Talk:Rhônexpress

Criticism

The system seems somewhat sensitive to weather. Soon after opening (on 18th September 2010) the system was partially closed due to electrical failure following heavy rain on the preceding day.

Passengers were disembarked at Vaulx-en-Velin and bussed from there to the city centre. The fare did not revert to the old pre-tram coach fare.

For a system specifically going to the airport the trams also have woefuelly little luggage space.

Disembarkation at the airport (even for a temporary system) is also poor requiring passengers to stand on an undersized and uncovered platform.--Stephencdickson (talk) 15:10, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I can confirm, as a resident of Lyon that has waited two years for Rhonexpress to open, that the final product is a major disappointment. The lack of luggage space has been a major shock to most customers; it's as if the designers never heard of people bringing suitcases to the airport. Capacity also does not seem to be all that much greater than the Satobus, though I suppose they could add an extra car in the future if ridership increases. As you say, it was also a large surprise that the Rhonexpress doesn't pull into the brand new train station built next to the airport, but rather stops just short of the station and lets passengers out on a makeshift platform with no shield from the weather.

When I have a moment, I'm going to look for news articles reporting criticism of the service because there's almost nothing in the article at this moment on its reception after opening. -Krasnoludek (talk) 19:37, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Railway vs. train, and whatever else...

@Red Slash: and @John Snow II:, this is the forum to discuss the issue, and seek consensus. Bring it to the attention of the relevant WikiProject if you need to. Just stop with the edit warring. -Oosh (talk) 04:41, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Let me copy-paste

If you asked people in France which one they feel a closer affinity to, yeah, they'll probably say British English. But changing the variety of English used based on that criterion is not our policy or practice at Wikipedia. We only change the long-standing English variety in case of strong national ties. I understand that you were just trying to tidy up and I do appreciate that. I really do. I wanted to let you know that changing the variety of English used in an article is not OK as far as tidying up goes. That's not a part of acceptable copy-editing. By the way, we don't practice consistency among varied articles in a particular field. Color is in U.S. English and most individual color articles are, as well--red, green, white, brown, pink, purple... but look at blue and, more obviously, orange (colour). Many editors, like you, have noticed the inconsistency, and indeed, Talk:Orange (colour) is chock-full of move requests to make it American English, just like all the other color articles. But it's always been rejected because we don't change the English used in our articles except in cases with strong and national ties to a variety of natively spoken English. Again, WP:RETAIN is what we do. (Changing the variety used in Ohio airport articles to American English would be appropriate, as would changing the variety about Heathrow to British English.) Red Slash 02:24, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

We're actually in agreement about that, Slash. You just seem to be attempting to apply that rather zealously where it is not actually relevant. Cool it. John Snow II (talk) 12:40, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

To Red Slash: I think that the national tie is strong enough here (both France and UK are part of the EU), and even WP:TIES gives an example: Institutions of the European Union. Anyway, even if you consider WP:RETAIN, it should be the British variant since the original page used that, as you can see in the page history. Vincent Lefèvre (talk) 16:26, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Vincent Lefèvre, this is not at all a "national" issue. The train tunnel linking London to France? That's nationally affiliated with the UK. This is not, in fact, an article that has strong national ties to any English-speaking country.

The general concept is the crucial thing; the application of that concept to this article is less important. There is no usage of British English in that first (stub) revision besides the usage of the {{convert}} template, which automatically transcribes into UK English. By the time the article had reached 3,000 bytes (which is a rough transition away from stub status - I'm totally open to other possibilities), it was already called a "rail line". Red Slash 20:16, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Surely the quality and readability of the article is the crucial thing? I log on to contribute to a properly edited encyclopedia, not to score points. Again, please back off and use your admirable energies more productively, Slash. Thanks. John Snow II (talk) 21:47, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

I don't get why this is a big deal to you. Why are you insisting on imposing your variety of English on this article? Why? We have policies that are explicitly designed to stop such a revert war. I like following WP:RETAIN. (Of course, man, I have done the same exact thing you've done here--like, I've seen "colour" and "color" in the same article and gone and changed "colour" to "color" without realizing that British English was the long-standing variety in that article, for example. But I've backed off once someone's pointed that out!) It's a good policy and avoids tons of silly edit wars (once you tell them, most people realize that changing the variety of English involved is against policy, and that's that). Why is this important to you? Red Slash 03:03, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Red Slash, British English was used in a consistent way until 2010-07-30, where the article was no longer a stub (see its contents). Then there was a single edit by a user, who added the term "rail line"; note also that this was for a disambig sentence, thus not really part of the article contents. Then, AFAIK, the edits remain consistent until 2013-08-07. Then you changed British English to American English. Instead of doing that, only the disambig sentence should have been corrected. Vincent Lefèvre (talk) 11:07, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Help me out, please; I don't see where any distinguishing features of British English were used other than the {{convert}} template which spells in British English by default. Most editors don't even notice that it outputs in British English, or don't know how to change it. I didn't find a single word that showed that this article was written in British English other than that. Red Slash 00:16, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Concerning the spelling, what's important is not the source, but what the reader sees. And editors usually read what they have written (in particular if they used templates), and here this was from an editor who knows how to use Wikipedia (see the history of his contributions).

The British term "railway" was also used twice (it would be "railroad" in American English).

Note: Concerning "rail line", it doesn't seem to be specific to American English. It is also used on gov.uk and on WP UK-related pages: High-speed rail in the United Kingdom. It appears to be a simplification of "railway line" / "railroad line" in modern English. Ditto for "train station", which just seems to be modern English (Railway station versus train station).

Vincent Lefèvre (talk) 10:38, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

It would be good to put this one to bed now. Thanks for your helpful thoughts Vincent. Just to help you out, 'rail line' is indeed occasionally used as an abbreviation for railway line, but 'train station' is incorrect in any form of English. John Snow II (talk) 13:22, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

I am unsure what to say after reading that last comment. Red Slash 21:02, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

I suggest that "kilometres" should be preferred over "kilometers" here, as that spelling is common between French and UK English, and I might generally lean toward UK for this article for reasons above (geographic distance, EU affiliation, early article history). Looking for WP:COMMONALITY may also be helpful. I think "central" works in both US and UK English. Does "parking lot" exist in UK English? I think it's clear that "car park" is foreign to US English. What's wrong with "train station"? (The article mentioned above by Vincent Lefèvre was published in The Telegraph (UK) and it says "train station is definitely becoming the preferred form over railway station".) —BarrelProof (talk) 21:59, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks BarrelProof. These mostly sound sensible considerations to me. Just to answer your latter point, what's wrong with 'train station' is that there is nothing right about it, to cut right to the chase: it is logically nonsensical, stylistically inappropriate (certainly for formal text such as an encyclopedia), and completely unnecessary when the established term, railway station, is used everywhere - remarkably enough, even in the US, at least originally. John Snow II (talk) 16:30, 27 September 2014 (UTC)