Great Western Coffee Shop

Same-day advance tickets are to be trialled by GWR between 20th June and 25th of July.

Like Crosscountry same-day advance tickets, these will be available on the app, at a ticket office or via the GWR website and have the same T&Cs as normal advance tickets.

They will NOT have a specific seat reserved, but WILL be booked train only.

For TOD from website/app - available up to 1 hour before departure
For Mobile ticket - available up to 5 minutes before departure
For ticket office - available up to departure (but recommended up to 15 minutes)
Not available from TVMs or on board.

Same-day Advance tickets will only be available on flows that already have Advance tickets.

I can see why same day advance fares are sold - all the revenue going to the TOC operating the train, a help to balance loadings on the day, and the customer making what is likely to be a small saving. But there many be no saving at all when looking at a round trip and finding that there's a lack of bargain level return journeys. And at a time that the Rail Delivery Group are consulting on simplifying the fare system, this looks like it could be a step in the opposite direction.

That, at least, is something. The horrid experience on CrossCountry where unreserved passengers can be turfed out of their seat mid-journey, or the "ggf freigeben" equivalent on DB, adds needless stress to a journey.

That said, GWR offering same-day advances just reinforces my impression that they are just not very good at doing yield management through walk-ups, as the Cotswold fare changes demonstrated.

Great ! just what we need, ANOTHER type of ticket to add to the existing considerable complexity. ???

Not really another ticket type.

Just extending the purchasing deadline of existing Advance Purchase fares and tweaking the reservation requirements. After the existing purchase deadline is passed the reservation system will still issue booked train details but the seat reservation will be marked xx xx.

Not available from TfL ticket machines. Why not?

How about GWR ticket machines?

Not available via the front panel of any ticket machines from what I read.   There is no requirement on ticket machines to provide the same full range you can buy from a staffed counter.

I suspect that the extra software complexity and time taken per user at the screen of a TVM as (s)he sorts out date, train service, seating preference would slow down the throughput at these machines.  Not sure who it was, but wasn't someone grumbing hereabouts recently about the slowness of TVMs at his local station  ;D ;D