Chiltern planning to introduce seat reservations - Survey

[LittleRedTrain]

I received the following e-mail from Chiltern Railways earlier today:

We're looking to introduce the option to reserve a seat on our new fleet of trains, and we'd love your input.

The survey takes about five minutes and it's completely anonymous. Just tell us how you travel and what you look for in a seat. Your answers will help influence how reservations work.

It closes on 9 August 2026, so there's still time to have your say.

The link to the survey is https://www.research.net/r/WMFXFWV (I've removed the referrer parameters so anyone else can fill it in if they want).

It looks like Chiltern are planning to introduce seat reservations, presumably on the loco-hauled services only (as the 16x units don't have displays, coach letters etc).

Questions include:

When Chiltern introduces seat reservations, how likely would you be to reserve a seat with us?

The use of 'when' rather than 'if' suggests its a done deal, rather than actually consulting customers to see if it's a good idea!

It also includes:

Imagine you are booking a train journey with us. Two ticket types are available for your journey, and they cost the same.
Which ticket would you choose?
Option A: Flexible ticket (travel on any train that day), but no reserved seat
Option B: Advance ticket (only valid on the train you book), but with a reserved seat

This smells very much like an attempt to justify a fares change similar to that on LNER, where flexible fares are removed in favour of fixed train tickets with associated reservations.

Personally, I think it's a nonsense idea:
Seat reservations make some sense on long distance InterCity (capitalised) services, where most people are making journeys of 2 hours plus and there's not much 'churn' of passengers.

Not on a line like Chiltern which, although it serves several cities, is really just an outer-suburban/commuter operation, more akin to LNWR than Avanti/LNER. On such a route, all they do is cause inter-passenger conflict and increased dwell times as everyone has to find their carriage/seat.
It's telling that XC (Turbostar routes), TfW and Anglia have all gone the opposite way.

Sadly there seems to be some delusions of grandeur going on at Chiltern HQ, where they think that having shiny loco-hauled trains makes them a proper IC operator requiring reservations and First Class instead of extra Standard capacity. (No catering though, as that might actually benefit passengers!)

 

[800002]

Sadly there seems to be some delusions of grandeur going on at Chiltern HQ, where they think that having shiny loco-hauled trains makes them a proper IC operator requiring reservations and First Class instead of extra Standard capacity. (No catering though, as that might actually benefit passengers!)

Ones opinion may swing such a way.
Unfortunately, one only need to read (the myriad) of mk5a / Chiltern threads here to see that this is as far from the case as could be.

Question: does survey refer to different classes of tickets?
Your point about extra standard capacity has long since been disregarded - it's not possible.

 

[LittleRedTrain]

Your point about extra standard capacity has long since been disregarded - it's not possible.

Oh, it's entirely possible: Permanently declassify the First Class in the Mk5s, and you've got another Standard class coach (albeit with fewer seats until you can re-seat it to match Standard).

Financially acceptable to the DfT, that's another matter...

 

[800002]

Financially acceptable to the DfT, that's another matter...

Glad you said this.

 

[81A]

To be fair, I think seat reservations make sense on most of the Mark 5 operated services (but only if they can be made-reliably-Mark 5). They certainly are just as long distance as many other services with reservations (unless it has changed, some are non-stop Banbury/Bicester to London).

Introducing them on the other services is probably folly though (given the difficulty of displaying them on 165s/168s, the more short distance nature of many of these services, etc).

 

[800002]

They would only be reservations on the mk5a sets.
Then come the standard difficulties, etc, of substitutions on the day / short notice timtable alterations.

I think any operator struggles with substitutions when they operate a non-standard fleet of units.

 

[Tetchytyke]

Reservations are a lot of faff. I’d support them having reservations on the Birmingham and Oxford trains, but they’re just setting themselves up to fail.

So if reservations cause them faff, there must be a trade-off that makes it worth it.

Wonder what fares shenanigans they’ll get up to at the same time? Abolition of off peak fares?

 

[JonathanH]

Wonder what fares shenanigans they’ll get up to at the same time? Abolition of off peak fares?

Given they already have counted place advance fares, the ability to have seat reservations doesn't seem to be a necessary precursor to such a move.

 

[Tetchytyke]

the ability to have seat reservations doesn't seem to be a necessary precursor to such a move

From a PR point of view it might be though.

“Our customers told us they preferred the certainty of having a reservation on a fixed train compared to a flexible ticket.”

In fact, the questions sound like that’s exactly what they’re planning to say!

 

[185143]

I am on the whole strongly against seat reservations.

Get on, sit down. Simple as that. Why should a group of 4 not be able to sit at a table from, say, Birmingham to Edinburgh because someone's reserved one of the seats from Carlisle onwards.

Let passenger assist reserve priority seats, but otherwise nope.

They just cause far too many issues when there are formation changes, unit swaps which mean reservations aren't then put out (on paper based set ups anyway), short forms, 168 running vice Mk5 set and so on. And don't get me started on the TOCs that will allow someone to reserve a seat that you're already sat in!

At least we're not as bad as some operators on the continent that won't allow travel without a reservation.

Admittedly, all that being said, I'm pretty much always travelling alone so as long as I'm not too far away from the buffet, I'm not bothered where I sit.

 

[JonathanH]

From a PR point of view it might be though.

“Our customers told us they preferred the certainty of having a reservation on a fixed train compared to a flexible ticket.”

In fact, the questions sound like that’s exactly what they’re planning to say!

Well yes, maybe, and getting the 'LNER model' onto shorter distance operators could prove its applicability to other routes.

 

[kje7812]

Question: does survey refer to different classes of tickets?

First and Standard? No. It does refer to types eg Advances, flexible, season tickets.

 

[MarlowDonkey]

I am on the whole strongly against seat reservations.

Once upon a time weren't reservations something that you paid extra for? When did this change? I can recall that at holiday times in the 1960s some West of England weekend trains had a form of compulsory reservation, but when did reservations become free and commonplace?

 

[JonathanH]

Once upon a time weren't reservations something that you paid extra for? When did this change?

Yes, but that changed in the 1990s.

On coaches, a charge for choosing a reserved seat is becoming commonplace.

 

[The exile]

Get on, sit down. Simple as that. Why should a group of 4 not be able to sit at a table from, say, Birmingham to Edinburgh because someone's reserved one of the seats from Carlisle onwards.

For exactly the same reason as in an unreserved train that family of four can’t sit round that table from Wolverhampton to Edinburgh because someone sat down at that table at New Street and is travelling to Preston, then someone else gets on and sits at one of the other seats from Crewe who’s travelling to Haymarket.

 

[MrJeeves]

This smells very much like an attempt to justify a fares change similar to that on LNER, where flexible fares are removed in favour of fixed train tickets with associated reservations.

I think it is far more likely that they simply want to avoid the situation on other operators where flexible ticket holders book reservations which they never use.

This is solved by tying reservations to Advance ticket holders only, as the reservations will be cancelled in the instance someone changes their plans and takes another train.

The other solution would be charging for a reservation, but that simply cannot happen as the nature of rail retailing in the UK means someone who books through another TOC or a third party would get the reservation for free anyway.

 

[MarlowDonkey]

The other solution would be charging for a reservation, but that simply cannot happen as the nature of rail retailing in the UK means someone who books through another TOC or a third party would get the reservation for free anyway.

Would it not be possible to charge reservations as an add on with them being sold like another ticket? Back when reservations were charged for, there would have to have been a collection mechanism.

That would be like Ryanair. Your ticket gets you on the planre, but you have to pay for a specific seat.

 

[Kite159]

You can imagine the result of the survey will be something like: "Customer Feedback has said they prefer fixed tickets with a seat reservation for London to Birmingham on our slow service, therefore we are getting rid of the route "High Wycombe" flexible fares, introducing more advance tickets. Anybody wanting flexibility will need to buy an Any Permitted ticket, but they won't travel with Chiltern due to our services being much slower than Avanti"

Is that Chiltern trying to price off demand for end to end customers knowing that 4 standard class coaches gets massively overcrowded?

 

[CyrusWuff]

Would it not be possible to charge reservations as an add on with them being sold like another ticket? Back when reservations were charged for, there would have to have been a collection mechanism.

It's entirely possible. It's essentially how berth supplements on the Night Riviera have worked since 2022. Instead of having berth-inclusive tickets, they now have 11 different levels of Solo and Twin berth supplement that are setup as chargeable reservations.

National Express tried it on both East Anglia and East Coast, and I think GWR did as well. None of them lasted very long because I think they set it up as a ticket type instead of a reservation supplement.

 

[MrJeeves]

It's entirely possible.

I think it would be a very bizarre decision to be the odd one out compared to every other TOC in the country, at least when Chiltern are usually the odd ones out in positive ways!

If this was the approach, I'd hope the rules regarding refunding such supplements would be clearly laid out, and information about reservations being unavailable on specific services on-the-day would be accessible to retailers in a way that would allow passengers to be refunded without hassle.

 

[mickey]

Is that Chiltern trying to price off demand for end to end customers knowing that 4 standard class coaches gets massively overcrowded?

I doubt it. Chiltern may be many things, but stupid isn’t one of them… they’ve cornered a market with their route-specific tickets and won’t be ready to give it up in a hurry. It’s one of the railway’s biggest success stories of recent years. Cynically you could add that they’ve never been bothered by crowding before!

I don’t mind reservations on the loco stock, assuming they can reliably assign the right sets to those diagrams. I’d be concerned about afternoon peak times though, they attract a mix of commuters and long-distance travellers and the wrong number of reserved vs unreserved seats could cause bad friction.

 

[Kite159]

I doubt it. Chiltern may be many things, but stupid isn’t one of them… they’ve cornered a market with their route-specific tickets and won’t be ready to give it up in a hurry. It’s one of the railway’s biggest success stories of recent years. Cynically you could add that they’ve never been bothered by crowding before!

I don’t mind reservations on the loco stock, assuming they can reliably assign the right sets to those diagrams. I’d be concerned about afternoon peak times though, they attract a mix of commuters and long-distance travellers and the wrong number of reserved vs unreserved seats could cause bad friction.

Unless the DfT decides they want more money and getting rid of route specific (and some of the TOC only) flexible tickets is one method. Replaced with quota controlled advance tickets which will disappear whenever there is an event at Wembley or the WCML is closed

 

[A S Leib]

I'd have thought that HS2 would remove the need for end-to-end seat reservations on non-HS London to Birmingham services, and have hoped that more London to Oxford capacity could come (weren't the Didcot stoppers meant to go through until electrification was cancelled?). Of course, neither of those are Chiltern services, and High Wycombe to Birmingham or central Solihull to London passengers may still prefer to have reservations.

There's at least two reasons I can think of for wanting a particular seat not covered in the survey; being near the station exit, especially at stations like Marylebone where it's easy to work out which carriage that means, and having a window seat which actually has a window view. The first one doesn't work well if the exit's at one end of the train and it's running in the opposite formation to plan. Moving from a reserved seat to get away from noisy passengers is something else which I don't think it mentions.

 

[CyrusWuff]

I think it would be a very bizarre decision to be the odd one out compared to every other TOC in the country, at least when Chiltern are usually the odd ones out in positive ways!

I didn't suggest it was sensible, given the result of the GWR and NX attempts to charge for reservations.

If anyone was going to charge for reservations for walk-up tickets, I'd expect it to be one of the OAOs. Most likely Lumo, given they already have a luggage policy that's stricter than laid down in the NRCoT, with an arbitrary £40 charge for excess luggage (previously capped at £5 per journey when "Accompanied Animals and Articles" were chargeable.)

 

[Falcon1200]

the wrong number of reserved vs unreserved seats could cause bad friction.

That is the key question for me, what proportion of seats on any given train will be non-reservable?

 

[themeone]

I am on the whole strongly against seat reservations.

Get on, sit down. Simple as that. Why should a group of 4 not be able to sit at a table from, say, Birmingham to Edinburgh because someone's reserved one of the seats from Carlisle onwards.

Let passenger assist reserve priority seats, but otherwise nope.

They just cause far too many issues when there are formation changes, unit swaps which mean reservations aren't then put out (on paper based set ups anyway), short forms, 168 running vice Mk5 set and so on. And don't get me started on the TOCs that will allow someone to reserve a seat that you're already sat in!

At least we're not as bad as some operators on the continent that won't allow travel without a reservation.

Admittedly, all that being said, I'm pretty much always travelling alone so as long as I'm not too far away from the buffet, I'm not bothered where I sit.

Agreed - reservations just cause work for the train operator, and unnecessary friction between passengers. Southwestern operates quite long routes without reservations, so I don't see why Chiltern needs them.

I suppose they could make seat reservations chargeable if not done via Passenger Assist. I imagine a £5 fee per seat would put enough people off reserving to bring some sanity back to the situation.

 

[OscarH]

I think it is far more likely that they simply want to avoid the situation on other operators where flexible ticket holders book reservations which they never use.

This is made much worse by the fake compulsory reservations done by those TOCs meaning people can't opt out of a reservation for their flexible ticket. I accept the problem will exist to some degree even when the reservation is optional like on Chiltern, but I have limited sympathy for people who have actively made the problem worse for themselves, and the idea of giving worse service to people who've spent money on a more expensive ticket is absolutely ludicrous

 

[Haywain]

This is solved by tying reservations to Advance ticket holders only, as the reservations will be cancelled in the instance someone changes their plans and takes another train.

That may be the case when making a change online but I very much doubt it will happen for tickets changed at stations. And there will still be the same level of no shows.

 

[MarlowDonkey]

And there will still be the same level of no shows.

What prevents someone with a flexible ticket making reservations on several trains using the same ticket?

 

[Haywain]

What prevents someone with a flexible ticket making reservations on several trains using the same ticket?

A theoretical restriction.