BR Fares

[bakerstreet]

Is anyone else finding BR Fares a bit buggy and slow / impossible to load on a mobile device. ? (Haven’t tried on a desktop but have tried Chrome and DuckDuckGo on mobile.

 

[_toommm_]

Working fine for me in Kiwi Browser on Android 16

 

[Paul Kelly]

Can you describe what's wrong in a bit more detail? It's possible there could be a browser incompatibility with the Cloudflare Turnstile anti-bot check that I (unfortunately) had to add a few months ago.

 

[david1212]

Can you describe what's wrong in a bit more detail? It's possible there could be a browser incompatibility with the Cloudflare Turnstile anti-bot check that I (unfortunately) had to add a few months ago.

Ahhhh - recently I have found the site often does not work at all or after a couple of searches when run from a platform of Debian KDE, Firefox browser in a private window with Ublock Origin and Surfshark paid VPN set to GB.

The 'Verify you are human' 'tick box' either does not appear or is not accepted.

 

[Haywain]

Is anyone else finding BR Fares a bit buggy and slow / impossible to load on a mobile device. ?

Working fine for me in Chrome on Android.

 

[trei2k]

I have found there is a bit of a lag in Safari on MacOS when first going to the homepage. For a couple of seconds, nothing is clickable until the Cloudflare box appears. Chrome seems OK though.

 

[bakerstreet]

Can you describe what's wrong in a bit more detail? It's possible there could be a browser incompatibility with the Cloudflare Turnstile anti-bot check that I (unfortunately) had to add a few months ago.

Yes, I have just tried it again. I
am on iOS.

What happens for me is I go to Google, type in BR Fares. BR Fares opens up.

i press into the origin box. The page zooms slightly as always.

But then (and this is before the Cloudflare verify you are a human needs to be pressed although it may be related). when I then begin to type in the origin the keyboard presses just dont register.

So you can be beginning to type and there’s no output in the box.no box accepts any content, even the expert mode tick box is unresponsive.
The page is frozen.

This is really recent. It’s never been a problem before.

It seems to be a timing issue because once it’s finally worked once (after say 20-30 secs). then it’s fine during that session.

But the same is repeated on the next occasion.

If the page is reloaded after a while of no use (eg you’ve completed other tasks and the cache has gone and you return to Chrome or DuckDuckGo or safari) then the fares page you had open tries to load again but animated circular loading graphic is stationary rather than turning.

Again resolves (usually) after a short time.

Apologies for lack of technical detail but that’s my user experience currently.

EDIT

Just looked again and yes it seems it is linked to cloudflare. Hadn’t noticed before. The page freezes until cloud flare has loaded on the page (hadn’t noticed that bit as it only becomes necessary to verify with cloud flare after inputting your content and it’s hidden further down the page.)

 

[Paul Kelly]

This is a great bug report and explains the problem really well; thanks a lot @bakerstreet. The 20-30s delay you mentioned certainly is not expected. I think Cloudflare must be finding something suspicious about your browser/connection and running a very thorough check; the check should take a maximum of a few seconds for most users and be barely noticeable. The only suggestion I can make on this point is to try turning off iCloud Private Relay if you are using it, but I understand you might not want to do that.

In any case that might be a separate issue as the browser really shouldn't be freezing. I looked into this and it seems to be a known issue on iOS that it's not as good at running stuff in the background and it's more likely that the Turnstile checks holds up all browser interaction. There also seems to be a separate issue on iOS when you come back to a browser tab after it was idle and it can get stuck when trying to reload the page. I'm looking into fixes for this now.

A note also on the comment from @trei2k - the "I am a human" Cloudflare checkbox should only appear if Cloudflare doesn't like something about your browser or connection and finds it suspicious for some reason, e.g. using a VPN or privacy blocker or something like that. According to the stats I have from Cloudflare this happens for less than 3% of site visits.

In general it's really unfortunate that this Cloudflare stuff is making the site harder to use but it was really being hit so heavily by bot traffic trying to scrape fares information (it was forming well over 90% of traffic around the start of the year) that I needed to do something. I see the forum is now behind Cloudflare as well so I guess it's affecting a lot of sites.

 

[jfollows]

Cloudflare is horrible for the user but seems to be one solution for Web sites in the face of attacks/bots etc.

I have big problems with Safari on iPad but have switched to Firefox which generally works better, although it seems to have a memory leak causung it to slow down and crash from time to time.

 

[LA50041]

This is a great bug report and explains the problem really well; thanks a lot @bakerstreet. The 20-30s delay you mentioned certainly is not expected. I think Cloudflare must be finding something suspicious about your browser/connection and running a very thorough check; the check should take a maximum of a few seconds for most users and be barely noticeable. The only suggestion I can make on this point is to try turning off iCloud Private Relay if you are using it, but I understand you might not want to do that.

In any case that might be a separate issue as the browser really shouldn't be freezing. I looked into this and it seems to be a known issue on iOS that it's not as good at running stuff in the background and it's more likely that the Turnstile checks holds up all browser interaction. There also seems to be a separate issue on iOS when you come back to a browser tab after it was idle and it can get stuck when trying to reload the page. I'm looking into fixes for this now.

A note also on the comment from @trei2k - the "I am a human" Cloudflare checkbox should only appear if Cloudflare doesn't like something about your browser or connection and finds it suspicious for some reason, e.g. using a VPN or privacy blocker or something like that. According to the stats I have from Cloudflare this happens for less than 3% of site visits.

In general it's really unfortunate that this Cloudflare stuff is making the site harder to use but it was really being hit so heavily by bot traffic trying to scrape fares information (it was forming well over 90% of traffic around the start of the year) that I needed to do something. I see the forum is now behind Cloudflare as well so I guess it's affecting a lot of sites.

I’m having the same issues as bakerstreet when using BR Fares on iPhone but not on the desktop using Edge.

 

[bakerstreet]

This is a great bug report and explains the problem really well; thanks a lot @bakerstreet. The 20-30s delay you mentioned certainly is not expected. I think Cloudflare must be finding something suspicious about your browser/connection and running a very thorough check; the check should take a maximum of a few seconds for most users and be barely noticeable. The only suggestion I can make on this point is to try turning off iCloud Private Relay if you are using it, but I understand you might not want to do that.

In any case that might be a separate issue as the browser really shouldn't be freezing. I looked into this and it seems to be a known issue on iOS that it's not as good at running stuff in the background and it's more likely that the Turnstile checks holds up all browser interaction. There also seems to be a separate issue on iOS when you come back to a browser tab after it was idle and it can get stuck when trying to reload the page. I'm looking into fixes for this now.

A note also on the comment from @trei2k - the "I am a human" Cloudflare checkbox should only appear if Cloudflare doesn't like something about your browser or connection and finds it suspicious for some reason, e.g. using a VPN or privacy blocker or something like that. According to the stats I have from Cloudflare this happens for less than 3% of site visits.

In general it's really unfortunate that this Cloudflare stuff is making the site harder to use but it was really being hit so heavily by bot traffic trying to scrape fares information (it was forming well over 90% of traffic around the start of the year) that I needed to do something. I see the forum is now behind Cloudflare as well so I guess it's affecting a lot of sites.

Yes completely understand your need for human verification.

Especially if the site has been scraped to that extent.

Just to add / refer to what you wrote.

I’m not using iCloud private relay (I didn’t actually know what it was!) And I thought perhaps given what you’ve written it might be an improvement using a mode that was not private/incognito. But this didn’t help.

Interestingly, I’m not having the same issues on the forum, which you suggested might also be using cloudflare. I use the same browser for RailForums.

I also tried with the WiFi and then 5G - no difference.

I’m also not using a VPN.

Anyway, I’m really appreciative of the BR Fares site and would rather it existed with these issues than risk it disappearing without.

 

[Paul Kelly]

I made a change earlier in the week such that (assuming you enter your query details and hit "Query Fares" in less than 30 seconds), any iOS "freeze" should happen at the "Loading fares.." stage - and thus hopefully be much less annoying.

If anybody who reported a problem previously has a chance to test it I'd be interested to hear if it helps.

 

[bakerstreet]

I made a change earlier in the week such that (assuming you enter your query details and hit "Query Fares" in less than 30 seconds), any iOS "freeze" should happen at the "Loading fares.." stage - and thus hopefully be much less annoying.

If anybody who reported a problem previously has a chance to test it I'd be interested to hear if it helps.

Just tried this. Not only is the order better - ie can input origin / destination immediately- but at first attempt the cloudflare resolved almost immediately. Great result so far. Many thanks @Paul Kelly

 

[trei2k]

Just another voice of support here. The issue has now gone for me and the page is much more usable on Safari on MacOS.

 

[pokemonsuper9]

Just noticed BR Fares appears to have a ticketing integration now.
And it does them without reservations, just a buy button on the ticket you've looked up.

Definitely a power user kind of system but it's BR Fares so they know their market.


Edit: please ignore just noticed other thread

BR Fares now selling itinerary-free tickets

I have just seen that BR Fares is now selling tickets directly from its search results, without needing to search for an itinerary first. Very useful for when the industry reservations system goes down as happened this morning! It only sells tickets that don’t require reservations (i.e. walk-up...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[jfollows]

Already discussed at

BR Fares now selling itinerary-free tickets

I have just seen that BR Fares is now selling tickets directly from its search results, without needing to search for an itinerary first. Very useful for when the industry reservations system goes down as happened this morning! It only sells tickets that don’t require reservations (i.e. walk-up...

www.railforums.co.uk