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Modern Railways: LNER and compulsory reservations

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bramling

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True, but I don't think "sold out" is as much of a calamity to show in the Press as against a visibly overcrowded train.

No, but “denied getting on train to see family at Christmas when there was space to get on” is.

Plus, there will still be plenty of scope for the “it’s disgusting I paid £xxx and the train was jam packed” stories during disruption.
 
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zwk500

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No, but “denied getting on train to see family at Christmas when there was space to get on” is.
I suspect at clearly busy periods either guards will be given discretion, an unreserved portion made available, or passengers will be able to nominate standing as their place on the train
Plus, there will still be plenty of scope for the “it’s disgusting I paid £xxx and the train was jam packed” stories during disruption.
Delay repay covers that situation - it needs reforming and updating anyway, so you can give a partial refund in the event reservations cannot be honoured, in the same way 1st class gets refunded if declassified. The press will always find something to moan about, because they need to sell copies or score hits, and the railways are an easy target for most papers' audiences.
 

Journeyman

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I think this will benefit more people than it inconveniences, will lead to better pricing strategies, and that opinions expressed here are decidedly at odds with the public at large.
 

OldNick

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I have several concerns about compulsory reservations in general. I have never travelled on LNER, but can't see it being practical on many other routes were the concept to spread.

1. XC services, and routes such as GWRs Cardiff to Portsmouth which see a lot of smaller journeys made on various sections of the route as well as much longer distance journeys using all or most of it. The trains are simply too short to have a meaningful mix of reserved and non-reserved coaches. Requiring a reservation between Cardiff and Newport, or Bristol and Bath is pointless. I used to regularly travel between Bristol and Southampton, and sometimes it would be busy, I often had to stand, sometimes as far as Westbury. I simply wouldn't be allowed on such a service at short notice. (There was no viable coach route at the time, it involved two changes and took half a day, I don't know if that's changed. I didn’t drive then, so no real alternative.) There isn't a clear-cut Express vs Commuter/Stopper set up in much of the UK. Much service coverage is provided as an alternating mixture of express and 'local' services, and as said before, some express services cater to both types of customer.

2. Disruption can quite often last all day. Some people have suggested reservations would have to be suspended on the next service to allow people to travel should their train be cancelled/connection missed, but rarely is disruption limited to just one operator or service, or hour in a day. This would upset people because:

3. If we are to drastically reduce capacity at peak times/holidays/sporting events etc (I can't imagine longer trains being affordable with the loss of capacity and ticket sales) then the resulting increase in cost per ticket to run what is undeniably an expensive railway to run will come with the benefit of a guaranteed seat - until it doesn't because the reservations have been suspended. When the cost rockets and the actual benefit ceases for hours or days at a time, people will be in the same overcrowded situation but will have paid a higher price. If their service runs on time, no delay repay. Will you be able to claim vouchers from customer services because the train was rammed? I can't see that being sustainable. You can't just "put another train on" as you can with a bus/coach without a lot of planning (and adding extra coaches/carriages to a train is usually robbing Peter to pay Paul, a big problem for reservation systems too I imagine!)

The industry relies on its income from high numbers of passengers. Limiting the revenue by limiting the number of people who can access the service is not the way to reduce overcrowding - it can't be economically sustainable in the long term. There will be a reduction in services, facilities and staffing.

4. Advance ticket pricing makes the railway affordable for some people (and businesses) by helping fill seats on less busy services but the restriction to that single service causes so many problems, particularly when they are told the cost of the walk-up fare when they miss it. Ask any ticket office clerk, gateline assistant, train manager/conductor who deals with it daily. With that in mind, a fare pricing overhaul purely based on availability means you'll never know what a ticket should cost. Some airline websites bump up the cost of fares if you visit multiple times to make you panic buy sooner rather than later. Is this the direction we want to go in? How about a multitude of petty fees to cover the reduction in tickets available to sell? Baggage, window seats, tables, wi-fi, charging points... I'd be cautious about airline models concerning pricing. Can you imagine a guard charging two different customers different excess fares for the same ticket/journey, because the price has now gone up in the interim?

5. Enforcement. Will the National Conditions of Travel be changed? If only "long distance" requires compulsory reservations then how would this be defined, and enforced?

6. The concept of booking a new reservation 10 mins before a journey is a great idea until half a rugby stadium tries to do it at once and the app crashes.

7. People won't "choose another weekend to travel" - its not how the world works. Stag/hen doos, birthdays, sporting and music events, religious festivals and public holidays, even organised protests happen on dates set by other people (even if more people work from home, for the majority the weekend is at the same time). They want to maximise their free time. If they can't travel/arrive within an hour or two of a time that works for them they will choose another way, and they won't bother checking the train next time.

8. Season tickets and rovers, plus payment by warrant - I don't see how any of this is possible if reservations are compulsory and there are no reservations available on the day, or reservations can only be made at the time/point of purchase.

By reducing capacity, raising prices and potentially leaving people stranded if they fear not being able to re-book at the last minute, we will kill rail travel in the UK. It'll be an expensive, unsustainable and short-lived club.
 

Hadders

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I think this will benefit more people than it inconveniences, will lead to better pricing strategies, and that opinions expressed here are decidedly at odds with the public at large.
Interested in the better pricing strategies as I just don't see it.

They will claim there will be more 'cheap' Advance fares but with the dead hand of the Treasury and DfT calling the shots expect the 'cheap' Advance fares to increase in price. They will of course keep a headline cheap fare to make it look like good value fares exist but the quota will be small and only of services at anti-social times.

If you ask the general public if a train ticket should come with a guaranteed seat then they will say yes. But they will soon change their tune when they want to make a short or medium length journey and cannot do so because the train is sold out.
 

Kite159

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Interested in the better pricing strategies as I just don't see it.

They will claim there will be more 'cheap' Advance fares but with the dead hand of the Treasury and DfT calling the shots expect the 'cheap' Advance fares to increase in price. They will of course keep a headline cheap fare to make it look like good value fares exist but the quota will be small and only of services at anti-social times.

If you ask the general public if a train ticket should come with a guaranteed seat then they will say yes. But they will soon change their tune when they want to make a short or medium length journey and cannot do so because the train is sold out.

Travel from London to Edinburgh from £30!

Only available in large enough numbers on the 06:00 departure from London, on a Tuesday, with a tiny handful of those fares available on other services, mainly ones you have to change at York to make them less unappealing and harder to find.

Monday afternoon on a bank holiday weekend, that will be £100+ each please, unless you want to travel on the last train of the day getting into London after midnight.
 

Bald Rick

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Monday afternoon on a bank holiday weekend, that will be £100+ each please, unless you want to travel on the last train of the day getting into London after midnight.

And they sell plenty at that price.
 

Journeyman

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Travel from London to Edinburgh from £30!

Only available in large enough numbers on the 06:00 departure from London, on a Tuesday, with a tiny handful of those fares available on other services, mainly ones you have to change at York to make them less unappealing and harder to find.

Monday afternoon on a bank holiday weekend, that will be £100+ each please, unless you want to travel on the last train of the day getting into London after midnight.
The airlines are the same. And it's already pretty easy to find decent price advances on trains, I do all the time.
 

Kite159

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The airlines are the same.
Although at the moment under the current fare system the most they can charge will be £77.25 (the super off-peak single).

Move into the brave new world of booked train only where any flexible tickets are removed from sale or not accepted for travel (no seat reservations being given to holders of those types of tickets) and that price will most certainly increase.
 

Bletchleyite

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Although at the moment under the current fare system the most they can charge will be £77.25 (the super off-peak single).

Move into the brave new world of booked train only where any flexible tickets are removed from sale or not accepted for travel (no seat reservations being given to holders of those types of tickets) and that price will most certainly increase.

That ticket is of course a regulated fare. It's not wide of the mark to suggest that the reservation inclusive "global fare" would be capped at that sum at certain times of day even if that actual ticket might not exist in the current form.
 

Watershed

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That ticket is of course a regulated fare. It's not wide of the mark to suggest that the reservation inclusive "global fare" would be capped at that sum at certain times of day even if that actual ticket might not exist in the current form.
Anyone who thinks that the prices of the existing "antiquated" regulated fare system will be grandfathered into an Advance-only system is deluding themselves. That's not to say there can't possibly be a maximum, the same as Eurostar fares don't go above £250 odd, but that's not a great solace once all opportunities for affordable travel are eliminated.

The DfT will undoubtedly seize this as an opportunity to hide a massive fare increase behind a headline of "archaic fare system made simple". There will be strong parallels with what happened back in 2007 or thereabouts, when unrestricted Savers were "simplified" to become highly restricted Off-Peak tickets.
 

Roast Veg

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When planning my Interrail route, you may be unsurprised to hear that it was planned with as little traveling in France, Spain, or Italy as could be afforded - and it wasn't because my German was a lot better!

Why do we have to take the model of the most unpleasant traveling experiences, and not the one that offers the most consumer freedom?
 

Hadders

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Travel from London to Edinburgh from £30!

Only available in large enough numbers on the 06:00 departure from London, on a Tuesday, with a tiny handful of those fares available on other services, mainly ones you have to change at York to make them less unappealing and harder to find.

Monday afternoon on a bank holiday weekend, that will be £100+ each please, unless you want to travel on the last train of the day getting into London after midnight.
Yes, that's about right.

And they sell plenty at that price.
And that's the problem from a passenger point of view because it'll be a massive increase in price and loss of flexibility over the current fares structure.

The airlines are the same. And it's already pretty easy to find decent price advances on trains, I do all the time.
Those 'in the know' can get decent fares but it often involves slower journeys, changing trains or travelling at anti-social times booked moths ahead.

Although at the moment under the current fare system the most they can charge will be £77.25 (the super off-peak single).

Move into the brave new world of booked train only where any flexible tickets are removed from sale or not accepted for travel (no seat reservations being given to holders of those types of tickets) and that price will most certainly increase.
I agree.

That ticket is of course a regulated fare. It's not wide of the mark to suggest that the reservation inclusive "global fare" would be capped at that sum at certain times of day even if that actual ticket might not exist in the current form.
Train Companies want to get rid of fares regulation. While regulation is not perfect it does at least provide a ceiling for Advance fares. Remove regulation and it'll be open season on fares increases. You only have to look at the price on unregulated fares since privatisation (London to Manchester Anytime being a classic) to see what will happen.
 

andy1571

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i personally think that, if this is the direction of travel, then some form of increased on-track competition is going to be required. Obviously First and Grand Central have (and are extending) operations on the ECML, but this would need to be widened out much further to avoid LNER (or any private successor) having a monopoly. If passengers are going to have to commit to a certain train, all the benefits on a regular, clock face timetable are lost, and so there is no reason for one operator to hold all the paths. I think this is the only way to ensure that ticket price increases are tempered; the DfT doesn’t necessarily lose out as operators could bid for paths in a tendering process.

That’s not by any means to say I’m an advocate of such a system; it’s probably the least worst outcome from the way LNER are thinking. There have been plenty enough succinct arguments from others here about the failings of similar systems abroad, and how ticket prices will likely sky rocket, especially given fare regulation will probably be the next thing to go.

in some respects, it’s a shame the ECML doesn’t have an LNWR-type operator, running semi-fast services from KGX to (say) York, calling at principal stations en route. With reasonably comfortable stock (350/1-equivalent), I think they’d do quite well, as well as increasing the market as London Midland/LNWR have done through the Trent Valley.

in all this, I’m still struggling to see how this is going to be enforced. Despite LNER saying how wonderful compulsory reservations are, my experience since it started (granted, only on a few occasions) were that people were sitting where they liked, and nobody undertook any checks at all. For instance, what happens at York on a Saturday night when the Doncaster crowd all try and pile on the last southbound train with (cheaper) tickets they purchased for trains that left hours ago? Is anyone seriously going to intervene?
 

py_megapixel

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On-track competition is an excellent idea assuming you have surplus paths. From a passenger perspective a 5 car train every 10 minutes is better than a 10 car train every 20 minutes.

However, whenever an attempt is made to introduce any new service pretty much anywhere, there seems to be a struggle to squeeze another path out of a network which is already pretty much at capacity. This suggests to me that what they really need to be focussing on is getting the most capacity out of the paths they have. Which means longer trains, not lots of short OA ones, and also room for standing.

But the railway's attitude - at least the public-facing one - at the moment seems to be "screw passengers; we don't need them".
 

zwk500

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But the railway's attitude - at least the public-facing one - at the moment seems to be "screw passengers; we don't need them".
At this point, what the railway needs most is money. Passengers tend to cost more than they bring. From a private company's perspective, 1 passenger paying £50 is a lot better than 4 paying £10. I don't think political concerns will allow them to go down that route, but the finances will not be far from the minds of those controlling the railway.
 

andy1571

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On-track competition is an excellent idea assuming you have surplus paths. From a passenger perspective a 5 car train every 10 minutes is better than a 10 car train every 20 minutes.

However, whenever an attempt is made to introduce any new service pretty much anywhere, there seems to be a struggle to squeeze another path out of a network which is already pretty much at capacity.
I think that’s why you’d have to come at it with a blank sheet of paper, whereby there is an auction for all available paths, rather than trying to squeeze additional services in around an incumbent operator.

As mentioned, if LNER is heading down the road of reducing flexibility and requiring advance purchase, there is not any great reason for them to hold as many paths as they do.

The DfT would probably have to put in some caveats, such as frequency of certain stops being served, but other than that, anyone could bid. In an ideal world, that might encourage some genuine passenger-friendly innovation (heaven forefend!)
 

py_megapixel

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I think that’s why you’d have to come at it with a blank sheet of paper, whereby there is an auction for all available paths, rather than trying to squeeze additional services in around an incumbent operator.

As mentioned, if LNER is heading down the road of reducing flexibility and requiring advance purchase, there is not any greatreason for them to hold as many paths as they do.

The DfT would probably have to put in some caveats, such as frequency of certain stops being served, but other than that, anyone could bid.
LNER (as well as Northern) is literally owned and operated entirely by the DfT, and at every other TOC, they're pulling the strings now.
This reservation-only thing is what they want.

Personally I hate the idea of auctioning off paths. Just imagine how inefficient that is from a use of resources point of view, as well as with operator-only tickets.

It would end up with a situation like the buses, where the operators pick and choose the profitable bits and leave the government to fill in the loss-makers, essentially siphoning money to WorstGroup and Arrival Fail which could otherwise be used to subsidise providing a decent service.
 

OldNick

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Sounds to me like auctioning off paths and having more complicated and operator specific fares is the exact opposite of what many people would call fare simplification.
 

andy1571

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LNER (as well as Northern) is literally owned and operated entirely by the DfT, and at every other TOC, they're pulling the strings now.
This reservation-only thing is what they want.

Personally I hate the idea of auctioning off paths. Just imagine how inefficient that is from a use of resources point of view, as well as with operator-only tickets.
The point about LNER being under DfT ownership is very true, and shows how far thinking has shifted given private operators like Virgin would’ve have loved to have gotten away with such a format in the past.

I fully concur the whole set-up would be sub-optimal. At the moment, we benefit from one main operator with regulated flexible fares, which in effect performs the dual purpose of controlling the cost for that type of ticket, as well as how much can be charged for advance fares.

But if fares regulation were removed, I can’t see how the consumer can be protected from unconstrained fares increases unless there is more on-rail competition (accepting they could use car/plane/coach instead).
 

greyman42

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For instance, what happens at York on a Saturday night when the Doncaster crowd all try and pile on the last southbound train with (cheaper) tickets they purchased for trains that left hours ago? Is anyone seriously going to intervene?
Or at Newcastle after a football match when hordes of people will simply board the first train going to Durham or Darlington.
 

Mat17

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My biggest complaint about compulsory reservations is that it hamstrings those who are reliant on other forms of public transport to get to the origin station in the first place.

I used to commute on buses for years and even though I went for the same bus every day (an half hourly service), depending upon whether that bus was late, stuck in traffic or simply didn't turn up and saw me on the next service, meant I could end up on a different train every day. Now admittedly this was a local train service, but if I had been travelling to say Leeds/York etc. Under a compulsory reservation system, which could see me purchase a ticket for a service and then end up missing it any way.

Many times people would say to me 'well you'll have to catch an earlier bus service', yes, but hard to do if you're already catching the first bus of the day!

Not everyone lives within walking distance of a station and not everyone can drive. Same issue if changing trains, if the first part of your journey is a no-show or very late, the second reserved part of your journey goes without you.
 

Frontera2

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From a customer experience point of view - for the majority of passenger - I wholeheartedly support compulsory reservations and have been for many years. Here's my rationale:

- At busy times, TOCs are bombarded with complaints, just look at the media stories and TOC Twitter feeds complaining that TOCs have "oversold" the train, and should't sell more tickets than are available. This will deal with that.

- A sizeable minority if not the majority of LNER's passenger base isn't commuter, it's leisure or occasional / business travel

- Crowded trains are an unpleasant experience for everyone, you cant reach the buffet or the toilets without difficulty for example, and if you've paid for First class do you really want to be unable to leave your seat because of people crammed in the aisles? This is exactly what has happened at the busiest times

- This model works well not only in Europe but also the US too for long distance journeys.

- Wherever possible, Longer distance trains shouldn't be used for "local" journeys. Take the TGV in the South of France for example. "Local" tickets aren't valid on TGVs between Marseille and Nice / Monaco. If you want to purchase a ticket and use the TGV then you can, but at a significant supplement. I accept that on some flows the local service will need to be improved to make this work.

- As is the model in France, if you've a reservation on a specific train, you can easily change it either online, at a ticket office or using a machine to a later / earlier service if a train is full.

And yes, if this means some people won't be able to travel at the very busiest because the trains are full then so be it - that's no different to the airlines.

It's not all about cramming as many people on to a train as possible - you have to give passengers a good experience to make them want to return and an absolutely wedged train is not the way to do it.

And nowadays, especially with COVID, how many people are going to be making a long journey but not book in advance?
 

yorksrob

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From a customer experience point of view - for the majority of passenger - I wholeheartedly support compulsory reservations and have been for many years. Here's my rationale:

- At busy times, TOCs are bombarded with complaints, just look at the media stories and TOC Twitter feeds complaining that TOCs have "oversold" the train, and should't sell more tickets than are available. This will deal with that.

- A sizeable minority if not the majority of LNER's passenger base isn't commuter, it's leisure or occasional / business travel

- Crowded trains are an unpleasant experience for everyone, you cant reach the buffet or the toilets without difficulty for example, and if you've paid for First class do you really want to be unable to leave your seat because of people crammed in the aisles? This is exactly what has happened at the busiest times

- This model works well not only in Europe but also the US too for long distance journeys.

- Wherever possible, Longer distance trains shouldn't be used for "local" journeys. Take the TGV in the South of France for example. "Local" tickets aren't valid on TGVs between Marseille and Nice / Monaco. If you want to purchase a ticket and use the TGV then you can, but at a significant supplement. I accept that on some flows the local service will need to be improved to make this work.

- As is the model in France, if you've a reservation on a specific train, you can easily change it either online, at a ticket office or using a machine to a later / earlier service if a train is full.

And yes, if this means some people won't be able to travel at the very busiest because the trains are full then so be it - that's no different to the airlines.

It's not all about cramming as many people on to a train as possible - you have to give passengers a good experience to make them want to return and an absolutely wedged train is not the way to do it.

And nowadays, especially with COVID, how many people are going to be making a long journey but not book in advance?

One of the issues with our network is that it doesn't fit neatly into InterCity trains and local services. If you were to travel from York to Doncaster for example, it's a local journey but the only trains doing that route are Inter City services. That's before you get to middle distance regional services such as TPE up the east coast main line, which is a bit of both.

The proposal smacks of the DfT trying to micro-manage the railway badly.
 

py_megapixel

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At busy times, TOCs are bombarded with complaints, just look at the media stories and TOC Twitter feeds complaining that TOCs have "oversold" the train, and should't sell more tickets than are available. This will deal with that.
Well, it will, until the point at which LNER realises that they could take a leaf out of the airlines' book and starts actually overselling
 

northernbelle

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From a customer experience point of view - for the majority of passenger - I wholeheartedly support compulsory reservations and have been for many years. Here's my rationale:

- At busy times, TOCs are bombarded with complaints, just look at the media stories and TOC Twitter feeds complaining that TOCs have "oversold" the train, and should't sell more tickets than are available. This will deal with that.

- A sizeable minority if not the majority of LNER's passenger base isn't commuter, it's leisure or occasional / business travel

- Crowded trains are an unpleasant experience for everyone, you cant reach the buffet or the toilets without difficulty for example, and if you've paid for First class do you really want to be unable to leave your seat because of people crammed in the aisles? This is exactly what has happened at the busiest times

- This model works well not only in Europe but also the US too for long distance journeys.

- Wherever possible, Longer distance trains shouldn't be used for "local" journeys. Take the TGV in the South of France for example. "Local" tickets aren't valid on TGVs between Marseille and Nice / Monaco. If you want to purchase a ticket and use the TGV then you can, but at a significant supplement. I accept that on some flows the local service will need to be improved to make this work.

- As is the model in France, if you've a reservation on a specific train, you can easily change it either online, at a ticket office or using a machine to a later / earlier service if a train is full.

And yes, if this means some people won't be able to travel at the very busiest because the trains are full then so be it - that's no different to the airlines.

It's not all about cramming as many people on to a train as possible - you have to give passengers a good experience to make them want to return and an absolutely wedged train is not the way to do it.

And nowadays, especially with COVID, how many people are going to be making a long journey but not book in advance?
I have to say that I'm inclined to agree, subject to there being sufficient non-reservation 'local' services to provide for the key flows. In this case, LNER is probably the most suitable of the TOCs to bring this in.

For example, making reservations compulsory on XC would cause a major problem for commuting flows such as Taunton-Bristol or those into Birmingham. To my mind, it's only workable if the service provision for 'commuting' and 'long distance' is split and LNER's market is primarily in the long distance market. I've had one too many Anglo-Scottish journeys on the floor of an HST vestibule where compulsory reservations would have allowed LNER to spread the demand and loadings more effectively. The post-Covid tempering of demand, having the better capacity of the Azumas and retained 225 sets, along with First East Coast's provision of seats probably makes this more workable than in years gone by.

This policy puts the onus on the customer to book a seat. If I chose to ride in the vestibule on a fully-booked service then I'm less likely to be miffed by it if I knew I had the option of a seat on an alternative service. Several times I've stood on TGVs that departed before my own booking (with the permission of the crew), because I valued an earlier arrival over having a seat. The system changed my mindset from 'it's a disgrace, I'm stood all the way' to 'that was great, they let me flex the rules and I got to Paris earlier than planned'.
 

Watershed

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- At busy times, TOCs are bombarded with complaints, just look at the media stories and TOC Twitter feeds complaining that TOCs have "oversold" the train, and should't sell more tickets than are available. This will deal with that.
This will simply replace those complaints with complaints that the trains are sold out every Easter/Christmas/BH etc. Fewer people will be able to travel overall. Surely that is not what the industry should be aiming for?

Prospective passengers should be able to make an informed decision as to which train they take, or whether they take the train at all. Therefore predicted and actual loadings should be made much clearer when booking - and if a train is fully reserved, anyone buying a ticket for that train should be given a clear warning of that.

- Crowded trains are an unpleasant experience for everyone, you cant reach the buffet or the toilets without difficulty for example, and if you've paid for First class do you really want to be unable to leave your seat because of people crammed in the aisles? This is exactly what has happened at the busiest times
But even more unpleasant than that is being stuck at the station unable to travel because all the trains are booked out...

- Wherever possible, Longer distance trains shouldn't be used for "local" journeys. Take the TGV in the South of France for example. "Local" tickets aren't valid on TGVs between Marseille and Nice / Monaco. If you want to purchase a ticket and use the TGV then you can, but at a significant supplement. I accept that on some flows the local service will need to be improved to make this work.
Fine in theory, but where is the rolling stock, line capacity etc. going to come from to make that happen? And it is not good enough suggesting that improvements will need to be made - LNER have implemented this policy already and I don't think there is any proposal to suspend it for a few years whilst replacement local services are added...

And yes, if this means some people won't be able to travel at the very busiest because the trains are full then so be it - that's no different to the airlines.
There is always a limit to the total number of people that can be carried, even in terms of standing capacity. But if reservation compulsory policies stay, or spread to other TOCs, then capacity is being artificially limited and fewer people will be able to travel.

This is really no different to making all coaches first class 1+2 seated - after all, it's more comfortable than slumming it in standard class. That's the sort of reduction in capacity we are talking about. Clearly, any such proposal would be given the short shrift it deserves. Yet somehow reservations being compulsory is fine and what people want?

It's not all about cramming as many people on to a train as possible - you have to give passengers a good experience to make them want to return and an absolutely wedged train is not the way to do it.
Enough people are willing to tolerate that experience that the trains are normally packed to the rafters every Easter/BH/Christmas. Why should the railway reject their custom? There are also the environmental and societal side effects to consider - if the railway reduces its capacity by implementing reservation compulsory travel, more people will travel by road, increasing pollution, traffic and accidents.

And nowadays, especially with COVID, how many people are going to be making a long journey but not book in advance?
Not many, and that has been a trend that gained traction over the last decade or so, but as you admit, this will affect many people making local journeys too. Would you accept having to book a seat on your local bus? If not, why on a local train?

Also, no amount of prior booking will help when reservation compulsory policies limit the total capacity to below the total demand.
 

Kite159

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Compulsory reservations won't be much use in times of high demand caused by sports event.

Say Leeds gets into the FA cup semifinal, the fans will be heading back to Leeds around the same time.
Having compulsory reservations will mean those fans trying to get on the last train as the finish time is unknown (injury time/extra time/penalties etc, plus the time taken to get from Wembley to Kings Cross, only to have to hang around until the booked train rather than currently booking the first available train (if they are using flexible tickets).

It could push those football fans away from the train onto coaches
 

Dr Day

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My biggest complaint about compulsory reservations is that it hamstrings those who are reliant on other forms of public transport to get to the origin station in the first place.
Exactly. The airline model works well for specific point to point end to end journeys eg London-Edinburgh. As discussed above, it is less effective for intermediate trips eg York - Newcastle, but probably even worse for a multi-leg journey where only one leg, possibly a short one, happens to be on the long distance train.

One of the benefits of the current national fare system is that you can buy flexible tickets from any station to any other station, and your through journey is protected (even if you can't be guaranteed a seat without a reservation). Many flows have Advance 'and connections' fares to cater for this, but not every one so this aspect will need some consideration too. Whatever is done I hope will retain national through ticketing with some form of consumer-protection price cap for any given journey, even if the system behind the scenes has to calculate the fare in a different fashion from today.
 
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