Rail for Less: a fare checking site

[Bronzeman]

Does this site not work for bus departure points? Amtrak provides service to Wilmington NC (WMN) which can be selected on Amtrak.com. Typically Wilmington to Wilson (WLN) on the bus then via rail to the ultimate destination.

The station drop down lists Wilmington NC but only Fayetteville can be selected. Using the WMN identifier produces “no station found”

 

[zephyr17]

Does this site not work for bus departure points? Amtrak provides service to Wilmington NC (WMN) which can be selected on Amtrak.com. Typically Wilmington to Wilson (WLN) on the bus then via rail to the ultimate destination.

The station drop down lists Wilmington NC but only Fayetteville can be selected. Using the WMN identifier produces “no station found”

Apparently not, same thing for SFC/EMY.

 

[Mr.Technician]

I'm guessing we filtered out any bus-only stops when we first pruned the station list. Maybe they can be included but shown with lower priority that normal train stops?

 

[Mr.Technician]

Hello railfans!

This latest iteration of the project is the result of yet another complete redesign of our backend architecture, and a slew of UI tweaks in response to user feedback. We have now finally migrated all of our backend services from Microsoft Azure to Cloudflare. This transition began over a year ago when we first transitioned our hosting to Cloudflare Pages, since then we have transitioned our CAPTCHA service to Cloudflare Turnstile, and now our entire backend to run on Cloudflare Workers. This marks the third complete redesign of our backend and with it you can expect faster searches with more frequent status updates. Through clever insights about the design of the Amtrak API and the use of new Cloudflare services we have lowered search times to a limit we long thought was impossible. Additionally, we have leveraged Cloudflare's vast network to eliminate the need for some of our most expensive proxies, allowing us to reduce our monthly fundraising goal for the time being.

With these backend changes come a variety of frontend improvements, many in direct response to user feedback. Some of these changes include a new custom date range selector, route icons, a more accurate geolocation API, smarter station recognition, more customization when viewing fares, and accessibility improvements.

Thank you to all who donated to fund this iteration, your donations are what allow us to continually improve. Much of this update was informed by generous user feedback—please reply below to let us know how we can improve.

https://railforless.us/

- Sean & Riley

 

[PaTrainFan]

Hello railfans!

This latest iteration of the project is the result of yet another complete redesign of our backend architecture, and a slew of UI tweaks in response to user feedback. We have now finally migrated all of our backend services from Microsoft Azure to Cloudflare. This transition began over a year ago when we first transitioned our hosting to Cloudflare Pages, since then we have transitioned our CAPTCHA service to Cloudflare Turnstile, and now our entire backend to run on Cloudflare Workers. This marks the third complete redesign of our backend and with it you can expect faster searches with more frequent status updates. Through clever insights about the design of the Amtrak API and the use of new Cloudflare services we have lowered search times to a limit we long thought was impossible. Additionally, we have leveraged Cloudflare's vast network to eliminate the need for some of our most expensive proxies, allowing us to reduce our monthly fundraising goal for the time being.

With these backend changes come a variety of frontend improvements, many in direct response to user feedback. Some of these changes include a new custom date range selector, route icons, a more accurate geolocation API, smarter station recognition, more customization when viewing fares, and accessibility improvements.

Thank you to all who donated to fund this iteration, your donations are what allow us to continually improve. Much of this update was informed by generous user feedback—please reply below to let us know how we can improve.

https://railforless.us/

- Sean & Riley

I found your tool to be invaluable in planning my upcoming trip to Florida. So helpful when one can be flexible with travel dates and can visually see the fares over a wide timeframe. Thank you!

 

[JuniusLivonius]

Hello railfans!

This latest iteration of the project is the result of yet another complete redesign of our backend architecture, and a slew of UI tweaks in response to user feedback. We have now finally migrated all of our backend services from Microsoft Azure to Cloudflare. This transition began over a year ago when we first transitioned our hosting to Cloudflare Pages, since then we have transitioned our CAPTCHA service to Cloudflare Turnstile, and now our entire backend to run on Cloudflare Workers. This marks the third complete redesign of our backend and with it you can expect faster searches with more frequent status updates. Through clever insights about the design of the Amtrak API and the use of new Cloudflare services we have lowered search times to a limit we long thought was impossible. Additionally, we have leveraged Cloudflare's vast network to eliminate the need for some of our most expensive proxies, allowing us to reduce our monthly fundraising goal for the time being.

With these backend changes come a variety of frontend improvements, many in direct response to user feedback. Some of these changes include a new custom date range selector, route icons, a more accurate geolocation API, smarter station recognition, more customization when viewing fares, and accessibility improvements.

Thank you to all who donated to fund this iteration, your donations are what allow us to continually improve. Much of this update was informed by generous user feedback—please reply below to let us know how we can improve.

https://railforless.us/

- Sean & Riley

The tool is very cool even as a non-rider!

Two points:
Do you have any comments about Google having exclusive access to certain fare data? As I'm sure you've heard, Amtrak and Google have a deal so fares are integrated with Google Maps' route planning. This is obviously unfair to you and all of the beneficiaries, but this arrangement might not be permanently exclusive.

Are we really witnessing a company (CloudFlare) in the business of bot- and scraper-denial now engaging (explicitly or not) in providing a service that effectively bypasses that denial for other services? Maybe they have an assumption of "good behavior" exemption for inter-customer traffic? (Not saying that Amtrak is a CloudFlare customer so that's probably a tangent) Wow. Let me know if I misunderstood the architecture but it looks like you're using CloudFlare services against a site that really hates scraping, and CloudFlare is also in the business of stopping scraping. Obviously it shouldn't have to be this way.

 

[dlagrua]

I applaud the efforts of the Railforless team for offering something good for the rail passenger. Last time I tried to use it Firefox would not work with it. The concept is great and I would not mind subscribing but it needs to work flawlessly. If these guys can get around the Amtrak blockers, then they have a bright future ahead.

 

[trimetbusfan]

I applaud the efforts of the Railforless team for offering something good for the rail passenger. Last time I tried to use it Firefox would not work with it. The concept is great and I would not mind subscribing but it needs to work flawlessly. If these guys can get around the Amtrak blockers, then they have a bright future ahead.

I’ve had great success using chrome

 

[Mr.Technician]

I applaud the efforts of the Railforless team for offering something good for the rail passenger. Last time I tried to use it Firefox would not work with it. The concept is great and I would not mind subscribing but it needs to work flawlessly. If these guys can get around the Amtrak blockers, then they have a bright future ahead.

What issues did you have with Firefox? All modern browser should work the same. In fact, the UI engineer, Sean, primarily uses Firefox.

Do you have any comments about Google having exclusive access to certain fare data? As I'm sure you've heard, Amtrak and Google have a deal so fares are integrated with Google Maps' route planning. This is obviously unfair to you and all of the beneficiaries, but this arrangement might not be permanently exclusive.

I am not aware of Google having exclusive access to fare data. There seem to be a number of providers (Expedia, Wanderu, etc.) who get access to it. Correct me if I am wrong, though, as I haven't looked into this a lot.

Are we really witnessing a company (CloudFlare) in the business of bot- and scraper-denial now engaging (explicitly or not) in providing a service that effectively bypasses that denial for other services? Maybe they have an assumption of "good behavior" exemption for inter-customer traffic? (Not saying that Amtrak is a CloudFlare customer so that's probably a tangent) Wow. Let me know if I misunderstood the architecture but it looks like you're using CloudFlare services against a site that really hates scraping, and CloudFlare is also in the business of stopping scraping. Obviously it shouldn't have to be this way.

If we're being pedantic, the actual scraping takes place with a different provider. The remaining 90% of the infrastructure lives on Cloudflare. Either way I am not concerned with Cloudflare shutting it down, only with Amtrak making changes to block us.

 

[ancompton]

I use Firefox w/o difficulty.

 

[OmahaRoad]

What issues did you have with Firefox? All modern browser should work the same. In fact, the UI engineer, Sean, primarily uses Firefox.

Until this most recent update, I had all sorts of issues when using Firefox--can't remember what the names of the errors were, but it would throw errors frequently and not be able to complete my query and would also be very slow. BUT--since this update, everything is lightning fast, and I've had no errors!

Thank you for your great work on this public service!!

 

[JuniusLivonius]

I am not aware of Google having exclusive access to fare data. There seem to be a number of providers (Expedia, Wanderu, etc.) who get access to it. Correct me if I am wrong, though, as I haven't looked into this a lot.


If we're being pedantic, the actual scraping takes place with a different provider. The remaining 90% of the infrastructure lives on Cloudflare. Either way I am not concerned with Cloudflare shutting it down, only with Amtrak making changes to block us.

I meant that Google (and other companies it seems) has data that you can't have, hence the scraping setup. I have no idea what goes on in the Amtrak booking space but I can see that Railforless is using underhanded techniques whereas other companies can (maybe) pay a sum and waltz right in?

I didn't mean that CloudFlare would shut it down, I was talking about how they might be offering a service (intentionally or not) that could be an effective bypass around the sort of blocking technology (CloudFlare's or a competitor's) they offer to their own customers. They would be setting up a hindrance to bots while offering services to bypass bot blocking. However, I do now see you're not using CloudFlare for scraping/proxying so you may not have any further insight or comment.

 

[niemi24s]

FYI, when searching for Bedroom fares on the LSL from BOS to CHI for the 24 Nov thru 31 Dec period your site returned about 22 different fares ranging from $906 to $3148.

That $3148 fare was on 21Dec when Amtrak shows sleepers sold out. Some fares are only $2 apart.

 

[trimetbusfan]

FYI, when searching for Bedroom fares on the LSL from BOS to CHI for the 24 Nov thru 31 Dec period your site returned about 22 different fares ranging from $906 to $3148.

That $3148 fare was on 21Dec when Amtrak shows sleepers sold out. Some fares are only $2 apart.

Did you change the setting for "Layovers" to "No Layovers"? Otherwise, Railforless will show connections between 449 and 49 at ALB, which will cause there to be a lot of similarly priced (but slightly different) fares that you are indicating.

 

[niemi24s]

Did you change the setting for "Layovers" to "No Layovers"?

Oops!!