> if the baseline chance of delay is 10%, engineering works add 25%, strikes add 35%, and bad weather adds 20%, then when all these problems happen, there's a 90% chance your train will be delayed.<p>What if signal failures "add" 15%? Then all factors combined would mean that there's a 105% chance your train will be delayed!<p>Adding up probabilities like this doesn't make sense. If you simplify these things as independent events, the probability of delay is just the 1 minus the product of all the probabilities of each event not happening (i.e., 1 - P(event)).<p>As for the article---I think you really undervalue your time and the price of inconvenience. I can see how you can romanticize it as a nice way to get things done, but (dealing with) train delays is hardly distraction free and is full of forced setting changes and (very) shit working environments (like waiting on a platform). This is a bad deal, even if it's free. Money is there to to be spent; this is a instance in which to spend it, moral/ethical/fraud concerns aside.<p>But hey maybe you're a Von Neuman type and thrive in cacophony and chaos.