- 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.
I agree, but how many media stories, twitter feeds will there be if passengers can't get reservations because they are full, especially as these 'full' trains will often have available seats as they will have been booked by passengers from intermediate stations. This would certainly look just as bad, if not worse.
- A sizeable minority if not the majority of LNER's passenger base isn't commuter, it's leisure or occasional / business travel
Leisure passengers often want flexibility as well. On the day 'things' happen. One key advantage of rail is its flexibility.
- 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
Ideally more capacity is required and has been added in recent years. Gross over crowding on inter-city trains is unusual, certainly outside of disruption. There are some exceptions, for example I recall the 06:16 Euston to Manchester, arrives 08:28 is very busy after Stoke on Trent where it calls at 08:00. Consequently it is
the commuter train for the good people of Stoke into Manchester (prior to Stoke it carries fresh air). If you ban the Stoke commuter from this train (an 11 carriage Pendolino) there simply isn't the capacity to hoover up these passengers on other Stoke to Manchester services or the available paths to run an additional service.
This is actually a really good use of resources by the railway. If you made the 08:00 from Stoke reservation only then just imagine the negative publicity with everyone crammed onto the Northern trains at that time, as an 11 carriage fresh air express speeds past from London to Manchester. That would be very brand damaging for the railway.
- This model works well not only in Europe but also the US too for long distance journeys.
It is difficult making this comparison because in Europe and the US inter-city trains don't really provide local services as well. See my example above of where and why this happens in Britain.
- 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.
Ideally I agree but we generally don't have the available paths on our network to run additional trains. See my London to Manchester example above - other examples are available.
- 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.
In Britain the inter-city trains often double up as local services. For example Retford to Newark, Doncaster to York, Wakefield to Leeds. These are short distance journeys where the inter-city operator is also the main provider of local journeys. Ideally we'd run additional 'local' services but in many cases there aren't the paths or capacity available. If you insist on reservations to make the local journey good luck trying to enforce it at stations along the route, people will just board the train.
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.
That's going to be a problem, especially when there is disruption. I don't just mean mass disruption either. A 10 minute delay to a connecting service (a sort of routine delay if you like) can often cause a connection onto a long distance inter-city journey to be missed. What happens if the trains for the rest of the day are fully booked, especially if I'm at somewhere like Retford or Newark which are interchange station but not with the most frequent service or loads of staff about either to assist.