Idea to restrict 'one stop journey' Seat reservations on XC

[Kite159]

Should XC cease offering seat reservations for one stop journeys when alternative* trains exist to attempt to decrease overcrowding on those sections with their short trains.

(*Such as Reading to Oxford, York to Leeds etc)

 

[The exile]

Should XC cease offering seat reservations for one stop journeys when alternative* trains exist to attempt to decrease overcrowding on those sections with their short trains.

(*Such as Reading to Oxford, York to Leeds etc)

Against this you have to remember that each person travelling from Reading to Oxford ( particularly on a Reading starter) gets off and leaves a seat for someone joining at Oxford….. There is more weight to your argument for short journeys in the middle (eg Birmingham - Wolverhampton), I admit.

 

[101DMU]

Should XC cease offering seat reservations for one stop journeys when alternative* trains exist to attempt to decrease overcrowding on those sections with their short trains.

(*Such as Reading to Oxford, York to Leeds etc)

Cross Country are not the only ones. LNER does exactly the same. If I am travelling from Durham to Newcastle (a 12 minute journey) it will reserve me a seat thus blocking that seat for use by a long distance passenger.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Cross Country are not the only ones. LNER does exactly the same. If I am travelling from Durham to Newcastle (a 12 minute journey) it will reserve me a seat thus blocking that seat for use by a long distance passenger.

LNER long distance services generally have very few unreserved seats. To do this (and it is possible to change the quotas to do it so these journeys/fares only had counted places) you would need to have far more unreserved space, which as they prioritise long distance is unlikely.

XC could more easily do this, but for whatever reason choose not to.

 

[BanburyBlue]

Big issue for me with XC is last minute reservations. So you can on a train and sit in an unreserved seat, only to find someone has booked along the way.

Mind you, seat reservations on XC are chaotic anyway.

 

[Kite159]

Against this you have to remember that each person travelling from Reading to Oxford ( particularly on a Reading starter) gets off and leaves a seat for someone joining at Oxford….. There is more weight to your argument for short journeys in the middle (eg Birmingham - Wolverhampton), I admit.

Although you could argue that someone reserving a seat between Reading & Oxford removes that seat from being reserved for a longer distance passenger (ie Reading to Birmingham New Street).

Although it does mean it's available for someone to book Oxford to Birmingham.

 

[Djgr]

Big issue for me with XC is last minute reservations. So you can on a train and sit in an unreserved seat, only to find someone has booked along the way.

Mind you, seat reservations on XC are chaotic anyway.

XC reservations by text have ended though, haven't they?

 

[BanburyBlue]

XC reservations by text have ended though, haven't they?

TBH I don't know - I've never done that. But I have been at the station, buying a ticket 10 minutes before the train arrives and offered reservations. I assume if I booked a ticket online on the day I would still be offered a reservation?

Perhaps I'm behind the times again .

 

[stevieinselby]

What I'm not sure about is how smart the seat reservation system is about preferring to re-sell the same seat for multiple journey legs.
eg, if seat B46 has already been reserved from Southampton to Reading, and from Oxford to Birmingham, when someone comes along and books a ticket from Reading to Oxford will the system automatically allocate them into B46 so as to get best use out of the reserved seats and leave as many free for longer journeys as possible?
If the system doesn't do that already then that should be the first priority, to improve it so that it does.
Only if it is already allocating seats in the optimal way and this is still leaving long-distance passengers unable to reserve a seat even when there are some seats free at every part of their journey should we look at alternative options.

 

[Mgameing123]

Should XC cease offering seat reservations for one stop journeys when alternative* trains exist to attempt to decrease overcrowding on those sections with their short trains.

(*Such as Reading to Oxford, York to Leeds etc)

How about we buy some additional trains for CrossCountry? The government needs to get a grip!

 

[VT 390]

The problem with banning all short distance seat reservations is that on some flows Cross Country forms an important part of the Local service (such as Wolverhampton to Coventry) with the alternatives requiring changes and/or slower. This may mean people will be more likely to use Cross Country if it shows as the direct/fastest option on journey planners.
As these types of local journeys will generally be made on shorter notice than longer journeys I do not see why (if these are still some unreserved reservable seats) they should not be allocated to shorter journeys.
Maybe a compromise would be to only open reservations for short journeys/station pairs 7 days before, similar to how the Caledonian Sleeper (used to?) manage reservations on the seats from Edinburgh to Fort William. Alternatively could local seat reservations be restricted to 1 carriage only.

 

[SuspectUsual]

What I'm not sure about is how smart the seat reservation system is about preferring to re-sell the same seat for multiple journey legs.
eg, if seat B46 has already been reserved from Southampton to Reading, and from Oxford to Birmingham, when someone comes along and books a ticket from Reading to Oxford will the system automatically allocate them into B46 so as to get best use out of the reserved seats and leave as many free for longer journeys as possible?
If the system doesn't do that already then that should be the first priority, to improve it so that it does.
Only if it is already allocating seats in the optimal way and this is still leaving long-distance passengers unable to reserve a seat even when there are some seats free at every part of their journey should we look at alternative options.

My understanding is that the XC system will always attempt to use a seat already allocated elsewhere in the journey where it can, and not use “new” seats unnecessarily

However you have to bear in mind the preferences (window/aisle, forward/backward, quiet, power socket etc) will mean it gets more fragmented than may will like.

The biggest issue is the use of the wheelchair spaces because there are so few

 

[Kite159]

The problem with banning all short distance seat reservations is that on some flows Cross Country forms an important part of the Local service (such as Wolverhampton to Coventry) with the alternatives requiring changes and/or slower. This may mean people will be more likely to use Cross Country if it shows as the direct/fastest option on journey planners.
As these types of local journeys will generally be made on shorter notice than longer journeys I do not see why (if these are still some unreserved reservable seats) they should not be allocated to shorter journeys.
Maybe a compromise would be to only open reservations for short journeys/station pairs 7 days before, similar to how the Caledonian Sleeper (used to?) manage reservations on the seats from Edinburgh to Fort William. Alternatively could local seat reservations be restricted to 1 carriage only.

Wolverhampton to Coventry will still get reservations offered as it's more than one stop. Anybody buying a Wolverhampton to New Street ticket selecting a XC shouldn't get a seat reservation, likewise New Street to Coventry. Push the passengers towards the Avanti services which 2 out of 3 starts at Birmingham and generally have a lot more unreserved seats

 

[The exile]

Wolverhampton to Coventry will still get reservations offered as it's more than one stop. Anybody buying a Wolverhampton to New Street ticket selecting a XC shouldn't get a seat reservation, likewise New Street to Coventry. Push the passengers towards the Avanti services which 2 out of 3 starts at Birmingham and generally have a lot more unreserved seats

It’s all very well to talk of “pushing” passengers and it may not matter to some, but the only place it will push some is to their cars.

 

[VT 390]

Wolverhampton to Coventry will still get reservations offered as it's more than one stop. Anybody buying a Wolverhampton to New Street ticket selecting a XC shouldn't get a seat reservation, likewise New Street to Coventry. Push the passengers towards the Avanti services which 2 out of 3 starts at Birmingham and generally have a lot more unreserved seats

Birmingham to Coventry makes sense to get people on to Avanti but as Cross Country is the quickest Wolverhampton to Birmingham service it will show up on journey planners as the fastest option meaning people will be likely to choose Cross Country based on journey time.
I would like to see journey planners and station departure screens at Wolverhampton not show Birmingham New Street at all but if people are going to use Cross Country and there are some reservable seats left then do not see why they can not be allocated a reservation.

 

[Kite159]

I suspect most people travelling the 12 miles between Wolverhampton & Birmingham will simply board the first available service. But there will probably be few who will go 'i won't travel on that lightly loaded Birmingham service as it calls at Smethwick I will wait 10 minutes for the nonstop XC as I've got a seat reservation'

 

[FGWHST43009]

LNER long distance services generally have very few unreserved seats. To do this (and it is possible to change the quotas to do it so these journeys/fares only had counted places) you would need to have far more unreserved space, which as they prioritise long distance is unlikely.

XC could more easily do this, but for whatever reason choose not to.

When I've booked LNER journeys lately they're now allocating one coach as unreserved

 

[Kite159]

When I've booked LNER journeys lately they're now allocating one coach as unreserved

Sadly on the 9 coach units it isn't even the whole of coach C which is truly unreserved, less than half of it is.

And those tend to be the seats which go first when people get given seat reservations not sat together

 

[deltic08]

How about we buy some additional trains for CrossCountry? The government needs to get a grip!

Yes please, a few 7 coach bimodes.

 

[Clansman]

Sadly on the 9 coach units it isn't even the whole of coach C which is truly unreserved, less than half of it is.

And those tend to be the seats which go first when people get given seat reservations not sat together

This has now been reversed, it’s the full carriage that is unreserved.

 

[Kite159]

This has now been reversed, it’s the full carriage that is unreserved.

The sea of red lights around seat 43 & above in coach C on the 09;30 London to Edinburgh tells a different story

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes please, a few 7 coach bimodes.

A fleet of 7 car 802s (maybe with the slightly denser 810 interior to maximise capacity and luggage racks in all 4 door pocket spaces in each coach) would solve basically all of XC's problems, but for some reason there's no interest in spending on that, so we're stuck with workarounds like the one that is the topic of this thread.

 

[Djgr]

I think the time for pussyfooting around the edges when it comes to XC is ending.

Given that XC in its current form has few redeeming features (and never really has had), we need to look at the provision of "cross country" in a very different way.

Certainly we need to look afresh at the provision of daily direct trains. This is far too low, even amongst blindingly obvious and popular journeys.

Many "cross country" journeys don't involved XC (e.g TPE) and in the medium term we need to look at the reallocation of routes to TOCs without XC baggage.

 

[amahy]

Big issue for me with XC is last minute reservations. So you can on a train and sit in an unreserved seat, only to find someone has booked along the way.

This is an issue on most TOCs offering seat reservations in my experience. Normally, when travelling on Avanti, I sit in an unreserved coach, but that can be an issue when a 9 car Pendolino turns up. It's incredibly annoying to be ejected from your seat mid journey, when the seat said "available" when you boarded!

A solution to the threads issue, could be a nationwide minimum journey time for seat reservation, imposed as part of GBR. This would make seat reservations not possible for journeys less than a fixed duration, for example, 30 minutes.

 

[SuspectUsual]

A solution to the threads issue, could be a nationwide minimum journey time for seat reservation, imposed as part of GBR. This would make seat reservations not possible for journeys less than a fixed duration, for example, 30 minutes.

At the very least you’d need exemptions for people with disabilities. I suspect it would open a big can of worms

 

[amahy]

At the very least you’d need exemptions for people with disabilities. I suspect it would open a big can of worms

Given that most TOCs currently have no reservations at all, I don't see how this should be an issue?

 

[stevieinselby]

This is an issue on most TOCs offering seat reservations in my experience. Normally, when travelling on Avanti, I sit in an unreserved coach, but that can be an issue when a 9 car Pendolino turns up. It's incredibly annoying to be ejected from your seat mid journey, when the seat said "available" when you boarded!

If they're going to allow reservations after the train has started it's journey, operators need to offer an easy way to claim the seat that you've found for the duration of your journey once you're sat in it, so that no-one else can book it from underneath you.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Given that most TOCs currently have no reservations at all, I don't see how this should be an issue?

Exactly! I think reservations are an all or nothing sort of thing. Creating exceptions within a journey will cause more hassle than it’s worth. (And of course there’ll be an edge case where some journeys between x and y are just above threshold and others are just below)

But more fundamentally of course all this is tinkering with the symptom, not addressing the root cause….