As readers may guess, this story had a trivial start: I forgot my bag on the bus. Five minutes later, I realized that the bag was missing, but the bus had already left. After coming home, I checked the bus company’s website for the possibility of claiming the lost bag, and several days later, I was lucky enough to get it back. I live in Amsterdam, and public transport here has a partnership with an iLost company, where people can claim their lost property. This site has a pretty clear structure and does not even require registration to view items forgotten by different people (personal details are, obviously, hidden). Having a sort of data-oriented mindset, I got a “Eureka” moment — data of this kind can be great from the cultural anthropology perspective, and we can learn a lot about what kind of goods can be lost in public transport and other places. Alas, the iLost license agreement does not allow the use of the data without written consent, and nobody responded to my question. But still having this idea in mind, I started to search online for alternative sources, and it turned out that:
- Transport for London (TfL) also has a good service for claiming lost property items.