Standby for lower fares and a more comfortable journey

[whole diary]

[grahame]

-- embargo until 00:01 - 1st April 2016 / http://www.gettinghere.info/standby

From Sunday, 15th May 2016, Great Western Railway will be offering standby tickets to major destinations from London Paddington. Booking ahead, passengers will check in at Paddington on their chosen day with a promise of a low price seat to their destination by the end of the day.

Available for purchase in limited numbers from a month before travel, these tickets are expected to sell out fast.  With a fare of just ^34 to Exeter St David's or to Swansea, ^29 to Taunton or Cardiff Central, ^24 to Bath Spa or Bristol Temple Meads, ^19 to Swindon or Chippenham. Individual rail card discounts will apply. Price includs PlusBus onward travel upon arrival at destination station. Standby tickets are a great money-saving way to get away from London when you've finished you're through with your business there.

Simply check in to the advance ticket desk at Paddington, situated on platform 1, and you'll be given a numbered boarding card. Numbers will be called between five and fifteen minutes before your train's due to depart, and you can then board and select any of the available unreserved seats on the train. "Provided you check in at least 4 hours before the final high speed departure of the day to your destination, we promise we'll get you on the way from Paddington by the end of the day.  Checkin opens at 06:00 each morning, and we'll also promise a maximum wait of 8 hours." explains Customer Service Manager Sharon Jones

"Although overcrowded trains make the headlines" says Ismbard Walkwell of Great Western "the fact is that over a quarter of the seats on our trains leaving Paddington through the day remain empty. By using standby seats - a well tested airline tool - we can increase the number of passengers carried, and do so with more travel comfort and at excellent prices as we make more efficient use of current resource".

"It's good to see Great Western are to boost their business on quieter train, and the traders around Paddington are looking forward to it" says Alf Murphy, owner of "The Tipsy Traveller" in Praed Street.

---

Note for editors:

Final trains:
- 21:45 to Taunton and Exeter / checkin by 17:45
- 22:45 to Cardiff and Swansea / checkin by 18:45
- 23:30 to Swindon, Chippenham, Bath Spa and  Bristol / checkin by 19:30

Late afternoon and early evening trains from London's Paddington station are often very busy, and the new "Standby Fare" offers a comfortable journey for those who are not in a hurry. Later evening trains offer a more relaxed journey, with seats for all and often a more leisurly schedule for you to relax and enjoy the journey.

Boarding card numbers will be called in sequence for trains with available seats, and will be displayed on departure boards and a mobile phone app which will estimate your wait time too.

Bookings only via the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) web site, GWR telesales, or in person at the booking office in Paddington.  Standby tickets are offored for for travel in standard class only.

Advance Fares, offering low prices in limited numbers on a specific train, remain available as an alternative product for passengers who can accurately plan their arrival at Paddington.

Passengers checking in after the final train deadline will be carried if there is sufficient allocation of seats available that evening, or will be refunded their ticket price minus a ^10 admin fee upon departure of the final train if capacity was not available.

-- embargo until 00:01 - 1st April 2016 / http://www.gettinghere.info/standby

[eightf48544]

Posted on the right day!

[Timmer]

Posted on the right day!

Yup

[Tim]

Interesting.  Although how will FGW^▸ (First Great Western) know how many spare seats there are on a service until it is loaded and the doors lock I don't know. 

[ChrisB]

Tim hasn't spotted the date....

[didcotdean]

Pick your own bowl of spaghetti included.

[jdw.wor]

Looks authentic, right down to the two typos!

[stuving]

In this case, a bit of thread drift seems inevitable - even de rigueur - here's RATP's contribution this morning:


English news report here, and RATP's own explanation (some of them are rather obscure unless you had a French childhood).

[JayMac]

The Virgin Trains East Coast effort:

https://www.virgintrainseastcoast.com/news/virgin-trains-introduces-flying-scotsman-to-the-commuter-route/

And Visit Scotland told of plans for a fourth Forth Bridge:

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/revealed-ambitious-plans-fourth-bridge-7663166#CZtl0bVUswx8McKj.97

RailUK Forums entered into the spirit by replacing their semaphore topic markers with TVM^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) 430 block markers.

[Tim]

Tim hasn't spotted the date....

kicking myself.

[stuving]

I did wonder about the piece quoted in the OP^▸ (Original Poster / topic starter) - was it a case of "but there's a serious side to this too"? I mean:

1. A compulsory seat reservation with a ticket is equivalent to an airline ticket (even on Air Bunfight you have a guaranteed seat, you just don't know which). On that basis an ordinary train ticket is standby. You are not picked off a list to board, it's just a matter of the compressibility of the passenger substance*.

2. If it was felt necessary to limit excess passenger numbers below that level, how would you do it? One way might be to say "you can stand if you like, but it's first come first served". You probably wouldn't now pick a number out of one of those deli counter machines, it would be some gizmoid equivalent. That would be a sort of standby.

And remember - an SET^▸ (Super Express Train (now IET)) can count passengers, and probably could e-mail the ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) if overloaded.

*Technical note: the passenger substance does exhibit a number of phases, but no clear boundaries or transitions. It is best treated as supercritical.

[JayMac]

*Technical note: the passenger substance does exhibit a number of phases, but no clear boundaries or transitions. It is best treated as supercritical.

Is this supercriticality affected by the fact that some passengers have more substance (i.e. are more substantial) than others?

[stuving]

*Technical note: the passenger substance does exhibit a number of phases, but no clear boundaries or transitions. It is best treated as supercritical.

Is this supercriticality affected by the fact that some passengers have more substance (i.e. are more substantial) than others?

No, not very much - though it may affect reaction dynamics a bit. Of course that's straying into the field of chemistry, where the compatibility of the different agents, and how heated they get, has a much greater effect on whether the reaction proceeds to completion, and if it is explosive or merely bubbles.

[ellendune]

*Technical note: the passenger substance does exhibit a number of phases, but no clear boundaries or transitions. It is best treated as supercritical.

/Pedant alert/

Does this mean that passenger substance has a Froude number > 1?. It is therefore shallow and fast flowing and influenced only by what has occurred upstream rather than downstream. What is the equivalent sub-critical substance (i.e. Froude number < 1)? as when they meet we must expect a massive standing wave (I mean "stopper" if you are into white water canoeing). 

/End/

[stuving]

"Oh dear! Does that mean we ought to find out something about the transport properties of the passenger substance?"

"No. It's always going to supercritical, whatever you do and however you try to analyse and predict its behaviour."