Seat Reservations on FGW

[whole diary]

[Glovidge]

It annoys me that people sit in (my) allocated reserved seats. Especially if you have been allocated a seat already. And particularly when the Paddington to Swansea train has little seating capacity left for whatever reason. Then when embarking at Reading or wherever one has to get into an exchange about how you're sitting in my seat. Invariably they have loads of luggage or are a few sandwiches short of a picnic and I end up somewhere other than my allocated seat. I can't be bothered telling the TM^‡(resolve) most of the time (if they come round)

Why issue seat reservations if they are not adhered to? As train companies are so fond of telling us the booking in advance system is a bit like airlines. Hence if that airline had alloacted me a seat I would expect to sit in it. On trains however around 20% of the time I am not in my allocated seat.

How much does it cost to print out seat reservations? How much money could be saved? How long does it take to put the reservations in place etc etc? Seems like a complete waste of manhours and paper to me.

[Timmer]

Other TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) should follow SWT^▸ (South West Trains)'s excellent example and just do away with seat reservations completely. Think of the money the TOCs would save. Get on a train, find a seat and sit in it! Having to watch people faff about all the time looking for their reserved seat when there is a carriage of unreserved seats they could sit in. You just want to say 'just sit down will you!'

I'm sure it's been mentioned here before that it would also cut down on delaying services as whilst people are looking for their reserved seats other passengers can't move down the train meaning passengers waiting on the platform can't board the train thus delaying the service. Places like Reading would be a good example I suspect.

And before anyone mentions about Granny needing a seat, if she is unfortunate enough to be travelling XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)), the chances of her getting anywhere near her reserved seat at times would be pretty slim unless Granny was on the train at the start of the journey in which case she could take her pick of where to sit.

[matt473]

Other TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company) should follow SWT^▸ (South West Trains)'s excellent example and just do away with seat reservations completely. Think of the money the TOCs would save. Get on a train, find a seat and sit in it! Having to watch people faff about all the time looking for their reserved seat when there is a carriage of unreserved seats they could sit in. You just want to say 'just sit down will you!'

I disagree with that simply because of the reason of commuters versus leisure travellers. Commuters will charge onto a train for a seat (probably a table seat) travelling as far as Reading/Swindon etc. leaving those with luggage, kids etc. to struggle on finding few seats dspite having tickets booked for weeks and travelling further afield having to stand for a large chunk, if not for the whole journey. This would ultimately lead to many people deciding not to use the railway.

I will agree though that local services could probably do without reservations but the problem is defining a local service as would people class Cardiff to Portsmouth as a local service or not?