Virgin want ll trains to be reservation only

[rs1952]

https://www.mynewsdesk.com/material/pressrelease/2...


With apologies to my readers on the other Virgin thread - I was wading through this all day yesterday for another forum so I didn't get a chance to respond to Yertis and others. I will do that later today.

In the meantime on this thread, what it says on the tin. Virgin have responded to the Williams Rail Review saying they think all trains should be reservation only. The above link takes you to their submission. You may have your own views...

[Shakermaker]

There was a Twitter discussion the other day from someone who was on a Virgin train, showing all the people spilling out into the aisles and vestibules.

It quickly became a poltical rant from many others on there, as so often it does. But, many of the people on there would agree with them, reservation only, guarantees a seat.

I don't think that's the best idea, personally, though perhaps for long-distance trains it would work better? I tend only to take more local trains where I need to go to London, around an hour, where I have sometimes been able to enjoy 6 seats to myself, sometimes I've had to unfortunately allow others to fully understand how sweaty it is possible to get under my armpits. If that went seated only, most people wouldn't be able to use the train to get to work as it would either mean no space, or too expensive.

[PurpleTurtle]

Interesting idea to follow 'the airline model'. I guess it has some merit if the service is non-stop like an airline but that's not the case with most Inter City rail services is it? I live in Reading and often hop on a Virgin Cross Country (Southampton to Glasgow via Bimingham and Manchester) train which stops at both Reading and Oxford (short distance) but also use the same train to visit my parents in Birmingham (long-distance).

I'd be pretty peeved if I couldn't get on that train at Reading if it had spare capacity and I just wanted to do a last minute walk-up and get on 'any' train that has spare seats.

With the best will in the world I would say it would be a logistical nightmare to run sufficiently regular, full to optiumum capacity services all the time, on a day to day basis to make it viable. More than happy to be proved wrong.

As another exampe, I go to loads of gigs in London, I know that whatever day or time it is (off peak) it costs me £16.50 to get a return with tube travel (with Network Railcard), regardless of what events are on in London that day. Sometimes the train back is medium busy, sometimes it is standing room only for the length of it. If I have to pay for a demand-based variable priced ticket, only after I've secured my gig ticket, it becomes a bloody nightmare.

"Wanna go see the Foo Fighters at Wembley?"
"Yeah, but it's 70 quid a ticket, then my train could be 8 or 80 quid!"

[DaveTheRave87]

TGV in France has reserved seats. You know that you are guaranteed a seat when you book.

I couldn't see it working on commuter trains but it should be in place for long distance.

[rs1952]

PurpleTurtle said:

"Wanna go see the Foo Fighters at Wembley?"
"Yeah, but it's 70 quid a ticket, then my train could be 8 or 80 quid!"

This is so obvious a point that it completly escaped my notice when I wrote my "War & Peace" on the other forum, and it wasn't picked up by anybody else over there either. Under this scheme, you wouldn't actually know the price of the ticket before you tried to book it.

To possibly generate more discussion I copy and paste below my (lengthy ) post on that other forum (I put so much bloody time into it that someone else may as well read it...) :

Having felt suitably admonished for not reading the report and wading in and only commenting on a newspaper article, I have spent much of today going through that report in detail. Suffice to say I have had more enjoyable days…

Nevertheless, now I’ve done it I can regale other forum members with my findings. As putting sections of the report into forum quotes is a little time-consuming (and personally my eyes have difficulty in reading forum quotes anyway – the font colour and quote background colour seem to cancel each other out), quotations from the report will be in italics below.

“Our submission is deliberately high-level and ideas-driven, rather than a detailed examination of the precise nature of operation. In this way we aim to spark debate and discussion, and to give the Review team food for thought”

They can say that again… You don’t need to read very far into the report before it dawns that it is, to use management speak, “Blue Sky Thinking.” Others may see it as an abject failure to see the wood for the trees, because many practical problems jump out as you wade on through it.

“The vast majority of long-distance rail travel is discretionary. Most customers are choosing to visit family or friends, using the train for a weekend break or holiday, or visiting business contacts. They have chosen to meet face-to-face, rather than use video-conferencing or the telephone, and they have chosen to travel by train rather than road or air. Whilst all of their reasons for travel are important, they are fundamentally discretionary in nature.”

Virgin will, presumably, have their own figures to back this up. Whether they have quantitative data about the reasons for the discretionary travel is less clear. As I see it, there are many distinct types of discretionary travel and to lump them all together is unwise. People using a train for a weekend break could probably specify their outbound and return trains before they travel. Those visiting business contacts (as in the case of Graham’s examples) may not. Those using the train to go to a hub airport like Heathrow may well be able to specify their outbound train, but would be unwise to specify the return one for fear of the plane being delayed or cancelled. Visiting friends and relatives might not be just a jolly to go to see Auntie Flo in Bognor for her 85th birthday; it might be going to see a terminally ill friend or relative and you might not be coming back until the inevitable happens. So there is discretionary travel and discretionary travel, and therefore something of a flaw in the reasoning.

“Virgin Trains’ West Coast franchise does, of course, have some customers who use us to commute to work, but they are a small minority; fewer than 10% of our journeys are currently made by season ticket holders”

Once again presumably Virgin has the data to back this up but I would still like to see some more detail. For example, it is currently only Virgin West Coast that provides a service between Wigan, Warrington and Crewe, or between Crewe, Warrington and Preston. If there is commuter traffic between those locations (and I’ be surprised if there wasn’t), Virgin provide the only current rail service.

“There are also significant problems with congestion and ticket complexity. Train companies are often obliged, by regulation, to accept ‘walk-up’ fares which means they have no control over the number of people getting on a particular train (unless it is physically unsafe). These walk-up fares are regulated by the Department for Transport (DfT) at a set price that cannot be varied by train; inevitably they are too cheap for some services and too expensive for others. This results in the all-too-frequent sight of customers forced to stand on a long-distance journey. Yet, on the same day, rigid timetables force companies to shuttle around extremely heavy and mostly empty trains, pushing up costs and ticket prices

Removing little-used trains would also improve overall network performance or could free up paths for more freight trains with corresponding benefits to our road network.”
”
There appears to be a large element of skewed thinking in these paragraphs. We are talking “walk-up” fares here, which essentially means anytime or off peak tickets. Then later on we are told that “inevitably they are too cheap for some services and too expensive for others.” I would like to see the evidence that they base this statement on - especially the "too cheap" bit. Then we are told that this results in customers being forced to stand on a long distance journey – or sit in a vestibule on the floor like Jeremy Corbyn perhaps… I have certainly been on trains that appear to be rammed to the gunwales only to hear the Train Manager plead with passengers to move down the train where there are plenty of empty seats. Sometimes the passengers themselves won’t even bother to look for a seat. Then there is the suggestion that the TOCs are running virtual ECS around the network to only fulfil their contractual obligations, but chooses perhaps not to mention that a single train cannot be taken in isolation because it is part of a longer diagram and, for example, a half-empty train going up to the Capital mid-afternoon will certainly not be half empty on its return working.

Finally on this particular quotation, the remark about TOCs having no control over the number of passengers on a train unless it is physically unsafe needs amplification. Bus companies have the same situation and so do ferries. They seem to suggest that the problem is one for the railway alone. I know that I personally would far prefer standing on a train than on a moving bus.

“Customers are often bewildered by the range of ticketing and fare options available and have little confidence that they have purchased the right ticket for their journey. There are too many options, with too many variables and unclear language.

The second, vital, step to import the airline model into the long-distance sector is to have reservation-only trains. This already exists on some international services such as Eurostar. Customers would book a ticket and a seat for a particular train. The price would be based on demand so as the train filled up, the price would go up. But there would only be one price for that train at a given point in time

Customers would be free to choose a popular train at a higher price, or a less popular train at a lower price. There would be no peak or off-peak, which would also eliminate much of the need for complex ‘split-ticketing’ arrangements by customers seeking to minimise their bills. It would eliminate ticket complexity at a stroke.

Just like airlines, customers could buy a flexible ticket which would allow them to change trains and make a reservation for a different service if there was space. Anyone with a season ticket would need to book a seat, and customers with ‘open’, fully-flexible tickets would also have to book a seat rather than simply turning up at the last minute for any train.

These flexible ticket holders could of course change their reservation to another train (assuming seats were available) but could only hold one reservation at a time for a given day and journey”

Hmm… So prices would be higher for “popular” trains than for “unpopular” ones, and customers could buy a flexible ticket (presumably for a higher price as that is how the airlines do it), Fantastic idea – we could call them Anytime, off peak, super off peak and advance tickets – I wonder why no-one has ever thought of it before…?

“…everyone understands what’s involved in flying. It’s almost impossible for customers to get on the wrong plane, and everyone accepts that they are booked on a particular flight with a particular seat – and if they miss it, they either don’t travel or have to rebook at their own cost.”

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, this ain't necessarily so. In the aviation industry if a flight operator is responsible for a delay which makes a passenger miss their connecting flight, they are responsible to rebook that customer. This is especially pertinent in the railway industry given that many people will use trains operated by multiple operators over one journey.

“…if a long-distance operator served a commuter market as part of its route, these commuters would still be required to reserve seats if they wanted to use this long-distance service rather than local commuter services”

I’d like a seat reservation for my 9-minute journey from Wigan to Warrington please…

I could go on but this post has now exceeded 1300 words so, if you are still reading, thank you!”