A key message in all of my #CrossBorderRail work has been that some problems ought to be really easy to solve. The really, really, really easy ones ought to be the places where trains run, and even run with decent timetables, but there are data sharing problems – meaning the timetables for those trains are not easily available.

One of those places was Irun-Hendaia at the France-Spain border. The Euskotren service crosses the border every half an hour there, but until now you had to know it existed – the timetables for it were nowhere to be found in international timetable searches like DB and ÖBB Scotty (the Swiss SBB timetable people were so annoyed they’d found a temporary work around).

But now – thankfully! – the problem is solved properly. Euskotren data is in UIC Merits, meaning it displays correctly. Now all you need to know is which station is which on the Euskotren network, and that Amara (Donostia) is the best bet for San Sebastián 🙂

At the same time, data from the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya has also been added to Merits, meaning a bunch of lines around Barcelona now show correctly as well, although none of these are cross border:

So I can add this to the list of #CrossBorderRail success stories – as half a success. Because there are still data problems at two further France – Spain borders, because Rodalies de Catalunya data is still not fully in UIC Merits, and that’s the root cause of the other two problems.