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Avanti compulsory reservations?
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They've been setting their trains to compulsory reservation for quite some time now. It's a pain because it blocks the sales flexible tickets in certain circumstances, but it's not being enforced on the ground, so to speak, so if you do have a flexible ticket you can use their trains without any problem.
mangyiscute
Established Member
To be clear they are not allowed to enforce such a thing, as part of their contract they have to accept passengers with walk-up tickets so in no circumstances would they be able to actually block you from boarding a train.
Statto
Established Member
I thought AWC had one carriage on all the Pendos that has completely unreserved seating, normally coach U on 11 car sets, & coach C on 9 car sets?
pokemonsuper9
Established Member
Coach C is always unreserved regardless of length
Coach U is unreserved on 11 cars since they're the only ones that have it
Coach G might also be unreserved on refurbished units but idk
I think U/G being unreservable might be due to 9 and 11 car substitutions so it's easier just to prevent booking them.
CharlieSpotted
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Is it C or G that has the shop in? Because, whilst it's unreserved, you might find a number of seats are taken up by Avanti staff spreading out and enjoying the ride instead of doing their jobs...
pokemonsuper9
Established Member
C has the shop, it's definitely not uncommon for Avanti staff to be right next to it (and be able to be overheard from the nearby seats)
MrJeeves
Established Member
It is unreserved, at least on the ones I've been on.
As I understand it.
At the height of the pandemic, when the government was trying to forbid or discourage us all from travelling, compulsory reservations were brought in on "intercity" trains.
In practice these were only ever enforced at a handful of locations and any enforcement has long since stopped. EMR, Crosscountry and GWR have dropped the compulsory reservation flag from the timetable data, but LNER and Avanti are still setting it.
Their trains are marked as reservations compulsory in the timetable data, but reservations aren't actually compulsory on the ground - if you have a walk-up ticket, you can take any Avanti service it's valid on.
Avanti introduced this policy under the guise of "social distancing" during the pandemic, and then realised it rather suited them to be able to stop people buying tickets for trains which they've not yet decided whether they'll run.
Avanti introduced this policy under the guise of "social distancing" during the pandemic, and then realised it rather suited them to be able to stop people buying tickets for trains which they've not yet decided whether they'll run.
I don't think the wording associated with the "compulsory reservations" flag in the timetable data will change. There is a legitimate case for having such a flag for trains such as the Caledonian Sleeper where reservations are indeed compulsory. But CS handle that in a reasonable manner, as you can buy tickets 12 months in advance.
The problem is that Avanti, LNER and the ECML open access operators are abusing and misusing the field, by applying it to every one of their trains and then holding back reservations until often only 8 weeks out, or even less.
Indeed. In my mind, the correct way of handling this would have been to reallocate the "reservations recommended" flag to this purpose. After all, very few people read paper timetables anymore!Perhaps they need to introduce an additional flag so that we have one for "reservations compulsory" and one for "reservations aren't compulsory, but we are pretending that they are"
A new industry specification would outline the new purpose of the flag; it would be failsafe as any older systems that weren't updated wouldn't break, but the most-used newer systems would be forced to try and get a reservation and to issue a warning (but let customers continue) if they can't.
Of course that would require far too much cooperation and common sense, so it couldn't possibly happen in our myopic rail industry.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Perhaps they need to introduce an additional flag so that we have one for "reservations compulsory" and one for "reservations aren't compulsory, but we are pretending that they are"
Post COVID the reason it's been retained is so they can control at an individual level which trains are on sale. Obviously nothing stops you buying a walk up ticket from a booking office, non-planner TVM or for another train, but it prevents the false expectations of picking a given train with an Anytime then finding they never had any intention of running it at all. With such a heavily disrupted service for a long time after COVID this was quite useful for Avanti at least.
My suggestion would be that the planner accreditation rules should change so the barely-used Reservations Recommended flag can be repurposed for this end. Or a new flag could be added of "do not sell without a reservation".
It is unhelpful that it means different things in different places - if you turn up to the Caledonian Sleeper for the seats without one you'll at best get moaned at or at worst be turned away.
Great minds/fools
Trainbike46
Established Member
Avanti's use of the "reservations compulsory" flag does cause problems, because it entirely prevented the sale of certain tickets at times. In some cases, they just never released the reservations for certain trains even though they did run, that's how I once ended up being one of 2 passengers on an avantie London-Glasgow train. Now that Avanti is back to some reliability, they should drop the "reservations compulsory" flag. LNER should have stopped using it tooPost COVID the reason it's been retained is so they can control at an individual level which trains are on sale. Obviously nothing stops you buying a walk up ticket from a booking office, non-planner TVM or for another train, but it prevents the false expectations of picking a given train with an Anytime then finding they never had any intention of running it at all. With such a heavily disrupted service for a long time after COVID this was quite useful for Avanti at least.
My suggestion would be that the planner accreditation rules should change so the barely-used Reservations Recommended flag can be repurposed for this end. Or a new flag could be added of "do not sell without a reservation".
It is unhelpful that it means different things in different places - if you turn up to the Caledonian Sleeper for the seats without one you'll at best get moaned at or at worst be turned away.
Great minds/fools
Haywain
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That's what the "reservations compulsory" flag does.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
It also, however, makes the statement that you cannot board the train without a reservation and will be turned away if you don't have one, as per e.g. the Caledonian Sleeper seated coach, or a TGV or Eurostar.
In essence there need to be two steps - one that allows a TOC to put a given train on sale once they're confident it's going to run (but doesn't indicate you can't just buy a walk up on the day and board anyway), and one that states that you must have a reservation to board and if you don't you're likely to be turned away or otherwise penalised.
At present the same flag is being used for those two rather different meanings, and it does confuse people (e.g. InterRail users are spending money on unnecessary reservations via their app).
Wallsendmag
Established Member
Last I heard that was the plan.Perhaps they need to introduce an additional flag so that we have one for "reservations compulsory" and one for "reservations aren't compulsory, but we are pretending that they are"
greatkingrat
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Maybe another flag to distinguish between trains where you can actually reserve a specific seat, and trains which just have counted place reservations?
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Yes, that'd be handy. The diamond (reservations available) really should only show if you can reserve an actual seat.
mangyiscute
Established Member
In fairness interrail users will spend money on reservations anyway when we know that you can get free reservations through gwr or lner
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Yes, true, but the point is that they don't need them and this misuse of the flag convinces them into thinking they do.
Coach G is unreserved on refurbished 11 car sets. So basically you have three unreserved coaches on most 11 cars but only one (Coach C) on 9 cars.
Because I cant book in advance due to medical reasons I'm left to find a table in one coach if its a 9 car set.
Because I cant book in advance due to medical reasons I'm left to find a table in one coach if its a 9 car set.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Reservations are marked in other coaches so you can look elsewhere. Invariably someone doesn't turn up, particularly as via most sales channels you have to pick a train at the moment, so people pick a random one or one they might use.
The reason it's like this is so you can substitute one for the other without breaking the reservations.
Exactly, in BR days there were two different styles of "R" symbol used in the all-line timetable: one that meant reservation compulsory, and one that meant reservation strongly recommended.
As I recall under BR you could still travel on a compulsory reservation train without a reservation if there were seats available but they didn't allow standing on them.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
There still are - a white R on a black background is recommended, a black R on a white background is (allegedly) compulsory.
For APT they used to issue boarding cards for any unreserved seats.
They also sometimes used to do that for ordinary Intercity trains at busy times, for example around Christmas, Easter and the late August bank holiday. I remember seeing leaflets saying that a limited number of boarding cards would be made available for each train for passengers without reservations, but such passengers could not be guaranteed a seat.
mangyiscute
Established Member
Oh true, that is pretty awful.
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