So, Google Maps informs me that a single £15.99 bus will get there in about 9 hours, 15 minutes. That's a good bit of distance across Great Britain, but GB's not really big compared to the United States, China, or Russia. I really wonder what's the longest route you could contrive across a really big country using only "local" public transit. I suspect that you could actually get really far through New England or the Eastern Seaboard, and that you'd have a lot of trouble going east-west across the western United States. But it'd be cool to try!
You can get from south of Tijuana to north of Ventura on local transit depending on what you define as local. Iirc it may be all possible on local transit busses (no metrostink).
Define “local”. Outside of Massachusetts (MBTA), I don’t recall hearing much about public transit in New England. The commuter rail probably gets you close to New Hampshire. Not sure how far you get from there.
I've found that people often mean 'far East' in CT when they say 'far North' (because 95 runs E-W), in which case it's a few hours' drive to cross CT, IIRC.
There aren't really local buses in the USA outside of cities. I noticed it when I started traveling the globe. Many developed countries have virtually no transport outside of cities, other than via car. If they have a train or regional bus, it's typically one route to get you from one side of the country to another.
According to rome2rio.com, you can take a train from Albany, NY to Buffalo, NY. But to get from Albany to Wellsville, NY, you'd have to take a train to Buffalo, connecting service to Mt. Morris, and then still drive a car an hour and a half to get to Wellsville.
To get from Albany to where I live in NY, I would have to take three once-a-day regional buses, and still drive a car 30 minutes.
Technically, there are a lot of large counties which have networks of "local" transportation where you can get from one end of the county to another without leaving a single system. For example, in San Diego you could easily get from Chula Vista to Encinitas on MTS buses. It may take you a lot of transfers. But this example is, arguably "outside of cities" because San Diego County is a large, densely-populated area that's made up of many more cities than San Diego proper. The same goes for Los Angeles and counties of the Bay Area.
I think the challenge for a "local-only" expedition is where one county ends and the other begins, and the local bus service may not necessarily serve a convenient point to transfer in-between.
From a US/Canadian perspective, that is incredible value. A one-way bus trip between Vancouver and Seattle costs CAD 26, which is just about the same price in pounds as the LON-EDI trip, but the distance is less than half.
A roughly equivalent bus trip for me would be Vancouver to Calgary, for which the bus ticket costs $170 / £105.
The days of 99p tickets on Megabus are gone, but booking ahead it's still just £6.88 from London to Manchester on Megabus. Mind you, Ryanair will fly you from London to Venice for £9.99.
Long distance buses in Britain often need to compete with a train booked a few days ahead.
In this case, there are trains from Edinburgh to London at least twice an hour through the day, taking half the time and with much more legroom, better seats, a fairly spacious toilet, probably someone selling drinks and snacks from a trolley or bar counter, tables between seats, no road noise or pollution (it's electric), and a view.
A few years ago this guy documented going as far from London as he could on local busses, it was very interesting. Apparently he's since done a follow up on trains, which I have not read
I remember an occasion in the mid 1980s when Tom Körner needed to get from Cambridge to Leeds and there was both a national train strike and a national coach strike. Simon Norton sat down and wrote an itinerary for Tom that did the journey using only local bus services.
This is such a lovely coverage of so many things British ... simultaneous national train and coach strikes, a boffin committing bus services to memory. Only thing lacking was a mention of tea :)
I should have included, then, that Tom mentioned the problem in the tea break, and Simon sat down and wrote his itinerary on the spot.
So it all happened in a tea break.
It's a true story, and if I remember I might even be able to get Tom to confirm it. But even true stories need to be told well, and your observation makes it better.
Please be considerate with your words. Going on strike simultaneously for trains, buses, trams, schools and recently air controllers is a tradition reserved for us French.
I wondered if, being a Sunday evening on the British train system, she'd find herself on a rail replacement bus service for some of the return journey. But luckily not - just some diversions because of engineering work adding 60 minutes to the usual journey times...
I did something like that going from Sao Paulo (Brazil) to Leticia (Colombia) following the coast toward north and later taking amazon river cargo ships. It took me about 5 months, transit days about 2 months.
> on Saturday, she became waylaid after her card was declined – something which later transpired to be because she had carried out more than the permitted number of Apple Pay transactions in a single day.
I thought the point of contactless payments, like with Apple Pay, was that there are fairly low per-transaction spend limits because it's "supposed" to be used for all the little purchases you make throughout the day.
But if there are also strict transaction volume limits, what the heck is the point? "Yeah, you can use this payment method for some of your small purchases during the day, but you still have to carry cash for the rest."
Like, WTF?
Or you could just stick with cash, and not allow a 3rd party to decide how often you can spend your money, or who you can spend it with. Or keep track of who you spend it with (and presumably sell that data to advertisers^W"partners", like you agreed they could.)
This is unlikely to have been an Apple pay specific issue. There's a lot of transaction pattern matching on card payments in the UK. You may get your transactions blocked if the card provider thinks they're suspicious. You can contact your provider and get it unblocked again.
In this case it's pretty clearly uncharacteristic behaviour by any measure, including the geographical movement between transactions.
Every time I read about cases like this, my mind repeats the phrase that is a title of a niche (but prophetic) song I've heard long time ago: random is resistance.
Yes, that's the song! I mistakenly took the album name to be the song title. Thanks for correcting.
Now that I got to listen to it again, I can recommend everyone to here to check it out. The lyrics are pretty much an artistic interpretation of any of the almost daily HN threads on surveillance and digital dystopia.
It’s the bank declining. Banks have a lot of heuristics to check for stolen cards. This could easily have been flagged up as unusual. But even if it wasn’t that, a lot of banks will have a daily total limit for contactless payments without the card PIN number being entered. Such limits are reset the following day or when the card is used in a chip and pin reader (whichever happens first).
It’s very common for people in the U.K. to use a debit card for all transactions because the banking system is so robust (thus we don’t need to rely on getting a credit card statement and then marking off legitimate spend, as seems to be the norm in the US).
So while the declined transaction might seem archaic on the surface, it’s actually part of a greater whole.
credit card purchases are viewable online instantly in the US. i get an SMS and email every time i or my wife charges the card. and it's on autopay. and i get 2% cash back. win win.
> But even if it wasn’t that, a lot of banks will have a daily total limit for contactless payments without the card PIN number being entered
Interestingly there seems to be no consistent way in how device payments are treated. For example, some card readers apply the £100 contactless limit for Apple/Google Pay while many are unlimited.
I always assumed that the verification required for device payments made them “as good as” Chip and PIN—for example I never have to do additional verification for purchases using Apple Pay on the web, regardless of the amount.
36 comments
[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 79.8 ms ] threadhttps://youtu.be/HX6C3MqH6EE
Just goes to show how poorly thought out transit is in North America.
https://youtu.be/HX6C3MqH6EE?t=151
According to rome2rio.com, you can take a train from Albany, NY to Buffalo, NY. But to get from Albany to Wellsville, NY, you'd have to take a train to Buffalo, connecting service to Mt. Morris, and then still drive a car an hour and a half to get to Wellsville.
To get from Albany to where I live in NY, I would have to take three once-a-day regional buses, and still drive a car 30 minutes.
I think the challenge for a "local-only" expedition is where one county ends and the other begins, and the local bus service may not necessarily serve a convenient point to transfer in-between.
From a US/Canadian perspective, that is incredible value. A one-way bus trip between Vancouver and Seattle costs CAD 26, which is just about the same price in pounds as the LON-EDI trip, but the distance is less than half.
A roughly equivalent bus trip for me would be Vancouver to Calgary, for which the bus ticket costs $170 / £105.
In this case, there are trains from Edinburgh to London at least twice an hour through the day, taking half the time and with much more legroom, better seats, a fairly spacious toilet, probably someone selling drinks and snacks from a trolley or bar counter, tables between seats, no road noise or pollution (it's electric), and a view.
https://www.seat61.com/london-to-edinburgh-by-train.htm
https://twitter.com/politic_animal/status/142843808187143373...
https://youtu.be/vnn7xooTxl8
https://youtu.be/fKQmp0spxhs
From memory.
So it all happened in a tea break.
It's a true story, and if I remember I might even be able to get Tom to confirm it. But even true stories need to be told well, and your observation makes it better.
Thank you.
I thought the point of contactless payments, like with Apple Pay, was that there are fairly low per-transaction spend limits because it's "supposed" to be used for all the little purchases you make throughout the day.
But if there are also strict transaction volume limits, what the heck is the point? "Yeah, you can use this payment method for some of your small purchases during the day, but you still have to carry cash for the rest."
Like, WTF?
Or you could just stick with cash, and not allow a 3rd party to decide how often you can spend your money, or who you can spend it with. Or keep track of who you spend it with (and presumably sell that data to advertisers^W"partners", like you agreed they could.)
In this case it's pretty clearly uncharacteristic behaviour by any measure, including the geographical movement between transactions.
Every time I read about cases like this, my mind repeats the phrase that is a title of a niche (but prophetic) song I've heard long time ago: random is resistance.
Now that I got to listen to it again, I can recommend everyone to here to check it out. The lyrics are pretty much an artistic interpretation of any of the almost daily HN threads on surveillance and digital dystopia.
It’s very common for people in the U.K. to use a debit card for all transactions because the banking system is so robust (thus we don’t need to rely on getting a credit card statement and then marking off legitimate spend, as seems to be the norm in the US).
So while the declined transaction might seem archaic on the surface, it’s actually part of a greater whole.
Interestingly there seems to be no consistent way in how device payments are treated. For example, some card readers apply the £100 contactless limit for Apple/Google Pay while many are unlimited.
I always assumed that the verification required for device payments made them “as good as” Chip and PIN—for example I never have to do additional verification for purchases using Apple Pay on the web, regardless of the amount.
Albeit it is "local" only between Oulu and Kilpisjärvi as it stops everywhere and delivers mail.
Achually the Baja bus from Tijuana to Cabo is very much the same experience and and also "local" in same sense.