All reserved seats?

[47137]

For most people, the train is something to take you from where you aren't to where you don't want to be. The service in Britain is so bad (infrequent connecting services, late running, cancellations, bizarre pricing) I don't think it can withstand any more conditions of travel.

 

- Richard.

[jim.snowdon]

51 minutes ago, caradoc said:

One part of the scheme is to discourage use of long distance services by commuters by altering stopping patterns; So would Virgin no longer stop say at Coventry or Birmingham International, or Stockport ?

There were, and still are, trains that have timetabled stops to pick up or set down only, the purpose of which is to discourage the use of those trains by short distance commuters. 

 

Jim 

[melmerby]

There would have to some change in the regulations in "Metro" controlled areas where train tickets within the area are valid for all services by all operators (except on HS1?)

If I am travelling around the Network West Midlands area on the ex LMS route I buy a ticket and get on the first train that comes from any of up to 4 operators and I imagine that except for those on regular commutes this is how most people do it.

Sometimes you get a seat, sometimes you don't.

[jjb1970]

22 minutes ago, 47137 said:

For most people, the train is something to take you from where you aren't to where you don't want to be. The service in Britain is so bad (infrequent connecting services, late running, cancellations, bizarre pricing) I don't think it can withstand any more conditions of travel.

 

- Richard.

 

I think that's rather unfair. Service levels will vary by route but the principal trunk routes tend to have a very intensive service and many secondary routes have good service. While our trains aren't perfect, for the most part they are comfortable if you get a seat, and if you commute in rush hour it is unfortunately difficult to avoid crush loading given routes are often operating at capacity. Certainly if I compare it with other railways around the world the only one I'd rank higher than ours overall is Japan (although some of the services in China are now superb).

[APOLLO]

Crewe - Warrington - Wigan is served ONLY by Virgin trains - all long distance. Agree there are not many commuters on this stretch, but how would they cope with needing reservations ?

 

Yesterday I took my sister to Wigan NW to reserve a seat for today on the Blackpool London Pendolino service. The train was cancelled, so luckily she waited 20 mins and got an (unreserved) seat on the next Glasgow - London service. SO - what about train cancellations if the next train(s) is (are) all reserved ?

 

Brit15

[jjb1970]

15 minutes ago, jim.snowdon said:

There were, and still are, trains that have timetabled stops to pick up or set down only, the purpose of which is to discourage the use of those trains by short distance commuters. 

 

Jim 

 

Alas, I am one of the guilty parties using long distance inter city trains to commute. I got so fed up of the abysmal ride quality of the Class 350's I switched from Bletchley to MK Central so I could avoid them.

[Davey]

Now the lunatics have really taken over the asylum,.

[APOLLO]

There is a book about it !!!!

 

 

Brit15

[brianusa]

This is a bind that 'progress' and the railways have created for themselves.  While passenger numbers have increased in recent years, stock to carry them in haven't increased exponentially; in other words there aren't enough 'carriages'!  While this was not a problem in days of railway yore, there were always a few carriages in a siding somewhere whereas today with fixed sets there are none to tack on the rear of a passenger train.  Indeed, there are few sidings to park them on!  Hence overcrowding!  Also having a two or three unit to run a longer distance than a commute is obviously not going to work.  These are the situations that the public perceive to be wrong with British railways, ever increasing fares with little or no improvement in service.  Already the successors to the HSTs have generated moans and discussions, even on these pages.

       Brian.

[corneliuslundie]

Cross-Country already allows seat reservations after the train has started its journey. It can be a real pain, as one can find an unreserved seat at, say, Birmingham NS only for a passenger with a reservation to get on at Derby.

And what happens if your journey starts at a station without a booking office to buy the ticket and make the seat reservation? Not everyone uses smart phones - and around here there is often no reception anyway?

Jonathan

[jjb1970]

10 minutes ago, brianusa said:

This is a bind that 'progress' and the railways have created for themselves.  While passenger numbers have increased in recent years, stock to carry them in haven't increased exponentially; in other words there aren't enough 'carriages'!  While this was not a problem in days of railway yore, there were always a few carriages in a siding somewhere whereas today with fixed sets there are none to tack on the rear of a passenger train.  Indeed, there are few sidings to park them on!  Hence overcrowding!  Also having a two or three unit to run a longer distance than a commute is obviously not going to work.  These are the situations that the public perceive to be wrong with British railways, ever increasing fares with little or no improvement in service.  Already the successors to the HSTs have generated moans and discussions, even on these pages.

       Brian.

 

I don't think it is rolling stock capacity but track capacity. If I stand on the platform at Milton Keynes Central and watch trains passing through it is almost constant, and even outside of rush hour the number of trains using the WCML is staggering. At rush hour many of the trains are already 12 car trains and I don't think platforms can accommodate 16 cars. And the WCML isn't unique, it's a very intensive service.

[phil-b259]

3 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

Cross-Country already allows seat reservations after the train has started its journey. It can be a real pain, as one can find an unreserved seat at, say, Birmingham NS only for a passenger with a reservation to get on at Derby.

And what happens if your journey starts at a station without a booking office to buy the ticket and make the seat reservation? Not everyone uses smart phones - and around here there is often no reception anyway?

Jonathan

 

If the station has no ticket machine (its perfectly possible for ticket machines to sell you a seat reservation) or staffed ticket office then you have to buy from the conductor / guard once you board. Subject to suitable devices being supplied to said staff member by the TOC, there is no reason why they cannot also sell you a seat reservation (which is uploaded to the ticket selling software in real time to prevent duplicate reservations).

 

In the internet age, the expectation that seat reservations are something that must never change after the train has departed its first station just so intermediate boarders don't get turfed out of their seat is outdated.

[phil-b259]

14 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

 

I don't think it is rolling stock capacity but track capacity. If I stand on the platform at Milton Keynes Central and watch trains passing through it is almost constant, and even outside of rush hour the number of trains using the WCML is staggering. At rush hour many of the trains are already 12 car trains and I don't think platforms can accommodate 16 cars. And the WCML isn't unique, it's a very intensive service.

 

I imagine the poster is thinking more along the lines of cross country services like Manchester to Nottingham which are usually only a 2 / 3 car DMU and can get very busy. Some of these services could probably be strengthened (note this is dependent on the platform capacity of larger stations - particularly where platform sharing is necessary) if the will was there  but with the DfT fixing the number of trains a TOC can lease to minimise HM Treasury expenditure there is not a lot TOCs can do.

 

As noted most trains on the WCML are already the maximum length they can be at peak times (while the Thameslink network ends up running lots of half empty 12 car services off peak due to the use of a single 8 / 12car unit)

 

Folk should note I have NOT mentioned the Cross Country franchise because the biggest reason why they HAVE to use short trains is the need to platform share at (Birmingham New Street) or use shortish bay platforms (Reading)

 

 

 

 

Edited April 24, 2019 by phil-b259

[47137]

1 hour ago, 47137 said:

For most people, the train is something to take you from where you aren't to where you don't want to be. The service in Britain is so bad (infrequent connecting services, late running, cancellations, bizarre pricing) I don't think it can withstand any more conditions of travel.

 

- Richard.

 

1 hour ago, jjb1970 said:

 

I think that's rather unfair. Service levels will vary by route but the principal trunk routes tend to have a very intensive service and many secondary routes have good service. While our trains aren't perfect, for the most part they are comfortable if you get a seat, and if you commute in rush hour it is unfortunately difficult to avoid crush loading given routes are often operating at capacity. Certainly if I compare it with other railways around the world the only one I'd rank higher than ours overall is Japan (although some of the services in China are now superb).

 

Well ... I am writing from my own experiences of long-distance travel in the last 18 years, which always end with a trip across London and an hourly service out to my local station. A single four-hour leg e.g. KX to Edinburgh can be a pleasure , but a four-hour trip from Bristol to Essex can become six hours extremely easily - just a delay into Paddington and a cancellation out of LST. And hardly surprisingly, I take the car for maybe five long trips out of six.

 

Regarding fares - earlier this year I had to travel Essex to Shropshire to attend a funeral and thought a couple of first class tickets would be good. Four hundred and ninety-six pounds was asked for the two of us. The major leg here being by Virgin trains. I think 'bizarre' is being a bit soft - more like diabolical. I took the car.

 

- Richard.

[Zomboid]

Having recent experience, immediate reservations work on shinkansen on the basis that on (for example) an 8 car Sakura, cars 1-3 are for passengers without reservations, and 4-8 are reservation only. So if you don't have a reservation you don't bother with cars 4-8.

I think if you don't have a tourist JR Pass then you have to pay the base fare and a limited express supplement to access the shinkansen platforms, and then a seat reservation is more again. But since the system is computerised and the seats aren't labelled, they can issue reservations for a train that departs in a few minutes.

They do permit standing, and for the trains which are reservation only, you can buy a standing reservation once all the seats are gone (I guess they'd limit the number that they sell). It seems to work pretty well, as Japan's reputation would attest. (Though their punctuality would seem to be driven in part by not especially ambitious schedules, especially on the regular lines).

 

I guess it also works because the trains that you can reserve seats for are actually provided with enough carriages and seats for the demand in the most part (the 16 car trains on the Tokaido - Sanyo shinkansen, and the 17 car trains on the Tohoku shinkansen are really quite impressive things as they blast through at 150mph+), unlike cross country and VT.

[caradoc]

1 hour ago, jim.snowdon said:

There were, and still are, trains that have timetabled stops to pick up or set down only, the purpose of which is to discourage the use of those trains by short distance commuters. 

 

Jim 

 

Indeed, and Virgin do use this, mainly for the Watford Jc and the odd Milton Keynes stops. However other short distance flows do not have this restriction, such as the Coventry/Birmingham/Wolverhampton corridor.

[jim.snowdon]

7 minutes ago, caradoc said:

 

Indeed, and Virgin do use this, mainly for the Watford Jc and the odd Milton Keynes stops. However other short distance flows do not have this restriction, such as the Coventry/Birmingham/Wolverhampton corridor.

As do Great Western for certain evening peak trains out of Paddington which stop at Slough to set down only.

 

Peak period overloading on the Birmingham - Coventry corridor, at least, is almost certainly down to a lack of line capacity, coupled with their being no practical means for easily terminating trains at Coventry. Short of four-tracking between there and Birmingham and redeveloping Coventry station (assuming that it would be physically practicable), there probably isn't much that can be done about it, other than building the relief line that is HS2 (not that I think the country needs an even higher speed line, just a WCML relief line at mor enormal speeds).

 

Jim

[ejstubbs]

4 hours ago, Arun Sharma said:

The system Virgin propose is of course currently used pretty successfully on National Express coaches up and down the country.

 

I believe that NatEx and Megabus have the capability to run an extra coach if demand is high enough to fill the first one.  So long as they can find a vehicle and a driver, they don't need a path for it, they just stick it out on the road.  I doubt there's capacity on many of the UK's busier rail routes to allow extra trains to run on spec like  that.  And modern passenger stock operation methods don't make it straightforward to just stick an extra carriage or two on a train in high demand (though in theory it might be possible to put two units on a service that that normally runs as just one - always assuming that the extra unit is available).

[melmerby]

2 hours ago, jim.snowdon said:

 

 

Peak period overloading on the Birmingham - Coventry corridor, at least, is almost certainly down to a lack of line capacity, coupled with their being no practical means for easily terminating trains at Coventry.

 

Jim

I can't understand what you mean as Coventry has 4 platforms all of which are signalled for use in the both directions to enable terminating and reversal.

Some Birmingham trains do terminate at Coventry & reverse as well as all the Nuneaton trains & Leamington trains

 

The idea of 4 tracking (from Rugby to Brum) has been on and off the menu ever since I got interested in railways 60+ years ago

Edited April 24, 2019 by melmerby

[locoholic]

7 hours ago, melmerby said:

 

The idea of 4 tracking (from Rugby to Brum) has been on and off the menu ever since I got interested in railways 60+ years ago

But is now presumably permanently off the menu due to HS2?

[jim.snowdon]

8 hours ago, melmerby said:

I can't understand what you mean as Coventry has 4 platforms all of which are signalled for use in the both directions to enable terminating and reversal.

Some Birmingham trains do terminate at Coventry & reverse as well as all the Nuneaton trains & Leamington trains

 

The idea of 4 tracking (from Rugby to Brum) has been on and off the menu ever since I got interested in railways 60+ years ago

I'm happy to stand corrected in regard to the layout at Coventry.

 

Jim 

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, locoholic said:

But is now presumably permanently off the menu due to HS2?

Definitely.

[corneliuslundie]

If we want to get people out of cars and into trains we need to provide an on-demand service. They can get in their cars and go just when they like, no preplanning needed. If that is not offered by the railway it will simply lose traffic to the roads. And that is the last thing the country wants.

And I suspect that even the politicians are not keen on funding lots of road upgrades for which there is zero return on investment.

Jonathan

[phil-b259]

9 hours ago, melmerby said:

I can't understand what you mean as Coventry has 4 platforms all of which are signalled for use in the both directions to enable terminating and reversal.

Some Birmingham trains do terminate at Coventry & reverse as well as all the Nuneaton trains & Leamington trains

 

The idea of 4 tracking (from Rugby to Brum) has been on and off the menu ever since I got interested in railways 60+ years ago

 

Just because Coventry has 4 platforms doesn't necessarily mean it  has much spare capacity to terminate stuff - it and Birmingham international are the only two places fast trains can overtake slower ones on the busy double track route between Rugby and Birmingham New Street.

 

This is why there are plans for an additional short bay platform to be installed on the north side for an enhanced Coventry - Nuneaton service as it keeps said trains out of the main station.

 

Incidentally, the same problem manifested itself back in the 1930s at Haywards Heath on the BML and in a bid to prevent trains clogging up the only passing place between Brighton and Three Bridges the Southern Railways solution was to extend the 3rd rail over to Horsted Keynes thus providing somewhere for the Seaford service to terminate off the main line as well as preventing the need for a HK - HH service getting in the way too.

[woodenhead]

16 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

If we want to get people out of cars and into trains we need to provide an on-demand service. They can get in their cars and go just when they like, no preplanning needed. If that is not offered by the railway it will simply lose traffic to the roads. And that is the last thing the country wants.

And I suspect that even the politicians are not keen on funding lots of road upgrades for which there is zero return on investment.

Jonathan

Maybe Virgin know this..

 

Haven't they just bought Flybe to add to their Connect Regional Air service - ruin the railways and boost their internal air routes.