It is entirely possible to get a cell signal on a train, even in tunnels. We as a society just choose not to build out the necessary infrastructure.
As software developers make up a vanishingly small amount of all users on trains, it seems prudent to highlight their collective experience, not the portion of a one-off that you can control as an individual contributor.
I'm well aware that you or I as individuals have very little control over public transit infrastructure. It's a shame we cannot team up as a group to solve these issues rather than fixate on our experiences solely through a personal lens.
In all seriousness, as engineers we of course can't assume the happy path is common, and to ensure good UX more often than not we need to account for these cases.
I'm am discussing a solution rather than a series of ephemeral and incomplete fixes. Not that developers can solve public transit issues but that society at large is the only one that can truly solve these issues.
The users are not wrong in my assertion nor do I think disabling lazy loading is the solution. Disabling lazy loading is an ephemeral and incomplete fix that helps some scenarios while degrading the experience in other scenarios.
The solution is improved infrastructure. I don't see why this position is controversial.
It seems more likely that the expectation that users must have consistent connectivity to load (and keep loaded) the most fundamental aspects of a website (images and text) is a poor assumption and the hubris to leave this type of assumption unchecked the actual root problem.
Lazy loading makes it impossible to do anything to manage a poor connection.
This was the exact problem lazy loading was supposed to solve
You could have truly wireless electricity power your phone and never have to recharge. You just need to invest in more infrastructure.
That you (and others) think network connectivity is anything higher than a rounding error in terms of rail infrastructure costs is likely part of the problem.
Building a website with the assumption that the user will have a perfect internet connection is like writing an application without error handling. When something goes wrong you can't just blame reality for being imperfect.