Great Western Coffee Shop

Walking down the 1415 Padd to Cardiff on Friday, trying to find an unreserved seat, which were as rare as hens' teeth, it occurred to me that online purchasing is making this problem worse. Once the train departed of course many of the seats remained untaken. I expect they had bought flexible tickets, chosen a return train closest to when they thought they would be travelling, and automatically got a reservation for that one. The booking systems almost force you down that route.

Has the time come to start charging for reservations again? It only need be a nominal sum, say 50p, to encourage people on flexible tickets to only reserve a seat if they intend to travel on that service.  If there are accusations of profiteering (which there almost inevitably would be) then the base fare could be reduced by around 30p, to balance out and make the overall cost approximately revenue neutral.

I don't think charging is the answer.

Mixing Deck booking engines default to 'no reservation' when selecting a walk-up ticket. trainline based engines offer a Yes/No question with no default selected. Perhaps the prompt to reserve a seat when  a walk-up ticket is selected could be worded better ("Only select 'Yes' if you intend using your selected service") and trainline should also default to no.

As for expecting flexible tickets had been purchased, there's no way of knowing that from a reservation slip. Equally possible that unclaimed seats are Advance Purchase (or walk-up) ticket holders who've chosen to sit elsewhere or someone who's chosen not to travel.

If I don't have a reservation and see an unoccupied seat with a slip, I look at the details and if the origin station has already been passed, or it's an origin after my destination, I take the seat.

The apps are the problem, aren't they. I think they automatically reserve on services chosen, even if its a flex ticket