S4 · E2 · 2026
The Ferry Leaves at 7:40
A river ferry sells its tickets at a window and its timetable is a PDF. Ida has eleven weeks before summer, and the pier has one bar of signal.
Client: Estrela Ferries · Web app
Previously on…
Estrela Ferries carries 9,000 people a day across the river. Season tickets were sold at a window, single tickets on board in cash, and the timetable was a PDF that went out of date with every tide. They wanted people to buy a ticket on the pier, on a phone, in under a minute.
Guest star
“The phone stopped ringing. I had forgotten what silence sounds like.”
The episode
Cold open. Ida stands on the pier at 7:38 with a stopwatch. The ferry company’s old site takes nine seconds to load on the pier’s one bar of signal. The ferry leaves without anyone buying a ticket online. Roll titles.
Act one
The timetable was a PDF because the times change with the tide. Ida wrote a small service that takes the sailing plan and the boats’ positions and produces the next six departures for each pier, served as plain HTML so it shows before any JavaScript arrives.
Act two
Checkout became three steps: the crossing, the ticket, the payment, with Apple Pay and Google Pay first because nobody on a pier wants to type a card number. The ticket screen turns its own brightness up, because the scanners on board are old and fussy.
The tag
The cat rode the ferry on launch day. She was not impressed by the river.
Scenes
Week two. The captain explains tides. Ida explains caching. Both pretend to understand.
How it ended
- Tickets bought online
- Before: 0%After: 61%
- Time to buy a ticket
- Before: A phone callAfter: 40 seconds
- Calls about the timetable
- Before: 140 a weekAfter: 30 a week
Crew
- Astro
- TypeScript
- PostgreSQL
- Stripe
