Great Western Coffee Shop

I was on the 16:36 Paddington to Cheltenham today. It was a short formed 5 car IET and was full and standing as we left Paddington.  The seat reservations were all off and I sat in an empty seat (I was first on that carriage so had a choice).

 As we approached Reading the seat reservations were still off, but as we were about to leave the person next to me was asked to move because he sitting in another passenger's reserved seat. I looked up and sure enough the seat reservations were now on my seat was reserved from Paddington to Gloucester but the adjacent seat was reserved from Reading to Stroud. Our carriage was once again full so I hope the person next to me found another seat, but since the catering trolley was still stranded due to overcrowding I doubt it.

I am not sure how I would have reacted had it been my seat that the new passenger required, after all i had arrived in plenty of time to find an unreserved seat, but was not afforded the opportunity by GWR. This did seem to be very bad practice. 

 

I thought (emphasis on thought here) that seat reservations were not usually displayed on short formed trains. After all, whilst there might have been "competition" for your seat, there were 5 coaches worth of potential reservations that weren't going to be honoured anyway because those coaches weren't there. There might not only have been difficulty between you and the booker of the reserved seat; there coud just as likelty have been friction beyween somebody who had booked that seat and someone sitting in it who had actually reserved a seat, but his/her coach wasn't attached to the train.

To me the bad practice was switching the things on at all. A recipe for trouble...

The bad practice was forming a 10 coach train with 5 coaches.

There were only reservations for A to E so does not appear to be short formed. 

Yes, that one is booked to be a 5-car!

Your move, TaplowGreen.  ;)

Putting aside the system being activated mid-journey, there remains the problem of people taking time to search / read all the labels, and having good geographic knowledge to then interpret them. A tourist joining at Paddington and travelling to Oxford may not understand whether a seat reserved from Reading to Evesham is available for him.

New technology / apps that access databases, and do image manipulation, can do amazing things (even beyond acceptable (https://technoidhub.com/games/deepnude-app-is-offline-after-developers-pull-plugs/16597/)).  How about an app linked to your e-ticket - hold up your phone and the light colour on the reservation system can show red (reserved for your journey), yellow (reserved for part of your journey) and green (available throughout your journey.  A mark 2 version which attached to sensors in seats will turn green seats to orange if a seat is fully occupied and to blue if a seat has a lighter weight (such as luggage or a child under 5) occupying it.

I appreciate I'm looking a long way ahead - perhaps so far ahead it's fantasy.  But holding up you phone and - in the same time that a ticket barrier takes - giving you a display of seats that will work for you - seems an admirable way forward.

Then why did the TM apologise that it was short formed?

Your move, Chris from Nailsea.

I don't know.  The drivers diagram is attached, which clearly shows it as an 800/5...

I see a few problems with this:

1. Not everybody has a smart phone, and especially not tourists from other countries who have packages (like me) where international non-EU roaming charges are prohibitive if not penal. When I am in South Africa, for example. my lot want £3 per mb (yes that is not a typo - £3 per mb) when I can buy a 2 gig package locally for under £20.

2. There is already (or there is when the seat reservation system works properly) a traffic-light system just as you describe on the 800s. I honestly suspect that this covers the vast majority of reserved seats on the GWR network at least. Other TOCs will differ, of course.


On the matter of seat reservations in general, I suspect I could rattle on about it more than broadgage rattles on about buffets, but in my view the current system is a joke anyway. Seat reservations are being issued like confetti, resulting in many reserved seats not having their intended occupants in them through not being on the train for one reason or another, or sitting somewhere else when they are on it. Some people take no notice of them (like me - I tend to park by backside in any seat I like the look of and only move if someone comes along with the reservation - and I don't get asked to move very often) to others who treat it like an airline-style reservation.

I witnessed one incident a fortnight ago on a 75% empty off-peak Liverpool St to Norwich, where somebody came along and "claimed" a reserved seat from someone sitting in it (table seat by the way) when there were twice as many unreserved seats in that coach than reserved ones, and table seats to boot). When the reverse happened to me in the days when HSTs were dragging around two and half coaches of first class ECS for most of the day and first class advance tickets were virtually being given away, I just sat somewhere else rather than churlishly asking the bloke sitting in "my" seat to clear off.

On busy services (and I am thinking especially of Bath in the evening peak when the IETs are full of commuters going one or two stops and tourists going back to London) it can cause havoc with loading as people with luggage bugger about trying to find "their" seat, potentially asking others to move, whilst at the same time blocking the aisle and preventing people on the platform from getting on the train.

What can actually be done about it is debatable, but something needs to be done.

I agree with most of that, Robin.  Though if you have a reserved seat as part of an advance ticket, then the rules state you should sit in that seat don't they?

I thought that the main reasoning behind it was that the seat reservation ticket was the only proof that the passenger had booked for that train. I'm not sure that having to sit in the specified seat is part of the deal - certainly on the rare occasions that I have used advance tickets, and the even rarer occasions when it has been checked on-board, all the TM/ RPO wants to see is the reservation and not to check which seat you happen to be in.

One way to get rid of the vast majority of superfluous reservations would be to go back to charging a small fee for them. In place of a formal reservation, those advance ticket holders who didn't want to pay for a reservation could be issued with an "authority to travel" ticket which would specify the train they had booked to use, but not a specific seat.

https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/46546.aspx


But whilst I have seen passengers being "kicked out" of seats so that people who've reserved can take the place they have booked, I have never seen any action being taken against people with advanced ticket seat reservations who've sat in a different and unreserved / unclaimed other seat.

On one occasion, I did ask someone who was occupying the seat I had reserved on an advance ticket to move to let me occupy it, and that "someone" felt I was being pedantic and suggested I look for another seat ... only moved grudgingly when I explained that my ticket was only valid for that seat.

I have a reservation today for coach E. There is no coach E on the train.

Then your ticket is invalid.  You must leave the train at the next station and wait for the next train that does have a Coach E.  ;)

More seriously though, is the seat reservation system working?  The seat reservation system recognises when a 9-car is used instead of a 10-car, and it should move First Class reservations in Coach E to the equivalent seat numbers in Coach K.  The TM should advise people of this as in the olden days on HSTs when a coach was missing and reservations were moved to the 'unreserved' carriage.

The reservation system was working but no, there was no mention of them being moved. That said, 1st class is only about 50% full. I think we're running about an hour late now.

Full refund for that part of the journey then.  :)

I had a similar experience on the Frome train when the reservations only came down after we'd left the station. It makes things difficult as often reservations are ditched if trains are running late or very quick turnaround (you'd hope the new system makes things easier). There was a bit of a heated argument before we left with a couple demanding someone move as they had the seat reserved and the occupant arguing there were no reservations which was true at that point.

It is neither 5, 9 or 10 tonight.  16:36 London Paddington to Cheltenham Spa cancelled. This is due to train crew being delayed by service disruption.

Similarly I have never seen a passenger told to sit in the "right" seat either, but this looks to me like one of those rules that looks better on paper than in practical day-to-day operations.

Can you imagine what the media would have to say if they got hold of a story that somebody was told by an RPO that their ticket wasn't valid for that particular seat, although it was valid on that particular train, and tried to charge them again and issued a penalty fare?

I can...  ;D

I take the view that if the railway insists that you sit in the reserved seat they must guarantee that that seat will be available for you.  They don't do the latter so they cannot enforce the former (unfair contract terms?)

And of course don't even think of going to the toilet - your ticket isn't valid in that seat... ;)

The only time I have personally seen this in operation was way back when on a GNER train, although that operator seemed at times to me to specialise in punctiliousness.

The seat reservations are pulled down once the headcode is loaded, if the crew load the headcode very close to departure time, it maybe that the reservations don’t display immediately.  If the signal is poor or interrupted and the SRS file doesn’t get pulled down, the TM can try again and it if it does load then, this will be the reason for the display after departure.  Paddington is probably the worst place, if crews are late, if there are late set swaps etc.