unless you travel on a 4 car voyager of course when the reserved seating is the entire standard class area of 3 coaches so reservations can be crammed together through the WHOLE train!
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Train Operator Considers Charging For Specific Seat Selection
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RailUK Forums
Your quite right, it soon adds up and as soon as TOCs get a taste of extra money for doing absolutely nothing, there’s no going back. I wouldn’t mind if the fares weren’t so bloody expensive to start with (yes, I’m looking at you again XC)
unless you travel on a 4 car voyager of course when the reserved seating is the entire standard class area of 3 coaches so reservations can be crammed together through the WHOLE train!
TPE 350S are like that too
The survey was about LNER. LNER only charge a multiplier of 1.7 on First Class for a London to Edinburgh Off Peak Return. You go around saying in any thread you like that a) you almost always travel with Off Peak Returns because you can use them very flexibly and that you like to buy them right before you get on the train to give you security and b) that you think between 1.3 and 1.8 is the right multiplier for First Class. I guess when the price is £410 though you don't put your money where your mouth is on that?
I am not sure that LNER, Virgin Trains or Hull Trains, as examples of long-distance operators, pay anything like the attention to the low-cost market that easyJet and Flybe do. I agree very much that no British rail service is comparable with Ryanair in terms of target price level. British Airways is a reasonable comparison (although BA would probably treat you rather better). There are a very small number of genuine attempts at 'low-cost' rail:
- London Northwestern Railway, as you have identified
- Forthcoming First open access service on the East Coast, totally untested
- Northern, on a tiny handful of routes e.g. Manchester to Leeds
- Chiltern between London and Birmingham
In the past I might have included Grand Central but they're very little different to Hull Trains now in that they are not trading mainly on price, rather on niceties and direct links. Chiltern's example is very limited in scope (only at off times of day, but at those times, they beat Megabus). Northern's is very limited in scale (only really the one route and not that many seats on it). Only LNR are making a genuine go of it, and that is only really by accident. Northern and Chiltern would never be sustainable businesses on the basis of their 'low cost' service alone because of the high cost of delivery of their service (inefficient diesel trains and highly paid staff). LNR have probably some of the most energy efficient trains there are.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
LNER's Off Peaks don't count, because they are the conversion of the Business Saver fares, not the old Savers, and therefore are too expensive for me to start with. For LNER, there'd need to be a First Super Off Peak to be equivalent to the situation over here on the West Coast, where the Off Peak is the old Saver, and the Super Off Peak is a deep discount ticket with very restricted availability.
Most First Anytime tickets are similarly around that multiplier, but Standard Anytime fares are too expensive so I simply don't travel at those times out of my own pocket - if I have to travel at those times I drive.
(I'd say the same for LNR/WMT but for the fact that I will not pay any additional fare, not even £0.01, for so-called "First Class" that is markedly inferior to the Standard accommodation on the same train - indeed if for any reason a First Class ticket was cheaper than a Standard one on a LNR journey on a 350/1 or 350/3 I would still travel in Standard provided it wasn't rammed).
Sort of. The LM franchise agreement required an hourly Trent Valley local service to be operated (two-hourly on Sundays) but this could have been a self-contained Northampton to Crewe service. LM decided they would go rather further than this by way of the low-cost long-distance approach, and those extended and much-expanded services were to all intents and purposes Open Access. (It's been referred to as pseudo-Open Access on here before - it isn't *actually* that, but it was a TOC going far, far beyond their franchise agreement because it was highly profitable to do so).
What it isn't is the classic low-cost-airline model - for instance, while there are Advances, and where they exist they are dirt-cheap, the model is primarily based on cheap walk-up fares. If anything it's more like Laker Airlines was than Ryanair or whatever. Of course the reason this works is that the train doesn't get full as such, so if more people want to go at a certain time they can still sell them tickets and cram them on.
You probably want to be more clear about that point in the future then, when you are arguing with people who say that flexible fares are way too high
A First Super Off Peak at the same ratio for Edinburgh to London would be £255. Unlikely to be a massive seller!
Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
I dunno, it'd compare well with off-peak BA (who DO treat you like rubbish unless you pay).
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I might consider it, though I'd go nearer 1.6 for the multiplier which would give you £235 ish.
kieron
Established Member
As far as I know, there's only one web site which permits you to reserve a seat of your choice, and then only on their own trains. Other TOCs and retailers could provide this facility, but they don't. If they could make money from providing seat reservations, perhaps they would.
It's not the biggest problem in the rail industry, but nor is it the most extreme action they could take.
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NoOnesFool
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I'd approve of this idea. The customer gets a guarantee of their desired seat and the TOCs get extra revenue. I'd feel sorry for the Train Managers though when these aren't able to be honoured.
TheManOnThe172
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And if you overdo the malevolence, you end up with groups of passengers on a single booking, with all their boarding passes on a single mobile device, being told to board by different doors: happened to me with Ryanair shortly after they started random seating.
(Result - holding up boarding to make a phone call down the length of the plane to check that it was OK to board the passenger without the mobile that had the passes. I'm not sure whether this was a robust procedure to ensured compliance, or just a bit of face-saving theatre).
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Nobody generally cares which door you board through once you've passed the gate agent. Sleasyjet used to say front doors for the exit row, I've always gone to the back because it's quicker as the row 1-2 people aren't blocking it up while putting their bags up. They since changed it, though.
Though only possibly enforceable if;
they've supplied the specified train
with the specified seats in the specified carriages
& there's no-one else sat in your seat
NoOnesFool
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I have seen East Midlands Trains RPOs enforce it.
alistairlees
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Do you mean seat plans? There are three that I can think of - LNER, Virgin Trains and Caledonian Sleeper. There might be some more.
On a packed train or one that is lightly loaded? I can understand it being enforced on a train which is full to ensure seats for passengers boarding without reservations - less so on a lightly loaded train.
Did they threaten to charge the difference between the advance fare and cheapest walk up fare, a penalty fare or just tell people to move?
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