How to increase passenger numbers?

tbtc said:

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).

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The biggest confusion I tend to see with seat numbers is where both sides of a table have the same numbers (I know that the reservations tend to have F or B on them for the direction, but most people I've dealt with have no idea what that means - similarly it's rare to find anyone who knows what the A means on airline style seats)

tbtc said:

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).

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The standardised numbering would certainly be a good idea, as would changing the way tickets are printed (perhaps when we get those new ATOC designs?) so as to do away with the 'A' after the number that many people seem to think means coach A.

From another thread on here, I think the use of eInk or flexible OLED film could one day see information integrated within the platforms themselves - so people can get information about the position of coaches, the service itself (and calling pattern) and so on.

moogal said:

The biggest confusion I tend to see with seat numbers is where both sides of a table have the same numbers (I know that the reservations tend to have F or B on them for the direction, but most people I've dealt with have no idea what that means - similarly it's rare to find anyone who knows what the A means on airline style seats)

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jonmorris0844 said:

The standardised numbering would certainly be a good idea, as would changing the way tickets are printed (perhaps when we get those new ATOC designs?) so as to do away with the 'A' after the number that many people seem to think means coach A.

From another thread on here, I think the use of eInk or flexible OLED film could one day see information integrated within the platforms themselves - so people can get information about the position of coaches, the service itself (and calling pattern) and so on.

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Agree with you both.

We (as enthusiasts) know what Facing, Back, Airline (etc) mean, but these things can really confuse people (especially when carriages use the same letters).

It'd be good to try to approach the situation from the perspective of a non-passenger.

On some lines there are some absolute no brainers to getting more people. From the Cambrian theirs no arrival into Shrewsbury between 0711 & 0924 as the operator adheres to the franchise agreement - a rough copy of BR's Winter 94 tt. Dumb specification and operational convenience triumph. The A458 road into Shrewsbury from Welshpool is of course full between 0800 & 0900 job and educational opportunities for the young have a severe barrier in place.

Invincibles said:

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.

.

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Would be unpopular, possibly almost unworkable. To many non-enthusiasts, a train is a train, and even with station announcements, I suspect a lot of passengers are a bit clueless about who operates a specific train. And making things more complicated would tend to discourage rather than encourage more rail travel.

And in any case, who would wamt to may more to stand in an overcrowded Voyager or 185, rather than to get a seat in a Northern 156 ?

tbtc said:

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.

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The idea of simplification is to avoid confsing people and putting them off travelling. My version was based around abolishing franchise premiums, provided the money went into cutting fares rather than shareholders' back pockets (whether that can be guaranteed in law I don't know).

Electronic headcode panels and marking the headcode on advance tickets might be a good idea, Platform 9 for 1S12, the East Coast service to Aberdeen, or something like that. This would be something like the method used for train reporting codes in France.

With the doors, possibly something resembling the old Tube trick (I've never been sure if it always works, only works at some stations/with some trains or is a CGSM) of standing opposite a sign, beacuse the signs line up with the doors. That means moving a lot of platform signs, and would then only work with one or two classes stopping exactly on their marks. Perhaps that's best saved for the next station facelift.

I also like the 'at a glance' screens, saves a lot of scanning. Getting rid of the any remaining LCD screens at some stations (totally unreadable if there is too much ambient light) would be very helpful as well. They've gone from Paddington and Waterloo, thankfully.

Nicholas43 said:

Abolish stress-generating advance fares. Set one basic fare, at roughly the current advance level. Set transparent shoulder and peak supplements for using shoulder and peak trains.

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Which advance level?

jonmorris0844 said:

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.

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The times you are talking about, First Class may be empty, but standard class is as well, so there is no need to relieve pressure on it. Anyway, if there was a cut-price upgrade, nobody would buy a First Class ticket at all.

LE Greys said:

The idea of simplification is to avoid confsing people and putting them off travelling. My version was based around abolishing franchise premiums, provided the money went into cutting fares rather than shareholders' back pockets (whether that can be guaranteed in law I don't know)

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The way I see "premiums" is that there are always going to be some routes that can be made to look profitable on the railway, but the railway is generally always going to need subsidy (if we keep up all of the branches/ late night services, PTE fares etc).

Based on current services, East Coast should always be profitable, ATW will always require subsidy.

So, the best way to deal with this (IMHO) is to run TOCs like FGW where the profitable stuff (Intercity to Paddington) cross-subsidises the branchlines etc.

Your idea of using the premium from profitable TOCs to cut fares specifically on those franchises would see East Coast using its millions to cut fares but we'd still need all of the money to subsidise ATW. So the cost to the Government would go up because there'd be no premium to off-set against the subsidies.

Flamingo said:

The times you are talking about, First Class may be empty, but standard class is as well, so there is no need to relieve pressure on it. Anyway, if there was a cut-price upgrade, nobody would buy a First Class ticket at all.

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But you did say that people in first weren't full price ticket holders, so all those FC passengers at other times won't be changing their travel plans (if they could, they'd buy advance tickets now).

It's an extra revenue stream, although I accept that this particular idea isn't just about getting more people to travel - just an 'up sell' opportunity.

One thing nobody has suggested yet is an "Off-peak only" Season ticket, which could encourage workers to change their work pattern if the savings were significant enough, especially over a longer commute.

I could see enforcing it to be a bit of a nightmare, though...

I've just realised one down-side: the first off-peak train after the peak is always rammed to the rafters, this would make it worse.

Flamingo said:

One thing nobody has suggested yet is an "Off-peak only" Season ticket, which could encourage workers to change their work pattern if the savings were significant enough, especially over a longer commute.

I could see enforcing it to be a bit of a nightmare, though...

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The Dutch have unlimited off-peak travel nationwide for €99 a month.

http://www.ns.nl/reizigers/blind/abonnementen/dal-vrij.html

Easily enforceable as you have to touch in your smartcard before 0630, between 0900 and 1600 and after 1830.

IanXC said:

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.

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Are they allowed to do that, it seems rather unfair for passgengers on their other long distant lines that are not covered by this ?

sheff'd victoria said:

Are they allowed to do that, it seems rather unfair for passgengers on their other long distant lines that are not covered by this ?

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Northern's fares seem to be fairly reasonable anyway.

Lampshade said:

Northern's fares seem to be fairly reasonable anyway.

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It would depend which route your on, as I have touched on their are some routes out their where Northern have priced themselfs out of the market.

Plus to be honest I dont think commuters to places like Sheffield, Manchester , Liverpool etc etc would want to pay more for travelling to/from work in a " Cattle Truck " railbus

Lampshade said:

Northern's fares seem to be fairly reasonable anyway.

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£54.70 Morecambe to York return doesn't seem "fairly reasonable" to me to suffer a 3 to 3.5 hour journey which would be just 90 miles on the road taking just 2.5 hours and costing a lot less in fuel.

sheff'd victoria said:

Are they allowed to do that, it seems rather unfair for passgengers on their other long distant lines that are not covered by this ?

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Not every two stations in the UK are linked by cheap advance fares (it's not a conspiracy against Lincolnshire) - there's now "allowed" to worry about

underbank said:

£54.70 Morecambe to York return doesn't seem "fairly reasonable" to me to suffer a 3 to 3.5 hour journey which would be just 90 miles on the road taking just 2.5 hours and costing a lot less in fuel.

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it 'only' costs £36.50 if you split at Skipton (and the journey is quicker)

There is another way to get more travel, and be able to control it to some degree, and that's more special ticket offers - sometimes bundled in with some accommodation, theatre tickets or whatever.

A few years back we got to stay in a hotel in Leeds for two nights, with standard class travel on EC. These were open tickets, not advance tickets, and the total cost was far less than buying those tickets normally, and paying for a hotel normally.

Couldn't TOCs do more of these deals on their own, advertised through their own websites and local press etc? That would also make people think more of taking the train, and not just to destinations served by their local TOC (as seems to be the usual advertising).

Then the industry (ATOC) seeks to advertise these deals on a wider scale, as clearly a lot of people no longer go to travel agents to buy train tickets - thinking it's best to do everything online and often directly with hotels/airlines/railway companies.

jonmorris0844 said:

There is another way to get more travel, and be able to control it to some degree, and that's more special ticket offers - sometimes bundled in with some accommodation, theatre tickets or whatever.

A few years back we got to stay in a hotel in Leeds for two nights, with standard class travel on EC. These were open tickets, not advance tickets, and the total cost was far less than buying those tickets normally, and paying for a hotel normally.

Couldn't TOCs do more of these deals on their own, advertised through their own websites and local press etc? That would also make people think more of taking the train, and not just to destinations served by their local TOC (as seems to be the usual advertising).

Then the industry seeks to advertise these deals on a wider scale - perhaps joining up with different operators (managed by ATOC), as clearly a lot of people no longer go to travel agents to buy train tickets - thinking it's best to do everything online and often directly with hotels/airlines/railway companies.

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that'd be a great idea as I go up to Manchester or Leeds for a weekend every month (although obviously it wouldn't generate any extra revenue from me)

jonmorris0844 said:

There is another way to get more travel, and be able to control it to some degree, and that's more special ticket offers - sometimes bundled in with some accommodation, theatre tickets or whatever.

A few years back we got to stay in a hotel in Leeds for two nights, with standard class travel on EC. These were open tickets, not advance tickets, and the total cost was far less than buying those tickets normally, and paying for a hotel normally.

Couldn't TOCs do more of these deals on their own, advertised through their own websites and local press etc? That would also make people think more of taking the train, and not just to destinations served by their local TOC (as seems to be the usual advertising).

Then the industry (ATOC) seeks to advertise these deals on a wider scale, as clearly a lot of people no longer go to travel agents to buy train tickets - thinking it's best to do everything online and often directly with hotels/airlines/railway companies.

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Good idea - car rental companies sometimes do offers with hotel companies - airlines do joint deals with both car rental people and hotels - if you advertised (say) two tickets from London to Newcastle plus a hotel for £100 you might attract people for a weekend that wouldn't have considered it otherwise (even if the £100 isn't a huge saving on the price of buying things individually - some people will pay a premium for "simplicity").

These are the kind of things that we should be encouraging

jonmorris0844 said:

There is another way to get more travel, and be able to control it to some degree, and that's more special ticket offers - sometimes bundled in with some accommodation, theatre tickets or whatever.

A few years back we got to stay in a hotel in Leeds for two nights, with standard class travel on EC. These were open tickets, not advance tickets, and the total cost was far less than buying those tickets normally, and paying for a hotel normally.

Couldn't TOCs do more of these deals on their own, advertised through their own websites and local press etc? That would also make people think more of taking the train, and not just to destinations served by their local TOC (as seems to be the usual advertising).

Then the industry (ATOC) seeks to advertise these deals on a wider scale, as clearly a lot of people no longer go to travel agents to buy train tickets - thinking it's best to do everything online and often directly with hotels/airlines/railway companies.

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I agree this is a good idea and I noticed your emphasis on them being not advance tickets which got me thinking. You obviously knew this but my guess is that few taking up the offer would know and probably even fewer would care. Crucially, given the bundling there was probably no practical need to restrict the tickets - they may have been open but I would think that very few of those using them would be likely to travel in the peaks.

So, thinking more generally and without any specific ideas in mind - pricing and ticket restrictiveness is one way of controlling demand (be it suppressing demand at some times and stimulating it at others). Surely the creative bundling of tickets with other products could be another.

You do see attempts by theme parks or other attractions to offer discounts to those travelling by train for example, but I can't help thinking there are more creative and interesting alternatives out there somewhere.

The advantage of having open tickets over advance tickets is going to appeal to many.

We actually booked seats on a specific train each way, so still tried to make specific trains. As it turned out, our train to Leeds had the seat reservations cancelled as a previous train had been cancelled. We were lucky to have got our seats though, having boarded as soon as it was announced (as it turned out, they declassified first class so we could have moved there!).

Coming back, we opted to travel back on a different train and gave up our reservations, but then paid to upgrade to first class (£25 each). So £50 to East Coast for some bigger seats and about 400 refills of tea!

It was a totally stressless and very enjoyable break, because of not having to be at any particular place at any particular time - just as a good weekend break should be. It was far more relaxing than with advance tickets, or as a comparison to how you'd have to plan things to fly (making a holiday by rail now seem more enticing than air travel).

jonmorris0844 said:

The advantage of having open tickets over advance tickets is going to appeal to many.

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I perhaps didn't word it very well above. The key here is peak / off-peak (even more specifically, rammed trains vs likely half-empty ones). Bundling will tend to place the bundlees on the latter rather than the former.

The freedom to catch any half-empty train they like is valuable to the customer but costs the operator nothing. That's what the operators need to try and capture.

Flamingo said:

One thing nobody has suggested yet is an "Off-peak only" Season ticket, which could encourage workers to change their work pattern if the savings were significant enough, especially over a longer commute.

I could see enforcing it to be a bit of a nightmare, though...

I've just realised one down-side: the first off-peak train after the peak is always rammed to the rafters, this would make it worse.

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FTPE and SET both offer something like this in the form of early bird season tickets on some routes.

Flamingo said:

One thing nobody has suggested yet is an "Off-peak only" Season ticket, which could encourage workers to change their work pattern if the savings were significant enough, especially over a longer commute.

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Most workers don't have the option to have much flexibility in their working patterns.

An interesting article in Rail Magazine entitled "Rail's Share Of The Travel Market Increases To 46%"

"According to ATOC students, the over 60's, and passengers with disabilities have helped to increase rails share of the domestic travel market, because of train companies' use of airline style pricing and Railcard discounts"

Well ATOC, I throw down the gauntlet. Let us all drive the increasing share of the domestic rail market. Don't just rest on your laurels with what British Rail left you. We have off-peak capacity elsewhere in the country. Extend the Network Card.
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Lampshade said:

Northern's fares seem to be fairly reasonable anyway.

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Almost ten pounds to travel on a Pacer from Wakefield to Sheffield seems steep to me.

Thingking about "bundel deals", even if there were similar restrictions to some of the cycle bans in the south east (i.e. you can't joing a train which will arrive in Londen or leave London between certain times within a certain area) it would still be fairly attractive. OK a little more confusing but given it should be easy enough to define the times of the trains that they are entitled to catch on the booking website and email confirmation, so no need to explain to the user the rules as to why not other services.

I would suggest that it would proberbly be best to limit the percived number of choices that the user is given, maybe by offering them a "choice" of up to, say, 6 services that they can use as part of the booking process (even though in reality they may be entitles to travel on more services than that). That should be enough that they could pick an early in the day time (if they decide they want ot leave early), a few around the sort of time that they think that they want to leave (without having to wait too long if they just miss a service) and maybe one or two much later (if they want to stay later).

Likewise there would proberbly be times of the year when there wouldn't be the offers, for instance, GW wouldn't allow them to be sold to go away to Cornwall for the August Bank Holiday weekend.

The other thing that would make it more attractive is if it was linked with other offers (i.e. group save) so the perception was that a family was getting a better deal than a couple. As there is an argument that by getting people intrested in travlling by train when they are young they would be more likely to do so when they grow up.

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One other way of getting more people to travel by train would be raise the age at which they have to buy tickets from 5. It proberbly wouldn't need to be by much, maybe start charging when they are 7, but again it would attract more families to travel by train and encorage children to travel by train when they are older.

It would also mean that more adults would be travelling, so proberbly wouldn't cost all that much more. If that was seen as too costly by TOC's make a child ticket cost no more than a fixed amout, say £5, as long as they are traveling with an adult. As then although the TOC would be making a loss on the child they would proberbly still be making a profit on the adult, which would hopefully fill a few more empty seats which otherwise wouldn't brought them any money anyway.

yorksrob said:

Almost ten pounds to travel on a Pacer from Wakefield to Sheffield seems steep to me.

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I guess it all depends where really.

Less than £4 for a return between Redcar and Middlesbrough for a 10 minute journey. The equivalent Arriva bus is nearer £5 and takes 30 minutes on a good day.

Which one would people choose there?

tbtc said:

The way I see "premiums" is that there are always going to be some routes that can be made to look profitable on the railway, but the railway is generally always going to need subsidy (if we keep up all of the branches/ late night services, PTE fares etc).

Based on current services, East Coast should always be profitable, ATW will always require subsidy.

So, the best way to deal with this (IMHO) is to run TOCs like FGW where the profitable stuff (Intercity to Paddington) cross-subsidises the branchlines etc.

Your idea of using the premium from profitable TOCs to cut fares specifically on those franchises would see East Coast using its millions to cut fares but we'd still need all of the money to subsidise ATW. So the cost to the Government would go up because there'd be no premium to off-set against the subsidies.

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In an ideal world, I would love to see that. It could even be done, if EC took over most of the former-LNER branch lines from Peterborough northwards (basically, some parts of EMT, the former Northern Spirit and so on). However, the problem of IC passengers being able to travel more cheaply by ticket-splitting would still exist, as would the perception that these IC passengers are being used as a cash cow (thus speaks someone who used to do 900 miles on EC every month or so since 2004, virtually never using another TOC except in the holidays).

And quite frankly, if the government is going to subsidise something, they should do it out of general taxation rather than taking advantage of a convenient profitable route within the industry.