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seat reservation displays

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caliwag

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Hope I'm not missing an earlier thread on this, but am I the only one that absolutely loathes those minute illuminated reservation displays in modern stock?

If there are any rolling stock designers or senior managers, who will all travel first class anyway! reading this, please bring back the paper tickets or similar flag...I don't care how it's done but the most important thing by a long way is to flag up reserved seats, visually as soon as you enter the carriage...one glance and you can see empty seats. (how long has the paper system been employed? The current system for half the poplulation means putting down your luggage, fiddling with spectacles and peering at the tiny scrolling screen...now whose daft idea was all that?

By the time you've carried out all that activity, an impatient queue will have built up behind the seat enquirer, and as we are becoming a fatter nation, and with all that luggage on a long distance, there is often no way round, so paper tickets on backs of seats please from now on! Thanks.
 
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Hope I'm not missing an earlier thread on this, but am I the only one that absolutely loathes those minute illuminated reservation displays in modern stock?

If there are any rolling stock designers or senior managers, who will all travel first class anyway! reading this, please bring back the paper tickets or similar flag...I don't care how it's done but the most important thing by a long way is to flag up reserved seats, visually as soon as you enter the carriage...one glance and you can see empty seats. (how long has the paper system been employed? The current system for half the poplulation means putting down your luggage, fiddling with spectacles and peering at the tiny scrolling screen...now whose daft idea was all that?

By the time you've carried out all that activity, an impatient queue will have built up behind the seat enquirer, and as we are becoming a fatter nation, and with all that luggage on a long distance, there is often no way round, so paper tickets on backs of seats please from now on! Thanks.


I've noticed them in use for the first time this week on XC HSTs. They're a lot clearer than the voyager ones, with a simple 'Reserved until Cheltenham' or 'Reserved from Derby' on them, with a blue screen - much clearer than the dim ones found on 22x.

Also of note was the way that the paper lables were still used... obviously they don't trust the system completely yet...
 

Greenback

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There is nothing much wrong with electronic displays as such, it is mroe the way that they have been implemented with tny screens and unreadable scrolling displays.
 

MCR247

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Hmm I'm half and half about them. I think they could be implemented better. For example I think a system which uses LEDs that are able to support different colours would be helpful

ie

[Red square] Reserved until Newcastle
[Orange square] Reserved from Darlington
[Green square] Unreserved

I do think that if implemented properly they are better than paper reservations because:

please bring back the paper tickets or similar flag...I don't care how it's done but the most important thing by a long way is to flag up reserved seats, visually as soon as you enter the carriage...one glance and you can see empty seats.

I don't believe that that is a good thing. It often leads to unreserved carriages being overcrowded, and carriages with reservations being unnecessarily empty. People take one look at a carriage and see reservation tickets and move on because "all of the seats are reserved" which isn't particularly useful. Really loads of the "reserved" seats with tags may not be reserved yet but it puts passengers off.

For example at Kings Cross, I boarded quite late onto an EC service and Coach B was rammed and we wouldn't have been able to sit together but in coach D i believe it was we got a table of four because they were ""reserved"". Yeah, but from Durham - Dundee or something, we were only going to Grantham
 

snail

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There is nothing much wrong with electronic displays as such, it is mroe the way that they have been implemented with tny screens and unreadable scrolling displays.
Virgin seem to have abandoned scrolling displays now on their WC Voyagers in favour of the equally useless 'Reserved' or 'Available' display that tells you nothing should you be boarding at an intermediate station about whether the seat was reserved but hasn't been occupied or could become reserved later in the journey.
 

caliwag

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OK, I understand that the design of the scrolling displays is not that clever, and I agree passengers haven't quite got used to finding a better seat, it's just us savvy travellers who can spot what is happening.

My point remains that you clamber aboard, say Derby on a XC to the coast, you haven't booked, one glance down a carriage, even from the outside, gives you a clue where there are empty seats. With the tiny screens (very neat, don't get me wrong) you stop and start clogging up the whole queue...fiddling with glasses, wondering whether Taunton is before or after your destination etc etc...shambles: just like a digital clock needs to be thought about whereas a sweep hand is just instinctively recognised!

Sad to hear that XC 125s are using the little screens. I was going to cite them as a strike against silly technology. Just watch next time there is clutter at the coach entrances...OK occasional passengers, doing the long distance usually book, but not all.
Probably my 'don't believe it' rant!
 

WillPS

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I don't have any problem seeing "Unreserved" (rather than a long string of text starting with "Reserved from...."), even at distance.

The problem of wondering whether Taunton is before or after your destination exists with paper tickets as well.
 

caliwag

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Agreed...my point is, one quick glance down the carriage and you can see every seat has a ticket, so you perhaps try another carriage. As I say with paper tickets you can see from the platform which coaches are ticketed.
I suppose I'm talking about 'every day' trains, not holiday time workings...even the FGW timetable highlights 'reservations necessary'.

Anyway, I won't go on, just observe as a sort of industry insider!:lol:
 

6Gman

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There is one significant problem with paper labels. The unscrupulous can remove them, screw them up ... "no seat reservation here mate, and I'm not moving".
 

MCR247

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Agreed...my point is, one quick glance down the carriage and you can see every seat has a ticket, so you perhaps try another carriage. As I say with paper tickets you can see from the platform which coaches are ticketed.

But that just results in people crowding to one carriage because there is a load of seats elsewhere that are ""reserved" when they aren't
 

jon0844

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Besides illuminating the displays in different colours, why not have coloured LEDs above the seats to show unreserved seats so you can see from far away? Like some new car parks (e.g. Heathrow T5).

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
 
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How about three colour illumination for visibility at a distance with text for more information.

Green = unreserved, free for the remainder of the journey.
Amber = reserved from a later station - the text tells you when it is reserved from. Maybe even including the booking reference or part of the passenger's name, e.g. Doncaster, Smith.
Red = reserved from this station, plus booking reference.

Nice and clear. If you've booked you know you're looking for a red light. If you haven't you know you can sit in an amber or green seat. But if you're in the former you need to be prepared to move.

Probably too costly to implement but surely worth it.
 

jon0844

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That's what I'd propose too. The amber would mean seats wouldn't be left empty any longer than necessary.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
 

mallard

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I don't understand this at all. To work out whether a seat with a paper reservation slip is actually "reserved" at the moment, you have to peer at the poorly-printed, small text that says where it's reserved to and from, possibly requiring you to physically pick up the slip, if the printing is too low on the paper. It's much easier to read the displays.

Not to mention that some operators aren't very good at removing the slips at the end of the journey, so the reservations might not even be for the current service!

Being able to look down the carriage and see the reservation slips is only useful if you're boarding at the train's origin and travelling all the way to the terminus!
 
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