More dangerous overcrowding to the Westcountry

[whole diary]

[TaplowGreen]

The writer's questions in the last paragraph are answered by her statement in the second. he turned up with a walk-up ticket. The TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) has no idea what service she will use unless she reserves a seat. For as many of those who demand 'Reservation Only' trains, there's an equal amount who will decry the loss of a turn up and go railway.

Totally agree.

Those who require a seat on a specific train can reserve one.  

………….given that position, how do you ensure that those reservations are honoured on trains which are already packed beyond cattle truck conditions?

If that is the philosophy, people will quite rightly expect it. I have never seen a TM^‡(resolve) insist on someone moving from a seat on such a train (they are normally nowhere to be found in these circumstances), the only time I've seen anything close to it (ironically) was a TM publicly shaming two GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) employees discovered to be occupying 1st class seats on staff passes long after the announcement had been made for any doing so to give up those seats. The two concerned did not identify themselves until exposed by others.

So if you are going to say "those who require a seat on a specific train can reserve one", there needs to be a mechanism to ensure that having done so, they can occupy it for the duration of their journey.

[grahame]

So if you are going to say "those who require a seat on a specific train can reserve one", there needs to be a mechanism to ensure that having done so, they can occupy it for the duration of their journey.

I agree.

[TaplowGreen]

So if you are going to say "those who require a seat on a specific train can reserve one", there needs to be a mechanism to ensure that having done so, they can occupy it for the duration of their journey.

I agree.

Very helpful! 😂

[Umberleigh]

I am a strong believer in the principle of a walk up railway with no requirement to book.
As I have previously stated, I believe that sales of discounted advance tickets should be limited or even eliminated for services that are expected to be overcrowded.

I see no merit in the sale of discounted tickets when this results in the scenes described.

And as for the advice to book a seat, I very much doubt that so doing would have helped in the situation described.
At least twice I have booked a seat and found it taken by someone else who simply refused to move. On one journey the on board staff felt unable to intervene, on the other occasion I saw no staff.
Being reluctant to give the usurper a good thump, I had to stand to Taunton. And that was in first class, cattle class was presumably even worse.

On another occasion when I DID^» (Didcot Parkway - next trains) get my reserved seat, I was asked very firmly by the train manager to give it up  in order that a mother and baby could sit. Splendid value for over £150 to Taunton.
I was refused any refund for having to stand with a first class ticket.

Whilst most of my FGW^▸ (First Great Western)/GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) trips go very much better than that, this is only because I avoid days when the railway can not cope.

It will be interesting to see what happens when a single 5 car DMU^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit) turns up for a popular Penzance service !

Reading this you can see why the Flybe Exeter to London is still operating, despite forecasts on here that it wouldn’t last long. On the plane you don’t pay £150 and have to stand for over 2 hours, babies or no babies. I see Flybe have increased capacity on the Newquay route, too.

[TaplowGreen]

From what I understand National Express are considering a couple more daily services to Devon/Cornwall too.

[Umberleigh]

Just scrolled back to that Telegraph article. Hard to believe that someone named  Sophia Money-Coutts was travelling cattle class 

[devonexpress]

This is half the problem back in the original GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) days trains where extended and made more frequent down to the West, these days they can't make them longer just for that, and there isn't enough to increase to the frequency required, and because of other cheaper railway ticket sites, GWR can't control how many people will book for specific trains. Which has led to the common problem every year of massive amounts of passengers for 1 train, what would be an ideal solution is to run 1 train direct, non stop through Reading down to Exeter, and then run another service 5 or 10 minutes behind stopping at Reading and the common stops of Pewsey, Westbury etc.   I fear that because the railways don't tend to use logic anymore that won't happen, and the IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train)'s won't help much either, give or take a few years (or maybe months) and the problems will be back again.

[broadgage]

Reading this you can see why the Flybe Exeter to London is still operating, despite forecasts on here that it wouldn’t last long. On the plane you don’t pay £150 and have to stand for over 2 hours, babies or no babies. I see Flybe have increased capacity on the Newquay route, too.

Regretfully, I agree. I do not approve of air travel on account of the fuel used and pollution caused, but can see the attraction.
On an aircraft, you get a seat a seat. End of.

On a train, you MIGHT get a seat, but probably wont at busy times or during disruption.
No reservations if the train is half length
No reservations if there is not time to put them out.
No reservations if the system is broken.

And if the reservations HAVE been put out, they are not enforced at busy times.
And if by luck you get your reserved seat, you can still be told to vacate it if the train manager considers that someone else is more deserving.

With the recent downgrade to 5 car DMUs^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit), reservations have got much worse. Voided if the train is half length.
Voided if it is an HST^▸ (High Speed Train) instead of a new DMU.
And if it is a full length train, the reservation system may well be out of order.

Next time that I am asked to give up a reserved full fare seat, I may consider refusing. Especially as my later request for a refund was refused.

[grahame]

Reading this you can see why the Flybe Exeter to London is still operating, despite forecasts on here that it wouldn’t last long. On the plane you don’t pay £150 and have to stand for over 2 hours, babies or no babies. I see Flybe have increased capacity on the Newquay route, too.

Regretfully, I agree. I do not approve of air travel on account of the fuel used and pollution caused, but can see the attraction.
On an aircraft, you get a seat a seat. End of.

On a train, you MIGHT get a seat, but probably wont at busy times or during disruption ...

What a terrible picture you paint of rail travel. You're pretty accurate in your descriptions of the issues, and it's not so much of FlyBE being so good that it gains passengers, rather that the railways have been proving such a poor passenger experience that they're loosing it.   And it will take may years to regain the ground lost.

To be accurate, I suspect you probably WILL get a seat even at busy times ... I don't think that either HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) or IETs^▸ (Intercity Express Train) have enough standing capacity to carry more than twice the number of passenger than seats they have.  A train with 580 seats ain't going to physically take 1160 passengers.

[broadgage]

As you point out, statistically there should be a better than even chance of obtaining a seat.
That does however presume that one is being at least somewhat decent and honourable and is "playing by the rules"

Under the conditions that I have experienced, I probably COULD have got a seat by a combination of pushing, shoving, use of luggage as a battering ram, generally aggressive behaviour, and so on.
Rather than looking for the seat that I had booked, I would have done better to take the first empty seat, even if reserved by someone else, and simply refusing to move.
I would however be most reluctant to behave so badly.

In the interests of balance, I should point out that most of my journeys are in fact fine. But that is because I almost always plan ahead and avoid  holiday times etc.
Not everyone has this option, and many passengers have had worse experiences, or more frequent bad experiences, than I have had.

The recent downgrade from full length inter city trains to 5 car DMUs^▸ (Diesel Multiple Unit) has made a bad situation worse, both as regards actual capacity and the general non availability of reservations.
And remember that the downgrade of longer distance services has not yet started. 5 car DMUs on Penzance services next Easter or Summer should be interesting !

[grahame]

This is half the problem back in the original GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) days trains where extended and made more frequent down to the West, these days they can't make them longer just for that, and there isn't enough to increase to the frequency required, and because of other cheaper railway ticket sites, GWR can't control how many people will book for specific trains. Which has led to the common problem every year of massive amounts of passengers for 1 train, what would be an ideal solution is to run 1 train direct, non stop through Reading down to Exeter, and then run another service 5 or 10 minutes behind stopping at Reading and the common stops of Pewsey, Westbury etc.   I fear that because the railways don't tend to use logic anymore that won't happen, and the IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train)'s won't help much either, give or take a few years (or maybe months) and the problems will be back again.

Are the peaks and troughs of the Regional needs the same as the peaks and troughs of the InterCity needs?

The logic you're looking at would lead to a clock face service something like this:





Which would be one extra diagram over the sort of thing proposed for (now) May 2019. Peak hour / start and end of service trains would still use the Bedwyn turn back, but otherwise the regional train would in effect be an extension of the old NSE^▸ (Network South East) trains that just made it into Wiltshire.  The HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) / slam door trains, with their diesel engines and extended station duties as the conductor checks the whole train at unstaffed stations, make the few Berks and Hants trains that serve stations both east and west of Bedwyn feel incredibly slow, but with the IETs (no matter how hard the seats, how short, how lacking buffets) you have something which overcomes these issues, and could progressively overcome them even further if you electrified short sections through plain-track stations such as Kintbury, Hungerford, Pewsey, Devizes Parkway and Bruton.

Note - my software is somewhat basic.  The regional IET that arrives at Exeter St Davids at :05 from London carries on at :15 to Paignton, having been overtaken at :10 by a stop in the intercity IET.   Same in reverse - the :35 arrival from Paignton carrying on at :45 as the London regional, with a call at :40 by the intercity express up from Plymouth and beyond.

There are lots of exciting new market opportunities if you run something like this, and some challenges too such as working out connections at Exeter for and from Exmouth and Barnstaple whilst remaining excellent on those lines within the hour for local traffic.

[grahame]

So if you are going to say "those who require a seat on a specific train can reserve one", there needs to be a mechanism to ensure that having done so, they can occupy it for the duration of their journey.

I agree.

Very helpful! 😂

Not sure what that smiley is.  Perhaps you're suggesting I should speculate on a method of ensuring that the seat reservation system works "properly". 

I'm attracted to the idea of specific coaches always being for passengers with reservations only. But I have reservations about such a scheme (sorry about the pun) under the current setup where open ticketed passengers can reserve a seat on the train they're most likely to take, but can just abandon that reservation at no penalty.  Combined with a system of purely reserve coaches, this current setup would result in far too many unused seats in the "reservation only" carriages.

I hate to suggest it - but change seat reservations on open tickets into a low fee, none-refundable, charge.  With entire carriages given over to reservations, those last minute during-journey reservations we mostly hate would become practical - I could grab a seat in my app as I headed for Paddington t ensure a seat on the train due out in half an hour ...

Of course, before implementing, performance standards need a good kick upwards to ensure that the new system is implemented on a secure footing.

[TaplowGreen]

Graham - please don't take offence - it was more about the substance of my question to you about the practicalities of how reservations would be enforced on cattle truck packed trains apparently being ignored after you had asserted that "Those who require a seat on a specific train can reserve one" - do feel free to have another go! 

[grahame]

Graham - please don't take offence - it was more about the substance of my question to you about the practicalities of how reservations would be enforced on cattle truck packed trains apparently being ignored after you had asserted that "Those who require a seat on a specific train can reserve one" - do feel free to have another go! 

Offence utterly not taken.   Indeed - thank you for the hook on which to hang a follow up answer  . My original reply just a short direction pointer rather that diluting the key point I was making into a (slightly) longer description of one possible way of doing it, which I provided in the follow up.  I'm no way an expert (as a user or in how it works) of reservation systems, so will leave it for those with more experience to make best suggestions.  I do know that the current system leaves a lot to be desired, and cannot adequately cope in current times.

[devonexpress]

This is half the problem back in the original GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) days trains where extended and made more frequent down to the West, these days they can't make them longer just for that, and there isn't enough to increase to the frequency required, and because of other cheaper railway ticket sites, GWR can't control how many people will book for specific trains. Which has led to the common problem every year of massive amounts of passengers for 1 train, what would be an ideal solution is to run 1 train direct, non stop through Reading down to Exeter, and then run another service 5 or 10 minutes behind stopping at Reading and the common stops of Pewsey, Westbury etc.   I fear that because the railways don't tend to use logic anymore that won't happen, and the IET^▸ (Intercity Express Train)'s won't help much either, give or take a few years (or maybe months) and the problems will be back again.

Are the peaks and troughs of the Regional needs the same as the peaks and troughs of the InterCity needs?

The logic you're looking at would lead to a clock face service something like this:





Which would be one extra diagram over the sort of thing proposed for (now) May 2019. Peak hour / start and end of service trains would still use the Bedwyn turn back, but otherwise the regional train would in effect be an extension of the old NSE^▸ (Network South East) trains that just made it into Wiltshire.  The HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) / slam door trains, with their diesel engines and extended station duties as the conductor checks the whole train at unstaffed stations, make the few Berks and Hants trains that serve stations both east and west of Bedwyn feel incredibly slow, but with the IETs (no matter how hard the seats, how short, how lacking buffets) you have something which overcomes these issues, and could progressively overcome them even further if you electrified short sections through plain-track stations such as Kintbury, Hungerford, Pewsey, Devizes Parkway and Bruton.

Note - my software is somewhat basic.  The regional IET that arrives at Exeter St Davids at :05 from London carries on at :15 to Paignton, having been overtaken at :10 by a stop in the intercity IET.   Same in reverse - the :35 arrival from Paignton carrying on at :45 as the London regional, with a call at :40 by the intercity express up from Plymouth and beyond.

There are lots of exciting new market opportunities if you run something like this, and some challenges too such as working out connections at Exeter for and from Exmouth and Barnstaple whilst remaining excellent on those lines within the hour for local traffic.

Excuse me if im being stupid here Grahame, but what your suggesting is nothing like what im talking about. Im meaning two express trains, one going direct to the South West, and the following service 5 or 10 minutes later being an overfill and taking passengers off the fast train for stations such as Westbury & Taunton. This would help with the overcrowding issues on many of the busy services.   The main problem I see with the IET's is even in 9 or 10 car the capacity will soon be used up (because everyone will still want the direct service). Even with a regulary timetable it won't change much, because what's needed is one train specifically for the far South West, and the other for Wiltshire/Somerset, effectively splitting the current train loads in half.