Flixbus’ website has become more enshitified with exclusivity. Tor users are able to go as far as sending a query, at which point the server says “fuck off, in general” (gives a 403 forbidden).
Along these lines, I have posted the following to !opendata@lemmy.sdf.org (which is currently down):
- https://fedia.io/m/opendata@lemmy.sdf.org/t/2724091/Why-is-train-data-shared-with-the-Belgian-gov
- https://fedia.io/m/opendata@lemmy.sdf.org/t/2655363/travel-info-wanted-blablacar-flixbus-trains-etc
Sorry I only have the fedia.io links as SDF is down.. and fedia.io likely still blocks non-members.
In any case, it’s worth noting that 3rd party travel sites (e.g. wanderu.com, checkmybus.com) manage to get Flixbus inventory. So it seems getting the dataset is feasible.. perhaps by scraping.
BTW, something dodgy happens with the 3rd party sites. They show a price and then update the price before you checkout. It’s hard to know with travel site shenanigans, but one theory (assuming honesty) is that they have old prices and update only when a transaction is initiated in order to avoid polling for new prices every second. This means that scraping the 3rd party sites is unreliable.
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