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How to increase passenger numbers?

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Bevan Price

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Being controversial:
(a). There is a decision to make - do the railways exist to make profits for (mainly) bus companies, or do they exist as a means to encourage as many people as possible to use public transport rather than cars. ? I think the two aims are mutually incompatible.

(b). I would prefer the latter model, which I realise no foreseeable government is likely to adopt. My suggestions refer to my preferred model. so,

1. Increase overall standard class capacity by abolishing first class. Only a small fraction of trains utilise a lot of first class. Is it really worth the costs of providing and operating so much space that is under-utilised for most of the day ? On the WCML for example, it would create another 200 to 250 standard class seats on every Pendolino, solving many of the capacity problems (and reducing the need for HS2)

2. Return to simple distance-based fares system, set as low as reasonably practicable without bankrupting the country. And a single national definition of peak hours (e.g. departures before 09:15 on Monday to Friday)

3. As far as possible, timetables to be set according to passenger needs rather than operating convenience. So, for example, Sunday services outside London would be increased during shopping hours. Trains timed to allow workers to commute to/from major centres - instead of, for example, the final Leeds - Lancaster/Morecambe departure being before 17:00

4. Abolish passenger charters and compensation for late running; instead, there would be a requirement to hold connections for up to 10-15 minutes on lines with hourly services or less - and more for "last connection of day" - unless a check is made with conductor of the late running train to confirm no passengers require the connection.
 
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jon0844

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1. Increase overall standard class capacity by abolishing first class. Only a small fraction of trains utilise a lot of first class. Is it really worth the costs of providing and operating so much space that is under-utilised for most of the day ? On the WCML for example, it would create another 200 to 250 standard class seats on every Pendolino, solving many of the capacity problems (and reducing the need for HS2)

First class helps subsidise other fares so scrapping it would be silly, although you could perhaps offer cheaper weekend upgrades or even perhaps weekday off peak upgrades.
 

dcsprior

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1: I'm not going to decide in advance to make this trip. It's weather dependent. So I will never see a hugely discounted Advance fare.

I think there should be an industry-wide effort to find good ideas and spread them. The no-hassle, no-fee refund that Southern offer for tickets bought online for collection from a TVM is a good idea that would prevent this particular issue

Also Sunday is now a working day or leisure day just like Saturday so service levels should be the same as Saturdays with perhaps a token one hour later start and the Engineers will just have to adapt.

Mainly agree, though would rather no-one had to work a Sunday (or a Saturday either) for single-time, and if premium rates have to be paid, would more services be viable?

1. Increase overall standard class capacity by abolishing first class. Only a small fraction of trains utilise a lot of first class. Is it really worth the costs of providing and operating so much space that is under-utilised for most of the day ? On the WCML for example, it would create another 200 to 250 standard class seats on every Pendolino, solving many of the capacity problems (and reducing the need for HS2)

When it comes to long-distance routes (by which I mean long enough that travelling by internal flight is an option) without 1st class the train would lose a lot of market share. I take the 0540 Edinburgh-King's Cross every Tuesday, and there are normally far fewer people from Edinburgh in standard class with me than in 1st. Indeed today I had Coach B to myself until Newcastle. Without 1st class as an option, these passengers would be lost to air with all the environmental drawbacks that that entails

How are Advance fares stress-generating? I often travel on intercity services where many of the passengers are using Advances and I've only seen someone using them incorrectly (wrong train etc) a handful of times.

I think the stess factor comes from people fearful that they'll miss their train. Personally, I avoid this by giving myself about 20 mins extra for my cross-London connection when I have an advance ticket, but that means that an advance ticket adds 20 mins to my total journey time.

I would probably be happy to pay a small premium (e.g. 5%) on advance tickets to be able to pay the difference to the cheapest walk-up ticket if I missed my booked train
 

A-driver

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Improving services on a Sunday is also very important for leisure travel, but something that will take a lot of work and investment to find ways to keep trains running while also carrying out essential maintenance. Perhaps bi-directional running to allow one line to be kept open during work, or the use of more diversionary routes and ensuring drivers are kept sufficiently 'trained' to use them.

Then there's also the issue of some TOCs having to one day solve the issue of relying on voluntary working on Sundays, which can mean that on the very Sundays that will have most people wanting to travel is also the same day that many drivers will NOT want to work.

The problem with the first paragraph is that a lot of Sunday closures are done as they need more than one line closed. They will introduce single line working where possible (have done it loads lately for the works at Alexandra palace ) but it reduces the number if trains you can run. Plus a lot of Sunday closures involve replacing points etch which can't be done with one line open. A lot of the Sunday works at the moment (especially on the GN) are actually for big projects and once compete will stop happening so often. As for diversions-there arnt any left really-if you close the lines at Alexandra palace for the huge upgrade project then there is little you can do diversionary wise. The only possible diversion to London would be Cambridge-Liverpool street. But that's no use for people south of Cambridge or peterbourgh!

As for bringing Sundays into the working week, its not actually a problem as far as I can see? Very few trains are cancelled on Sundays due to lack of drivers. Infact most weeks on FCC the list of drivers volunteering to work is longer than the list of jobs avaliable. Many weeks 5or6 drivers per depot who wanted to work can't get anything and so if anyone does pull out last minute there are plenty of willing volunteers. Most drivers would welcome an increase in Sunday traffic as it would mean more work!

Saying Sunday is the day drivers don't want to work is incorrect-many drivers are queuing up to work Sundays! Plus less drivers go sick on a Sunday as you don't get paid if you don't turn up - Saturdays on the other hand can be the opposite as they are within the week and therefore get paid sick.
 
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A 5 day weekly ticket? If I buy a weekly season I only use it Monday to Friday yet it is valid Monday to Sunday. I don't want or need the weekend dates, so why not cut them out and reduce the ticket price? Call it a commuter season ticket. :)
 

IanXC

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2. Through services, even if it's just a couple a day - a headache for organising a network I know, but they often encourage infrequent travellers to travel

Or at least workable connections - the best journey opportunities for my commute to work are 1hr35 or so, compared to 1hr20 by car (even though rail is a very circuitous route), however as soon as you get to a journey which is useful for a 9-5 commute, the journey time rockets to 2hr10 or so.

5. A more difficult but potentially attractive option would be season tickets which work for people who don't work a regular 5 day, Monday-Friday, 9-5. This could be 'off-peak season tickets' (which I think exist in some areas?), carnets (although I know that there have been problems with these in FCC land, I'm sure they could be done in a more practical way!), season tickets valid for particular days a week (eg a 4 week season valid on Wednesdays-Saturdays only) etc.

There are some of these kinds of seasons available, they were discussed in this thread http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=78924

Every time I have caught it (and that would be only ever with some sort of offer - Red Dot Day was the last) it wasn't anything like overloaded.

The return has been standing room only on departure from Scarborough on the last 2 occasions I've been on it!
 

yorksrob

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A 5 day weekly ticket? If I buy a weekly season I only use it Monday to Friday yet it is valid Monday to Sunday. I don't want or need the weekend dates, so why not cut them out and reduce the ticket price? Call it a commuter season ticket. :)

I suspect you'll find that the current season ticket is priced in the expectation that the majority of commuters won't travel on the weekend with the extra days being a loss leader. Any improvement in price for a 5 day ticket would soon be notched up to what the existing season would have been.
 

LE Greys

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OK, some of these will be a little contraversial:
  1. I entirely agree with the idea of a National Railcard, it would solve a lot of problems
  2. I think we should get rid of the last distinctions between 'Intercity', 'NSE' and 'Local' fares, thus allowing Super Off Peak to be used on all journeys everywhere (i.e. period returns become as cheap as day returns)
  3. Abolish advance fares altogether, to be compensated for by halving Super Off Peak prices and taking a third off Off Peak prices immediately
  4. bolish premium payments by franchisees, provided they re-invest the money in fare cuts, thus making ticket-splitting pointless
  5. Look at where peak restrictions are tighter than they were under BR and loosen them
  6. Make the 'weekend first' option much more affordable
  7. Introduce a rail-air codeshare, allowing tickets to any airport in the world to start from any railway station in Britain
  8. Make it possible to buy a Plusbus from any bus driver, with perhaps a discount on a rail ticket if you present it when you buy one

The idea is to make rail travel a lot less complicated, so that people are no longer penalised for making a snap decision to travel somewhere (or being forced to in an emergency). Ideally, you should be able to buy tickets to you ultimate destination from any bus stop in the country, but that's probably impossible.
 

WatcherZero

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Im also in favour of abolishing advance fares but I would put most of the savings into peak fare reduction rather than off-peak reduction. Maybe as much as reducing peak fares by 50% and offpeak by 10% would be revenue neutral from the higher average ticket price. I certainly wouldnt put all the extra revenue into offpeak as a lot of offpeak services are already loss making with lower fares than the cost of operating the service.

How about introducing a annual rail pass for £6,000 (based on most expensive season tickets currenly being around £4,000) that allows unlimited travel anywhere. I think they could probably sell a few thousand of them.
 
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Invincibles

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I would simplify the ticketing system by introducing a per mile fare which would then make it simple to calculate the cost of getting between any two points on the network and leave things like split ticketing pointless.

Trains would also be classified (rather as they are in the headcodes) so that inter city services were more expensive than the slower regional ones - It would be cheaper to do Preston to Lancaster with Northern than Transpennine Express, who in turn would be cheaper than Virgin.

For obvious reasons there would be a different figure for first class compared to standard class. Similarly a standardised peak period would apply.

I like advance tickets, so would keep them - with less stipulation about price per unit distance. This would leave the train companies with scope to yield manage.

For the leisure market more special fares could be introduced to coincide with particular services (like the EMT Scarborough) which were cheaper than the standard per mile and marketed as such - These tickets would be fixed in quota, fixed to the train, but available on the day.
 
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I think advanced fares should be made available from all T.O.C 's if you travel over a certain mileage, say 25 miles

This would put Nothern Rail in their place who do not offer advanced fares at all :(
 
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I suspect you'll find that the current season ticket is priced in the expectation that the majority of commuters won't travel on the weekend with the extra days being a loss leader. Any improvement in price for a 5 day ticket would soon be notched up to what the existing season would have been.

I imagine you are correct but this forum is looking for ideas to increase passenger numbers. My suggestion is to lower prices for those who buy their travel in advance (yes, I know they are already cheaper than an SDR). In Northern and ATW land their are no advanced ticket deals.
 

jon0844

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I think advanced fares should be made available from all T.O.C 's if you travel over a certain mileage, say 25 miles

This would put Nothern Rail in their place who do not offer advanced fares at all :(

What about TOCs that run DOO services. Nobody would be there to check tickets, and you can't reserve a seat so I guess it would effectively end up being a normal ticket but with a large discount.

If you could buy a ticket in advance at a vastly reduced price, wouldn't it a) add confusion for advance tickets on Intercity services, which are tied to a specific service and b) allow regular travellers a way to avoid more expensive peak fares by bulk buying advance tickets weeks in advance.

That's not to say I'm against the idea of having discounts on ordinary tickets bought in advance, but I can see it open to abuse (including people bulk buying and then reselling whether allowed or not.
 

Flamingo

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A 5 day weekly ticket? If I buy a weekly season I only use it Monday to Friday yet it is valid Monday to Sunday. I don't want or need the weekend dates, so why not cut them out and reduce the ticket price? Call it a commuter season ticket. :)

Commuter trains are not the ones that need bums on seats, so there is no need to encourage people on to them - encouraging people off them is what is required.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
First class helps subsidise other fares so scrapping it would be silly, although you could perhaps offer cheaper weekend upgrades or even perhaps weekday off peak upgrades.
They are called Advance tickets... I almost never see an "Ordinary" ticket in 1st class, I'd say that on the off-peak trains, the vast majority in 1st class are Advance ticket holders (in most cases having paid less than the walk-up Std class fare).
 

NSEFAN

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flamingo said:
Commuter trains are not the ones that need bums on seats, so there is no need to encourage people on to them - encouraging people off them is what is required.
Rather than changing the pricing structure, perhaps what the railways need is for the commuters' working hours to be spread out across the day? This would help make better use of the stock by balancing out the loads. Given the rising population, simply pricing people off the trains is not sustainable. It's a quick fix, but it only pushes people onto the roads, which is even worse.

I'm in broad support of a national railcard type scheme, but only if the major capacity issues are dealt with first! As has been said, we currently have no shortage of passengers for the number of trains on the majority of routes.
 
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What about TOCs that run DOO services. Nobody would be there to check tickets, and you can't reserve a seat so I guess it would effectively end up being a normal ticket but with a large discount.

If you could buy a ticket in advance at a vastly reduced price, wouldn't it a) add confusion for advance tickets on Intercity services, which are tied to a specific service and b) allow regular travellers a way to avoid more expensive peak fares by bulk buying advance tickets weeks in advance.

That's not to say I'm against the idea of having discounts on ordinary tickets bought in advance, but I can see it open to abuse (including people bulk buying and then reselling whether allowed or not.

The point I was trying to make is it is wrong for a Passgener to go from A to B and one TOC give advance tickets and the other does not.

E.g Sheffield Midland to Cleethorpes , if/when you can go via Doncaster & Mount Hadfield you can buy advance tickets from TPE, if you go via Gainsborough on Northern you can not even if your going to the same place.
 

IanXC

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This would put Nothern Rail in their place who do not offer advanced fares at all :(

I would just point out that isn't true. Northern do offer advance fares, I know of availability on routes such as Carlisle to Newcastle and Leeds to Nottingham. They are just being sensible and not introducing them on routes where the likelihood is people will swap from buying walk ups.
 

tbtc

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As has been said, we currently have no shortage of passengers for the number of trains on the majority of routes

Agreed.

Whilst I'm in favour of attracting extra journeys, we need to be realistic about how and where such increases can be.

Cutting every fare in half/ introducing advance tickets on every route/ an annual cap on the amount that anyone could spend on train tickets/ some kind of discount for regular travellers (etc) is just going to slash income, make busy trains busier and not solve anything.

I'd be more interested in how to make journeys more attractive (without any huge spend of fantasy money). For example, whilst stations are generally a lot nicer than at privatisation and trains are generally a lot nicer than at privatisation, the "gap" between the two isn't great - think of what its like to be an unfamiliar passenger trying to find your way round - easy when you are a seasoned enthusiast, but quite off-putting for a lot of (potential) passengers.

Would it help if we had the old Southern Region approach to "numbered" trains (so that a passenger found it easier to look for the right service)? Virgin tried to "number" their services in the XC days, to tidy up a muddled map.

Better confidence about where the doors would line up on the platform on routes served predominantly with one type of stock (C2C especially, but a number of lines have the vast majority of their services provided by one type of train). It saves a lot of time on Sheffield Supertram, as people can see on the platform where the tram doors are going to line up - there's no mad scrum of people chasing along the platforms.

Encourage the provision of "at a glance" screens showing the most popular destination only (e.g. if I'm at Doncaster I have to scroll through several departures to find the next Sheffield service - and know that the Manchester/ Southampton/ Lincoln etc train is going to go via Sheffield - it may make the whole experience a lot easier if there were a screen showing the next train to Sheffield, in the way that IIRC at Reading there's a "next fast Paddington service" screen). Could we have that at every big station?

There's a few things that shouldn't cost loads of money but could make rail travel much less stressful/ much more attractive.
 

The Ham

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Im also in favour of abolishing advance fares but I would put most of the savings into peak fare reduction rather than off-peak reduction. Maybe as much as reducing peak fares by 50% and offpeak by 10% would be revenue neutral from the higher average ticket price. I certainly wouldnt put all the extra revenue into offpeak as a lot of offpeak services are already loss making with lower fares than the cost of operating the service.

How about introducing a annual rail pass for £6,000 (based on most expensive season tickets currenly being around £4,000) that allows unlimited travel anywhere. I think they could probably sell a few thousand of them.

There is little point in reducing fares during the peaks, as the trains are fairly full already and if they are not then cutting the fares by 50% probably wouldn't make much difference to the numbers travelling and would only make it less likely that trains would be lengthened when they were full.

An annual rail pass could work, but then would that actually attract more people to use the railways? I would suggest that it would probably just result in the same people using the railways more.
 

jon0844

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I almost never see an "Ordinary" ticket in 1st class, I'd say that on the off-peak trains, the vast majority in 1st class are Advance ticket holders (in most cases having paid less than the walk-up Std class fare).

That's not surprising, but actually helps my argument that perhaps more people would go into first class at off-peak times (and not just weekends) if they could upgrade on the train for a reasonable supplement.

And at a reasonable price, at a time when there's loads of capacity and - from what you've said - not many full price 1st class ticket holders that could get 'upset', that's a nice bit of extra income for the TOC from those who won't mind paying a small supplement (works for the low cost airlines).

I'm sure that it isn't just extra cheap fares that will get some people to travel. I can think of a group of people that might want to ensure they can stay together, and possibly enjoy a bit more comfort, possibly a table to play some games or whatever. But they may not want to book an advance ticket due to the fact that they need some flexibility.

It could even apply to getting a (before-travel) upgrade for non-Intercity services at quiet times. That could mean a first class supplement that I could get for use on FCC, but not usable in the morning or afternoon peak.

Ideally, for the Intercity operators, they could mark individual services as offering upgrades, shown in a timetable and also on platform signs.

Obviously FGW and other staffed trains will happily sell more expensive upgrades at the moment, but this is one way to make better use of first class throughout the day.

Let's imagine a £5 or £10 upgrade, perhaps with the ability to get railcard discount? I could see myself doing it quite a bit if I've had a long day, while it wouldn't get everyone doing it (thus filling up FC) because I doubt anyone would want to pay the extra money every time. Those travelling on full price tickets in the peak are also unlikely to suddenly start going off-peak as they probably need to travel in the peaks, or are on company expenses anyway.

I'd say it's worth someone doing some research/surveys, or an enterprising TOC giving such an idea a trial on selected services on a weekday.
 

IanXC

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Encourage the provision of "at a glance" screens showing the most popular destination only (e.g. if I'm at Doncaster I have to scroll through several departures to find the next Sheffield service - and know that the Manchester/ Southampton/ Lincoln etc train is going to go via Sheffield - it may make the whole experience a lot easier if there were a screen showing the next train to Sheffield, in the way that IIRC at Reading there's a "next fast Paddington service" screen). Could we have that at every big station?

The "fastest train to" board at Leeds always seems illustrative to me, even as a regular traveller its useful to have this information presented like this. I've always thought that York could do with such a board, to add to Doncaster on the list!
 

tbtc

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The "fastest train to" board at Leeds always seems illustrative to me, even as a regular traveller its useful to have this information presented like this. I've always thought that York could do with such a board, to add to Doncaster on the list!

Agreed - these are the kind of simpler improvements that we could be making to make the railways more attracting to (potential) passengers.

Most stations with more than two platforms could have a board with the next "un-overtaken" train to the most popular destinations on it, it'd be a simple introduction to the station for a large number of passengers.

In the example of York, Leeds is clearly a popular destination, but you'd have to look for departures for Plymouth/ Manchester/ Manchester Airport/ Blackpool/ Liverpool etc to find the next Leeds-bound service - no wonder some passengers get confused and board the wrong service.
 

jon0844

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There's loads of improvements that could be made at stations with lots of platforms, lots of different routes, train types (layouts, lengths) or TOCs etc.

I do think that even if a TOC can use its own colours at a station, and its own posters etc - we should have had standardised signs with the same font, colours, international symbols for exit/platform/refreshments/toilets etc.

Showing where trains stop, and that includes how long they are (so signs to show the 'end' of certain trains) would better spread out passengers - and also showing where first class, disabled areas, bike storage areas etc are would help - even if that's down to posters on a nearby board.

Having more information available via apps, so not just timetables and running info, but things like maps (and as phones now have more precise GPS, that could even include maps that show your exact position and where your train will be) are all things that should be introduced in the coming years, given that most of this information is already out there but just hasn't been packaged up in a consumer-friendly fashion.

Some of the websites working with the feeds right now are excellent examples of what can be done, but so far not really likely to get into the hands of people like my parents (and they each have an iPhone, so would definitely use an app if available over trying to navigate a standard TOC/National Rail website).

For any of these changes, ATOC would need to take the lead. It would also be a move towards the ideal scenario that one day we might have the whole UK network being more like the BR days, with private operators still operating as now, but under contract and without the same high-profile branding. That would make rail travel massively less confusing for a lot of people.
 
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43074

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According to Virgin West Coast in January 2004:
Full Tilt for West Coast said:
The Winning Formula

Frequency + Speed + Reliability = Growth

I think there is truth in this (and for once I agree with something Virgin Trains have said). Frequency and Speed certainly help increase passenger numbers as Virgin Cross Country found out the hard way with their Operation Princess fiasco in 2003.

And as for reliability... I suppose a dark shadow casts a long shadow, i.e. if you travel from A to B and your train breaks down and you become stranded for 1 1/2 hours with no catering, no light and no heat on a cold winters night you are not likely to forget about it for a while and therefore you will be reluctant to travel by train again.
If however, the staff are courteous, the fare is reasonable and everything is clean and on time then you will be much more inclined to travel.
 

jon0844

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I'd hope the industry could inform people that such incidents are exceptionally rare.

I've had a few nightmare flights, including one long-haul flight from New York where I was on the ground longer than in the air, but it hasn't put me off flying.

Non-confusing ticketing, where people can feel confident that they didn't get the wrong ticket or pay over the odds (anyone using some TVMs can be very daunted by all the choices available), good access to information about the trains themselves and information when there are delays all lead to people feeling more confident, and therefore happy, to use a train.

I should imagine far more people are put off by relatively simple things every day than any major incident.
 

jon0844

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There is that.

Having people spreading out more efficiently along the platform would also make it harder for me to have that horrible problem of having to choose a seat from so many potentials, but this is a thread about increasing passenger numbers!
 

reb0118

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Fully integrate other forms of transport into the rail network. e.g. Through ticketing and through timetabling would be a start.
 

tbtc

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What about numbering seats in the hundreds so that...

...Coach A = seats 1 to 75...
...Coach B = seats 101 to 175...
...Coach C = seats 201 to 275...
...Coach D = seats 301 to 375...
...Coach E = seats 401 to 475...

...so that there'd be no confusion about which coach people were in (e.g. you get people who's ticket shows that they have seat 23A reserved, but have boarded the wrong coach).

Also, some national agreement on which coach letters are used and which aren't (y'know, the way that car registrations used to miss out certain letters) - at the moment you can board some trains with missing letters whilst other TOCs would use those letters - like the missing "Coach A" on GNER 225s - hope I've remembered that right).
 

yorksrob

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I think the improved information systems would help the travelling experience and would have an impact over time. However, I think you need something more immediate to get people travelling during the off peak there and then.
 
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