German court takes an interest in journey planner algorithms

[Paul Kelly]

Link here if you can read German: https://www.hessenschau.de/wirtscha...n-in-bahn-app-v3,olg-db-suchfunktion-100.html

The gist of it is that a private train operator complained to the regional court in Frankfurt-am-Main about the fact that the journey planning algorithm that Deutsche Bahn's app and website uses (provided I think by Hafas) will by default not show overtaken journeys, even though it shows other journeys which arrive much later than the overtaken journeys. The court decided that this was misleading and unfair and ordered it to be changed.

E.g. consider the following sequence of departures from York to King's Cross:



The Grand Central journey would never be shown because it is overtaken by 1 minute by an LNER service. The example used by the court was that when searching for a departure from 10:00 onwards, the algorithm might show a journey departing 10:20 taking 1 hour, followed by a journey departing 10:30 taking 2 hours. However it would never show a journey departing 10:10 departing only 1 and a half hours. When you look at it that way, in my opinion the court's decision does look kind of reasonable, although the algorithm seems to have been working as intended! Quite interesting to see something like this being discussed in a court when usually it is such a niche topic!

 

[josh-j]

I wonder what a good faith reason could be to not show overtaken journeys? It seems obvious, at least when it is pointed out, that the key information is the departure and arrival times!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I wonder what a good faith reason could be to not show overtaken journeys? It seems obvious, at least when it is pointed out, that the key information is the departure and arrival times!

Because people, in a system that has traditionally been based on fixed fares*, want the quickest option so showing the slower ones isn't desirable?

UK planners do show them these days, but that's because differing prices are far more of a consideration, as is competition.

* If one did want to exclude ICE or say regional trains only as those were always cheaper, those options were there to select.

 

[Paul Kelly]

If one did want to exclude ICE or say regional trains only as those were always cheaper, those options were there to select.

Yes, true, I maybe wasn't clear enough that the other types of search were there if you needed them; it's just that "Prefer the fastest journeys" was always there very prominently and indeed selected by default.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes, true, I maybe wasn't clear enough that the other types of search were there if you needed them; it's just that "Prefer the fastest journeys" was always there very prominently and indeed selected by default.

And historically that's what most people in Germany wanted. Advance type tickets there are a relatively new thing, as is competition on long distance routes (and it's still quite rare, with Flix operating single train pairs on a tiny number of routes).

 

[bahnause]

If I use the Flixtrain planner, only Flixbusses and Flixtrains are shown. No DB connections at all.