Mandatory reservations, recommended reservations, meaningless reservations

[APT618S]

My most recent journey saw me have a pointless reservation. Allocated to a coach that wasn't on the train due to a stock change.

Within the past week I have had the following on LNER:
Like you when a 5 car Azuma turned up instead of a 9 car, my reservation was for a coach that did not exist.
I also have had a reservation for a train which did not exist (not cancelled btw), presumably removed from the timetable between the date of reservation and the date of travel.
And at KGX I have encountered no external side displays or internal displays on an Azuma for about 10 mins between when the platform was announced and a couple of mins before departure, so nearly everyone did not know which coach was which !

 

[XAM2175]

The political and stakeholder environment means that for practical purposes there is (rightly) an insistence on a walk-up railway, but the economics simply do not allow longer distance services to be walk up at the cheapest fares, and a lot of (ordinary, non-expert) travellers would be up in arms at losing the very cheapest fares simply because they were no longer reservable.

I agree entirely.

I think also (in terms of the entire discussion) that there's some conflation happening too; there's a difference between "walk-up", meaning travel undertaken on very short notice, and "flexible" meaning travel that could have been planned long in advance but without specifying the exact itinerary, and that different groups of people value these points differently

On a tangential note while I'm here - I wonder as to the merit of changing tack on reservations for advance purchases. DB's practice when selling low-price specific-train advance tickets is to not issue a reservation (so the equivalent here would be a counted-place reservation only), and indeed a passenger purchasing such a ticket in second class actually needs to pay extra to obtain a reservation for a specific seat. It strikes me that a similar practice could perhaps be helpful here.

It's also worth noting that that doesn't necessarily mean "expensive". I took a "walk-up"* room at a Premier Inn last weekend as I was too tired for the drive home. It only cost £35, which I think is the lowest I've ever paid for one.

* OK, it wasn't quite walk-up, but sat in the car at the motorway services I used the app to find the cheapest nearby one, booked it, headed straight there and was in bed within the hour.

It's not really a good comparison because there element of flexibility isn't there - you were doing the equivalent of purchasing a same-day advance ticket, and it's entirely possible it was yield-managed down to that price because the room was empty and letting you have it for £35 is less bad than letting it go unsold.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It's not really a good comparison because there element of flexibility isn't there

Well, it was - I purchased it when I needed it.

- you were doing the equivalent of purchasing a same-day advance ticket

Indeed.

and it's entirely possible it was yield-managed down to that price because the room was empty and letting you have it for £35 is less bad than letting it go unsold.

I suspect indeed so.

 

[XAM2175]

Well, it was - I purchased it when I needed it.

To be more precise - it's not directly comparable to walk-up in the railway sense of an anytime or off-peak ticket (unless it was the sort of hotel that offers by-the-hour occupancy, I suppose )

 

[YorksLad12]

This I believe is a cultural difference dating back to the early days of the post-BR railway. GNER guards were infamous for checking advance ticket reservations to the point of insisting passengers moved to their "correct" seat. Only they and their successors have behaved like this en-mass, no other TOC ever has.

Really? I never had that then (and have never had it since). In the early days I would ask someone when boarding "am I alright not sitting in my reserved seat?" - after always being told it's fine so long as I have a valid ticket, I stopped asking. Either I or the TM would pull out the card reservation slip to free up the seat.

Last year I was in a Standard coach on an Azuma set to London with half a dozen reserved seats, one of which was next to mine for no obviously good reason (I mean, *no-one* wants to listen to my war stories) so I moved. Seat still showed reserved from Leeds but later boarders twigged there was no-one there. All fine. In these days of "Covid-secure" separation I'd definitely want my reserved seat and would spread out to make sure no-one tried to sit next to me... assuming the correct train formation turns up, of course.

 

[greyman42]

They can't police it at intermediate stations and this is one way where the concept falls down.

I am not aware of it being policed at larger stations either. I have bought tickets for trains that are supposedly anti-socially full and found that they are not full at all.

 

[NoMorePacers]

Recently I took an XC service between Peterborough and Leicester - I tried to get a reservation on their 10 minute reservation page on their website but I couldn't find either station as an option. I don't know if this was by design or simply me being incompetent.

Based on passenger levels one wouldn't have been needed anyway (I easily obtained a table to myself), it was just intriguing.

 

[D6130]

I have bought tickets for trains that are supposedly anti-socially full and found that they are not full at all.

I wonder whether business travellers are getting back into their old habit of reserving seats on two or three different homeward-bound trains when they're not sure what time their meetings will finish?

 

[gallafent]

I wonder whether business travellers are getting back into their old habit of reserving seats on two or three different homeward-bound trains when they're not sure what time their meetings will finish?

Interesting. With a sane reservation system this shouldn't be possible, there should be a 1:1 mapping between ticket and reserved seat — if you make a new reservation, the old one is freed up.

 

[merry]

Well, in the last year LNER has been the only operator I've travelled upon, and their reservation policy has been a light to the rest of the railway world IMO.

Most of my journeys are for work, like as not Newark-KingsX going somewhere in London or beyond.
My employers have a fairly strict COVID-safe travel policy at the moment, as it did straight away last time (our management saw the writing on the wall and sent vulnerable staff to work from home 2 weeks before 1st lockdown, and the rest of us a week before - well done to them!). The upshot of this is that we have to be able to demonstrate that safe distancing & working is in place all the way from base to site, on site, in hotels, and back again. So if I would have to used the Tube from Kings Cross, for example, that was unsafe at peaks so it was a case of driving and staying over in a safe hotel. But some sites have been 'walkable' from Kings Cross, and it was great to be able to take the (much faster) train again, knowing distancing controls were in place.

Coming back to the point, the LNER practice of ensuring all are correctly seated and 100% reserved - for the most part - has been a class leader in rail. Would I travel on Transpennine "we're trusting passengers to distance" services? No thanks, unfortunately a significant minority can't be trusted to do that. A shame really. Now of course, there are times of disruptoin [most notably the great cracking debacle] that makes reservatoins and distancing impossible to deliver, but in all honesty the operator and its staff have always provided the best customer service that could have been hoped for whilst doing their best to also keep us safe. Other operators could have looked to this.

With a few notable exceptions, this has been my long-term experience of staff on the East Coast. Even when National Express tried to break it the staff carried on trying their best to deliver the customer service attitude already established, often with a wry twist or friendly honesty, but never unpleasant (if occasionally a bit tired and less interactive as a result, but hey, they are humans!).

Yes, distancing is not going to be perfect, but the principle keeps the number of people in a closed space controlled, which reduces overall risk of airborne transfer. it's not jsut about proximity, but also density (and yes, i've been accused of being dense but that's another story...) Hopefully one day soon the distance and space really won't be needed and we can have more travel capacity, but for now let's not rush the finish and regret it later. Patience please for as long as it takes! One day relatively soon we'll be able to hop on a service as we please (with the right ticket), and it'll be great, let's look forward and see what shape that future under GBR might take while we wait for the long tail end of this crisis to unfold.

 

[D6130]

Interesting. With a sane reservation system this shouldn't be possible, there should be a 1:1 mapping between ticket and reserved seat — if you make a new reservation, the old one is freed u

Under the current reservation system, it's perfectly possible to book seats which are not tied to a particular ticket. If I am making a long distance journey on a free staff pass box, accompanied by a friend who does not have staff travel privileges, but already has an open ticket or a rail rover, we can go to my local station and ask for two seat reservations on a particular train. We have to show our tickets/passes, but their details are not keyed into the system to match the tickets. By that standard, there is nothing to stop someone - or their secretary - going to their local station on three different occasions and selecting different members of staff from whom to request three different reserved seats on three separate trains on the same date. It happens....or did pre-Covid.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Under the current reservation system, it's perfectly possible to book seats which are not tied to a particular ticket. If I am making a long distance journey on a free staff pass box, accompanied by a friend who does not have staff travel privileges, but already has an open ticket or a rail rover, we can go to my local station and ask for two seat reservations on a particular train. We have to show our tickets/passes, but their details are not keyed into the system to match the tickets. By that standard, there is nothing to stop someone - or their secretary - going to their local station on three different occasions and selecting different members of staff from whom to request three different reserved seats on three separate trains on the same date. It happens....or did pre-Covid.

If there was a proper move to mandatory reservations you'd really want to move to "global fares" as well, i.e. everything as an Advance (even if you have an Off Peak equivalent that is effectively a quota of every available seat on the train at a capped fare). The present situation is a bit of a short term bodge.

 

[Tryfan]

I have to agree with @merry my experience with LNER in covid times has been very good.

When travelling for work to London I nearly always go by train. My options are Matlock line into Derby for EMR, Chesterfield to St Pancras EMR or travel from Alfreton which can be via Chesterfield or Nottingham EMR. I always opt to go via Grantham on LNER. So I travel EMR from ALF to GRA which mostly has been bearable. Then LNER to KGX. It’s less expensive and within a few minutes journey time. The clincher is knowing I’ve got a seat booked in and out of London. Far better than the EMR bun fight that my Daughter has faced travelling to and from St Pancras recently!!

I’ve found the LNER staff to be friendly, courteous and good humoured on all the services I’ve been on whether it’s been 1st or Std class.

 

[Bill57p9]

I did my first rail journey since the start of the pandemic last week and had a somewhat mixed experience:
A work colleague and myself were traveling from Dumfries to Southampton. AWC & XC taking the aisle seats out of use was a very sensible move to maintain distancing, however it struck me as odd that both limited reservations to some coaches, making each row available rather than spreading the reservations throughout the train. This despite XC recommending leaving two empty rows of seats between each other.
Not allowing two bubbled people to share a table seemed excessive too.

At no point did anyone check our reservations, despite AWC & XC stating mandatory reservation policies.

Both ways AWC was delayed leading to a missed connection and us needing to catch a train flagged by NRE as "full". This had two effects: first ticket offices were unable to reserve us seats, despite their being whole carriages unreserved, unless we purchased first class tickets(!). This lead us to worry that we would be denied boarding. Second was that anyone looking to travel would have been seriously dissuaded.

I can't quite understand this half way house: either spaces are allocated (like with an airline) in which case all usable seats should be bookable, or they aren't.

I should add that I felt that the numbers on each train were low enough for me (as someone who was on the shielding list) to feel confident, even if 2m distancing couldn't be maintained.

 

[Furrball]

Avanti seat selector is currently borked

They are now also allocating aisle seats at tables (so diagonally opposite the window seats there were bookable previously)

There are going to be some annoyed passengers who have been told that where booking for multiple passengers that they would be able to move to share the table to find another passenger with reservation

(Images showing test booking for 4 passengers Glasgow to Euston - Seat allocation J12, J18, J24, J30 which are aisle seats)

 

[kez19]

Curious here, I used LNER between Dundee-Newcastle during the week, whilst I understand that the displays are off what is the need for the tickets on seats? (I looked at where I sat and thought it would be printed with where I was going who was on next but nothing). Would it not be better just putting the displays back on?

 

[XAM2175]

Curious here, I used LNER between Dundee-Newcastle during the week, whilst I understand that the displays are off what is the need for the tickets on seats? (I looked at where I sat and thought it would be printed with where I was going who was on next but nothing). Would it not be better just putting the displays back on?

VTEC/LNER stopped using printed reservation cards when the digital displays became available. Since at the present time LNER don't want people to change from their assigned seat once they've boarded, the displays are switched off so as to make it harder to know if a seat is or isn't free.

 

[kez19]

VTEC/LNER stopped using printed reservation cards when the digital displays became available. Since at the present time LNER don't want people to change from their assigned seat once they've boarded, the displays are switched off so as to make it harder to know if a seat is or isn't free.

I felt a bit confused when I boarded at first as this was the first time using them ever since COVID and it did look weird, I just thought because the tickets were on the back they still had the assigned areas people were going to but of course not.

I am glad I sat in my reserved seat but I also got confused as to if I boarded the right coach (lol).

 

[trebor79]

Most of my journeys are for work, like as not Newark-KingsX going somewhere in London or beyond.
My employers have a fairly strict COVID-safe travel policy at the moment, as it did straight away last time (our management saw the writing on the wall and sent vulnerable staff to work from home 2 weeks before 1st lockdown, and the rest of us a week before - well done to them!). The upshot of this is that we have to be able to demonstrate that safe distancing & working is in place all the way from base to site, on site, in hotels, and back again.

Nonsense like this reminds me why I left my career with a FTSE100 for a smaller company.
When I started travelling for work again a few months ago and mentioned trains there was a very brief "oh, what about COVID". I replied "what about it?" and that was the end of it.

To come back on topic, I regularly use LNER trains as part of a longer journey. I buy flexible returns as I don't know really what time I will be coming home. I just ignore all the nonsense about booking a seat and haven't ever had an issue.
This "must have a reservation" really doesn't work when it's part of a longer journey. What if I do make a reservation but more it because my connecting train is delayed? What if I can't get a seat on the next service? An I stranded at Peterborough, do I get a refund for not being able to complete my journey? Had any of this been thought about by the powers that be?
What problem are they trying to solve with this policy?

VTEC/LNER stopped using printed reservation cards when the digital displays became available. Since at the present time LNER don't want people to change from their assigned seat once they've boarded, the displays are switched off so as to make it harder to know if a seat is or isn't free.

But you can look at the ticket to see which stations the seat is and isn't reserved between? Just like we all did in the days before the electronic displays.

 

[YorksLad12]

VTEC/LNER stopped using printed reservation cards when the digital displays became available. Since at the present time LNER don't want people to change from their assigned seat once they've boarded, the displays are switched off so as to make it harder to know if a seat is or isn't free.

Shirley, then, the thing would be to default to everything being reserved apart from the ones you don't mind people sitting in?

 

[XAM2175]

But you can look at the ticket to see which stations the seat is and isn't reserved between? Just like we all did in the days before the electronic displays.

The displays were introduced to replace the printed reservation cards - or I have I missed LNER re-introducing them?

Either way, the entire point of the displays being switched off is because LNER don't want you to know about the status of any seat other than yours, in the hope that this uncertainty will discourage seat-hopping.

 

[Essexman]

Meaningless reservations - one evening last week I travelled from Torquay to Paignton and back. Booked online as ticket office closed in the evening and it happened to be Cross Country trains both ways. With reservations compulsory due to COVID (at least when booking online if not in practice) I had reserved seats for a journey of about six minutes on almost empty trains.

 

[trebor79]

The displays were introduced to replace the printed reservation cards - or I have I missed LNER re-introducing them?

Either way, the entire point of the displays being switched off is because LNER don't want you to know about the status of any seat other than yours, in the hope that this uncertainty will discourage seat-hopping.

I'm pretty sure I've seen tickets in the seats on at least some of the LNER trains I've been on.

 

[kez19]

The displays were introduced to replace the printed reservation cards - or I have I missed LNER re-introducing them?

Either way, the entire point of the displays being switched off is because LNER don't want you to know about the status of any seat other than yours, in the hope that this uncertainty will discourage seat-hopping.

The reservations I sat on didn't have anything printed on them as to say it was my seat, the only info on these was basically, "if you have booked a seat?, if not why not then book at LNER/seat reservation", for me it help at least that they got rid of these to say I boarded from Dundee-Newcastle then person 2 Newcastle-York if they aren't using the displays.

 

[Hadders]

LNER have generic reservation cards that say something like you must sit in your reserved seat. The cards are semi-permanent and don't have any details of actual seat reservations.

It's all a bit of a nonsense really. They should switch the electronic reservations back on. I'm travelling with a friend to Leeds tomorrow and we wanted forward facing seats. Unfortunately because we purchased the last available seats in the price tier I could not re-locate them on the seat selector. Despite requesting forward facing seats at a table we have rear facing airline seats.

I suspect we'll be heading to coach C....

 

[mmh]

LNER have generic reservation cards that say something like you must sit in your reserved seat. The cards are semi-permanent and don't have any details of actual seat reservations.

It's all a bit of a nonsense really. They should switch the electronic reservations back on. I'm travelling with a friend to Leeds tomorrow and we wanted forward facing seats. Unfortunately because we purchased the last available seats in the price tier I could not re-locate them on the seat selector. Despite requesting forward facing seats at a table we have rear facing airline seats.

I suspect we'll be heading to coach C....

Sit where you want, and if asked for your reservation wave a ticket in the air, ask the guard to step back and why social distancing doesn't apply to them.

 

[trebor79]

Sit where you want, and if asked for your reservation wave a ticket in the air, ask the guard to step back and why social distancing doesn't apply to them.

in my recent experience nobody checks that you're sitting in the "correct" seat. It's exactly as you describe - they view your ticket form a distance and aren't interested at all in your seat reservation.

 

[Dave91131]

I suspect we'll be heading to coach C....

How does this work?

Reservations are mandatory, yet coach C is the unreserved coach.

Any explanation appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[Watershed]

How does this work?

Reservations are mandatory, yet coach C is the unreserved coach.

Any explanation appreciated.

Thanks.

They realise that not everyone will have a reservation - for example, traincrew travelling 'pass' to their next working, passengers who are displaced due to delays.

It does make somewhat of a mockery of the system though.

 

[Dave91131]

They realise that not everyone will have a reservation - for example, traincrew travelling 'pass' to their next working, passengers who are displaced due to delays.

It does make somewhat of a mockery of the system though.

Thanks.

Does this apply on all types of LNER train?

It's a big portion of the seating on a single 5-car unit!