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Mandatory reservations, recommended reservations, meaningless reservations

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dosxuk

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They shouldn’t be on Intercity, which is meant for long distance travellers. Local services should be provided (and CR would make that more viable)
But they aren't, there are no plans for them to be introduced and do the paths even exist to add those local services?
However it is unavoidable in some circumstances and the system can be flexed for those. Shouldn‘t be using fringe cases to avoid the whole principle.
"Flexed" meaning ignored where real life is too awkward to allow for the wonderful CR world you wish we were in? The whole principle only works if the network is designed for it - ours isn't - so the whole principle is flawed.

I've said on other threads, I've got no problem with CR for first class, or Avanti's new premium class - it could be actually a worthwhile benefit, and something that maybe should be rolled out to the other intercity operators. I also expect CR to be a thing on HS2, but those are new long-distance only services that people will be paying a premium to travel on. But it just won't work for standard class on our current network without putting a lot of passengers off travelling, or making their lives more difficult - and what for? a better "ambience" for a handful of people who hate the idea of other people being on their train?
 
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Ianno87

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But they aren't, there are no plans for them to be introduced and do the paths even exist to add those local services?

"Flexed" meaning ignored where real life is too awkward to allow for the wonderful CR world you wish we were in? The whole principle only works if the network is designed for it - ours isn't - so the whole principle is flawed.

I've said on other threads, I've got no problem with CR for first class, or Avanti's new premium class - it could be actually a worthwhile benefit, and something that maybe should be rolled out to the other intercity operators. I also expect CR to be a thing on HS2, but those are new long-distance only services that people will be paying a premium to travel on. But it just won't work for standard class on our current network without putting a lot of passengers off travelling, or making their lives more difficult - and what for? a better "ambience" for a handful of people who hate the idea of other people being on their train?

It's more the general public. Check out the number of Tweets to TOCs on busy weekend along the lines of "you've sold too many tickets!". I suspect the general public actually prefer CR if they can be certain of not having packed out trains (which are pleasant for nobody)
 

mmh

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It's more the general public. Check out the number of Tweets to TOCs on busy weekend along the lines of "you've sold too many tickets!". I suspect the general public actually prefer CR if they can be certain of not having packed out trains (which are pleasant for nobody)

I disagree. Nobody ever says "you've sold too many tickets." Rather, they say "why is this train so short" or "why aren't there more trains."

Passengers do not think in terms of tickets sold when they have to stand, to think they do is apologist fantasy.
 

Bletchleyite

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I disagree. Nobody ever says "you've sold too many tickets." Rather, they say "why is this train so short" or "why aren't there more trains.",

Passengers do not think in terms of tickets sold when they have to stand, to think they do is apologist fantasy.

Yes, they absolutely do say that. The most common complaint I've seen and heard in relation to overcrowded trains is "why do they sell more tickets than seats?", usually with an undertone of "nasty profiteers", "airlines don't do that" etc.

Second to that is "can't they put more carriages on?"
 

Ianno87

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I disagree. Nobody ever says "you've sold too many tickets."

I've seen and heard it plenty of times.

Second to that is "can't they put more carriages on?"

And there's only so many carriages you can put on the 1600 to Aberdeen before you need some other way of managing passenger demand if everybody decides they want to get on it simultaneously.
 

dosxuk

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It's more the general public. Check out the number of Tweets to TOCs on busy weekend along the lines of "you've sold too many tickets!". I suspect the general public actually prefer CR if they can be certain of not having packed out trains (which are pleasant for nobody)
They will soon change their tune if they find they can't travel at the times they want to, despite there being empty seats and plenty of standing room.

And there's only so many carriages you can put on the 1600 to Aberdeen before you need some other way of managing passenger demand if everybody decides they want to get on it simultaneously.
The answer to more passengers than seats isn't to tell a random selection of them to naff off and get there some other way. It's either to increase capacity or to make other services more attractive. CR does neither.

How long would the (pre-covid) peak be if trains were only allowed to carry the same number of passengers as seats?
 

Ianno87

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They will soon change their tune if they find they can't travel at the times they want to, despite there being empty seats and plenty of standing room.

Will cease to be an issue once all seats are reservable again. I'm off the belief that "short notice" travellers can be accommodated by holding back a quota of seats that are only reservable (say) one hour before departure.


The answer to more passengers than seats isn't to tell a random selection of them to naff off and get there some other way. It's either to increase capacity or to make other services more attractive. CR does neither.

It's not telling people to naff of. It's telling them "turn up at the station for the 1500 or 1700 rather than the 1600 and you'll definitely have this seat".


How long would the (pre-covid) peak be if trains were only allowed to carry the same number of passengers as seats?

Exactly as long, if passengers were told in advance which trains were full and didn't all try to get on the same one, spreading demand better across the capacity available each day.
 

trebor79

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It's more the general public. Check out the number of Tweets to TOCs on busy weekend along the lines of "you've sold too many tickets!". I suspect the general public actually prefer CR if they can be certain of not having packed out trains (which are pleasant for nobody)

They will soon change their tune if they find they can't travel at the times they want to, despite there being empty seats and plenty of standing room.
And when they find the fares have to increase significantly to pay for the reduced capacity.
Exactly as long, if passengers were told in advance which trains were full and didn't all try to get on the same one, spreading demand better across the capacity available each day.
Doesn't work. I want to get home ASAP after my meetings finished, not kick my heels on Peterborough station for a few hours, and then probably miss last train home on my local rural line.
If I'm happy to risk standing for a short period of time, why shouldn't I be allowed to do that. We all know that the ticket is for travel, not a seat.
 

trebor79

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The general public certainly don’t know that and get pretty annoyed that they have paid ‘full fare’ and then have to stand.
I'd be much more annoyed if I'd paid full fare and then wasn't able to travel at all, or until much later potentially impacting on my work or home activities.
 

Bikeman78

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CR would sort of solve that - whoever got on the train would get what they paid for as opposed to none of them getting what they paid for.
There is a limit to how many people you squeeze on a train before people aren’t allowed onboard anyway, CR just reduces that limit until extra capacity is provided (which is the proper solution), and means potential passengers will know whether or not they will get on and won’t be left on the platform.
After a fatality at Twyford, I had to stand in a vestibule from Reading to Newport. It was the least bad option. I had no idea when the next Swansea train was likely to turn up. I'm not sure what compulsory reservations would achieve in that situation, or how it would be enforced.
 

bramling

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It's more the general public. Check out the number of Tweets to TOCs on busy weekend along the lines of "you've sold too many tickets!". I suspect the general public actually prefer CR if they can be certain of not having packed out trains (which are pleasant for nobody)

I wonder if the clue there is “busy weekend”. It seems to be the case that weekends have a different passenger dynamic, with some odd and unrealistic expectations. In other words, the types who turn up once in a blue moon, perhaps for a day out at the beach, and expect everything to be laid on to revolve around their exacting wants.

I’m not sure the railway should be based around this group, which in any case isn’t the bread and butter.

I’d say compulsory reservations would pee off the majority.
 

dosxuk

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I'm not sure what compulsory reservations would achieve in that situation
If you're lucky, you might be offered a seat on a train in the next hour, or even the next 12 hours, or told to go home and come back another day. What it won't do is allow you to get on the next service with space going in your direction.

This exact scenario has been seen on the east coast when they've had disruption recently, with people being offered alternative journeys on trains hours later or the following day - all while trains which aren't even half full continue to call.

As for how it would be enforced, I would suspect not-at-all :lol:
 

Bletchleyite

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If you're lucky, you might be offered a seat on a train in the next hour, or even the next 12 hours, or told to go home and come back another day. What it won't do is allow you to get on the next service with space going in your direction.

This exact scenario has been seen on the east coast when they've had disruption recently, with people being offered alternative journeys on trains hours later or the following day - all while trains which aren't even half full continue to call.

As for how it would be enforced, I would suspect not-at-all :lol:

While you don't have to do this to have CR, I suspect a "proper" CR policy would involve walk-up tickets losing their IC validity and being removed entirely in some cases so IC could gain full airline-style pricing (or what the Germanic countries call "Globalpreis" or "global fare", i.e. where the ticket and reservation are one and the same). If this happened, it'd be easy to enforce, as you'd get a PF if caught without an Advance for that train, or could be prosecuted under the Byelaws or RoRA.

It's hard to use the current situation as a comparison for lots of reasons, not least because of the reduced capacity in operation.

I wonder if the clue there is “busy weekend”. It seems to be the case that weekends have a different passenger dynamic, with some odd and unrealistic expectations.

What's unrealistic about them?

What other mode of long-distance transport allows you to carry more passengers than the seating capacity allows? (Yes, you could technically run city buses with standee capacity up the M1, but nobody is).
 

dosxuk

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What other mode of long-distance transport allows you to carry more passengers than the seating capacity allows? (Yes, you could technically run city buses with standee capacity up the M1, but nobody is).

Boats, ferries and buses.

Reversing the question, what other modes of long-distance transport only allow you to carry seated passengers, you get a short list of "aircraft" - where the issue is more about safety and management of people than capacity. If Michael O'Leary could find a way of accommodating standing passengers sufficiently safely that the authorities would permit it, then you can be sure he'd be doing it.
 

Bletchleyite

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Boats, ferries and buses.

Though boats and ferries certainly do have a maximum capacity, dictated by the lifeboat/vest capacity. A crush load is absolutely not allowed.

Reversing the question, what other modes of long-distance transport only allow you to carry seated passengers, you get a short list of "aircraft" - where the issue is more about safety and management of people than capacity. If Michael O'Leary could find a way of accommodating standing passengers sufficiently safely that the authorities would permit it, then you can be sure he'd be doing it.

Aircraft, coaches and cars. City buses are not methods of long distance transport (you can string them together to do a long distance journey if you really must, but they are not intended for that).
 

bramling

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While you don't have to do this to have CR, I suspect a "proper" CR policy would involve walk-up tickets losing their IC validity and being removed entirely in some cases so IC could gain full airline-style pricing (or what the Germanic countries call "Globalpreis" or "global fare", i.e. where the ticket and reservation are one and the same). If this happened, it'd be easy to enforce, as you'd get a PF if caught without an Advance for that train, or could be prosecuted under the Byelaws or RoRA.

It's hard to use the current situation as a comparison for lots of reasons, not least because of the reduced capacity in operation.



What's unrealistic about them?

What other mode of long-distance transport allows you to carry more passengers than the seating capacity allows? (Yes, you could technically run city buses with standee capacity up the M1, but nobody is).

Hoards of people see the weather forecast and all simultaneously decide they want to head for a day at somewhere like Brighton or Skegness, and then moan that it’s crowded. I’d say it’s completely unrealistic for the railway to fully provide the capacity for them.

In the same way that the roads don’t either, so meanwhile there will be people sitting in traffic congestion also finding something to moan about. You might not have standing on something like a coach, but that doesn’t mean the road isn’t operating over capacity.
 

Bletchleyite

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Hoards of people see the weather forecast and all simultaneously decide they want to head for a day at somewhere like Brighton or Skegness, and then moan that it’s crowded. I’d say it’s completely unrealistic for the railway to fully provide the capacity for them.

I don't disagree, but the difference is in what you do when more people want to go than can.
 

bramling

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I don't disagree, but the difference is in what you do when more people want to go than can.

I just think the moans will go from “nasty profit-munching train company sells too many tickets” (whatever that really means), to “devastated family rudely turned away from hard earned day at the seaside”.

We both know that the underlying issue is insufficient capacity, sometimes more could and should be provided, sometimes it just isn’t really realistic especially to cater for one-off spikes in demand. I simply don’t think tinkering with reservations is the right way of addressing that fundamental issue.

We already attempt to push people onto less crowded services by managing the prices of advance tickets and doing things like peak/off-peak fares (albeit Covid has well and truly messed that one up, for the time being at least). I just don’t see why we need to go further than that.

There’s still variations in the level of capacity provided. AWC, for example, has the 11-car 390s which are excellent, but equally there’s plenty of 9-cars, and of course some 5-car Voyager services. We now have 5-car services on LNER and GWR, and the EMR Intercity timetable is now heavily based on single-unit working, there’s now virtually no doubled up working on weekdays. So plenty of scope to increase capacity still, IMV this should be the main focus.
 

WelshBluebird

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I suspect a "proper" CR policy would involve walk-up tickets losing their IC validity
That sounds like a horrific idea and a great way to push people away from the railways.
For a lot of local journeys that happen to involve intercity services, you will basically be halving or worse the number of services that person can currently take.
Bristol to Bath must be a great example where about half the services are the Paddington services and the other half are the local services. You take away those intercity services and you not only vastly reduce the number of services I can use, but you also remove a huge number of seats and capacity from an already busy route. Awful idea.
 

43066

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We already attempt to push people onto less crowded services by managing the prices of advance tickets and doing things like peak/off-peak fares (albeit Covid has well and truly messed that one up, for the time being at least). I just don’t see why we need to go further than that.

Indeed.

People generally want flexibility, even if that means the possibility of not getting a seat. The vast majority of times on long distance services seats will be available anyway (in any case don’t most flexible return tickets usually already include a reservation for one particular train, which can be used as desired?).

If I do a leisure trip I don’t want to commit to taking a particular train back, and those who travel for work don’t necessarily know when they’ll be finished.

Quite honestly CR is the last thing we should be doing. In many cases people will simply decide it’s less fuss to drive, or not bother to travel at all. It has put me off doing leisure trips over the last few months on LNER, and I can travel on their services for free!
 

Meerkat

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After a fatality at Twyford, I had to stand in a vestibule from Reading to Newport. It was the least bad option. I had no idea when the next Swansea train was likely to turn up. I'm not sure what compulsory reservations would achieve in that situation, or how it would be enforced.
How do they deal with disruption now? With ticket acceptance etc so CR doesn’t create a big issue, in fact it makes it easier - they can allow standing on a service (they could even do it with standing reservations to keep it from getting too crowded) and know there should be space as it won’t already be full of standing people.
 

trebor79

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I suspect a "proper" CR policy would involve walk-up tickets losing their IC validity and being removed entirely in some cases

That sounds like a horrific idea and a great way to push people away from the railways.
For a lot of local journeys that happen to involve intercity services, you will basically be halving or worse the number of services that person can currently take.
Or even making the journey impossible to make at all.
Would it? Or does the present complexity of the fares system do that? It's the ultimate in simplicity, other than just having kilometric fares.
Yes it would. It would massively reduce options for journeys that involve a short section on an IC route, and in many cases make the journey impossible to complete at all.
So I'll drive. Is that really the objective?

What problem is CR meant to be solving. I can see the argument for CR if your journey starts at one of the London termini of an intercity route, but it's completely senseless for joining and leaving an IC train later on in the route. That avoids the long distance (who are mainly going to be on a fixed schedule) passengers having to stand, without making journeys unnecessarily difficult or impossible for the mere mortals travelling between other points.
 

Bletchleyite

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What problem is CR meant to be solving. I can see the argument for CR if your journey starts at one of the London termini of an intercity route, but it's completely senseless for joining and leaving an IC train later on in the route. That avoids the long distance (who are mainly going to be on a fixed schedule) passengers having to stand, without making journeys unnecessarily difficult or impossible for the mere mortals travelling between other points.

I could certainly see a case for GWR Penzance services being "IC to Plymouth thence RE", sort of thing - so CR as far as Plymouth. That sort of exists elsewhere, e.g. the Geneva-Milan ECs are "just normal Swiss trains" as far as Brig then become CR for Italy (as SBB won't allow anyone to operate there with more than one stop in Switzerland unless they accept regular SBB tickets).

On the WCML we just need a Crewe-Carlisle local, and have for years. But in reality some would get off along the way so there'd likely be reservations available on the ICs too.
 

Bikeman78

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While you don't have to do this to have CR, I suspect a "proper" CR policy would involve walk-up tickets losing their IC validity and being removed entirely in some cases so IC could gain full airline-style pricing (or what the Germanic countries call "Globalpreis" or "global fare", i.e. where the ticket and reservation are one and the same). If this happened, it'd be easy to enforce, as you'd get a PF if caught without an Advance for that train, or could be prosecuted under the Byelaws or RoRA.
None of this would work following major disruption, e.g. a fatality/major signalling failure. Trying to PF people that are already three hours late will go down like a lead balloon and is unlikely to be looked on sympathetically by a court. In any case, there was zero chance of tickets being checked on the HST I mentioned. It was rammed from end to end. There were at least 10 people in my door vestibule and one bloke in the toilet! If the railway thinks that people will wait multiple hours after the initial delay then they are living on another planet. The vast majority will just pile onto the first train. They might grumble about it but they still do it.
 

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And when they find the fares have to increase significantly to pay for the reduced capacity.
It could be argued that in purely commercial terms, that is the logical solution to too much demand and insufficient capacity, but it would have the same detrimental effect as CR of driving people into their cars (where they have that choice) and reducing their ability to travel (where they don't), so I hope it can be avoided.

What other mode of long-distance transport allows you to carry more passengers than the seating capacity allows?
If other forms of transport can sell out and leave people stuck, it's all the more important to have one that can't. The fact that on the railways you can almost always be sure of being able to travel, without having to commit days beforehand to an exact time, is a big advantage over coaches and planes. It seems unwise to throw this away and thereby make the railways much less convenient than the biggest competitor, the car. (Maybe one day long-distance car travel will require you to book your slot on the motorway well in advance, but not in the near future).

The general public certainly don’t know that and get pretty annoyed that they have paid ‘full fare’ and then have to stand.

I'd be much more annoyed if I'd paid full fare and then wasn't able to travel at all, or until much later potentially impacting on my work or home activities.

It seems that this thread, and the previous one on much the same subject, show a lack of meeting of minds between those who prioritise comfort and those who prioritise convenience. It seems obvious to me that being stuck at the station is far worse than being on a crowded train (most standing passengers are already free to wait for a later train if they wish, so presumably they prefer not to), but apparently not everyone sees it this way.
 

APT618S

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If other forms of transport can sell out and leave people stuck, it's all the more important to have one that can't. The fact that on the railways you can almost always be sure of being able to travel, without having to commit days beforehand to an exact time, is a big advantage over coaches and planes. It seems unwise to throw this away and thereby make the railways much less convenient than the biggest competitor, the car. (Maybe one day long-distance car travel will require you to book your slot on the motorway well in advance, but not in the near future).
Totally agree. Remember a friend of mine flew into the UK but this flight was delayed so that they missed their connecting internal flight. This was a Thurs afternoon. Was told the next internal flight that had seats was the following Tuesday. This was on a route with more than one flight per day. Obviously they were not waiting and got the train home which BA refunded.
The walk up nature of rail is a big advantage.
 
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