an hour an a half. The sun has just about burnt off the fog of the morning along the Yonne and now the Seine. We are rumbling along the line somewhere between Montereau […]

Analysis, European Union, France, Ticketing

Solving the Valence-Armentières Problem – the gold standard for railway trip planning and ticket sales

Geopolitics had the Schleswig Holstein Question. Machine intelligence has the Turing Test. Jumble those up, throw in a little extra European Union complexity, and I am proud to present you the railway equivalent: the Valence-Armentières Problem. At one level the theoretical solution to the problem is simple: calculate all the […]