I would certainly argue for the use of Hanlon's razor in this case, yes.
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Northern fake "Compulsory Reservations" Trial
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Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Evidently
Talk about someone coming up with a stupid idea and just flipping a switch in the production instance without bothering to do any impact assessment or testing first.
Thanks for the clarification. I expect that in practice it won't make much of a difference. How they'll manage to enforce quota control across so many stations and stop other outlets selling tickets for their services is beyond my comprehension. Even management will probably decide it's more hassle than it's worth.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Enforce what? All it is is, like Avanti and LNER, the online sales channels and planner based TVMs mark that service as "sold out", and every ticket is sold with a counted place even if it's hidden from display by your retailer. It's a level of control on sales which is easily worked around.
You mean like Grand Central do?
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
If they do, and it results in paying more than you should, then I would argue that is fraud if it is done deliberately. I'm not sure in GC's case it's not just incompetence, though, it's never been a well managed operation. It's incompetence in the way WMT do it, certainly (having restriction text that can't be implemented properly).
It's entirely irrelevant.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
The same as it does now. It only has any kind of effect on purchasing tickets against an itinerary. It is just a sales tool, one is not required to have a reservation to board.
Harpers Tate
Established Member
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Season tickets and PTE passes? How about using trains that are fit for purpose (i.e. have enough room)? Oh, wait; we can't do that because Platform 17 at Leeds. Good way to encourage people to drive - which has, of course, been the agenda at government level since the late 50s.
Bishops
Member
They are missing out on a so much data because it seems a lot of their guards on the bishop line wont scan an ITSO card - apparently they are always *broken* so if it happens here im sure it happens a few other places as well. Mind you ive had one or two guards actually question my card before they have scanned it because 'it doesnt say northern on it'!!
All great stuff and exactly to be expected. What a total mess of executing what was a bad idea to start with.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
The thread is a misnomer. It's not actually compulsory reservations, you do not need a reservation to board. Could the thread creator maybe change the subject to "Northern Fake Compulsory Reservations Trial" or somesuch as people would know what it meant then?
It is the same as LNER/Avanti in that reservations are optional but quota control is applied to the selection of each train when buying online or from a planner based TVM. From most vendors you won't even get anything that even looks like a reservation when you buy a ticket - most if not all are set up now not to print a coupon/put an itinerary on an e-ticket when the only reservations are counted places unless it is an Advance fare.
Edit: thanks for the subject change!
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fishwomp
Established Member
This is where they're going wrong:
If you don't have people sat in the bog, you aren't even approaching full... capacity needs to be - I'd guess - 2x the number of seats.
Where on earth do they get the staff/leadership from that come up with these ideas.
They will be marking available capacity as the number of seats.
If you don't have people sat in the bog, you aren't even approaching full... capacity needs to be - I'd guess - 2x the number of seats.
Where on earth do they get the staff/leadership from that come up with these ideas.
redreni
Established Member
If this is the answer, what's the question?
My guess is something like:
The government wishes to promote growth by refusing to invest in anything. We have noticed some local trains can be really badly overcrowded and, consistent with our vision, we want to be seen to address this problem without laying on any more capacity. What can we do to make the consequences of our refusal to invest less visible to the media?
My guess is something like:
The government wishes to promote growth by refusing to invest in anything. We have noticed some local trains can be really badly overcrowded and, consistent with our vision, we want to be seen to address this problem without laying on any more capacity. What can we do to make the consequences of our refusal to invest less visible to the media?
Farigiraf
Established Member
Hoping that Trainsplit (and all Raileasy brands) will find a workaround or boycott this altogether. Moving to dynamic pricing on long-distance rail is bad enough, it's totally foolish for regional rail, and the step-by-step stealth implementation is so shockingly dishonest and confusing that I've really got no idea anymore what the UK rail fare system will look like 10 years from now.
French regional trains not having compulsory reservations is partially a result of the fact that they're rarely very busy, due to decades of neglect. Many UK regional railways are strings of overlapping commuting patterns at decent, predictable frequencies, and therefore are used a lot more.
I do hope that the aim is not to move things towards the French fares model (superficial proftability over overall socioeconomic benefit), although it's true that when you have growing rail usage and a DfT with the goal of zero rail growth, you do have to cap off demand somehow to prevent the railway from becoming too popular and useful (and therefore a vote loser to neglect). If you don't want to spend any money on the railway, it's better to make people not care about the state of the trains by reducing the amount of people using them.
When the 'counted place' reservations were being introduced on short-distance TOCs like Northern and GTR, it was apparently clear that this was just to allow for advance fares. I'd regret being one of those posters who stated this!
@Paul Kelly Might be time to go all in on an ad campaign targeted at Sheffield rail users!
French regional trains not having compulsory reservations is partially a result of the fact that they're rarely very busy, due to decades of neglect. Many UK regional railways are strings of overlapping commuting patterns at decent, predictable frequencies, and therefore are used a lot more.
I do hope that the aim is not to move things towards the French fares model (superficial proftability over overall socioeconomic benefit), although it's true that when you have growing rail usage and a DfT with the goal of zero rail growth, you do have to cap off demand somehow to prevent the railway from becoming too popular and useful (and therefore a vote loser to neglect). If you don't want to spend any money on the railway, it's better to make people not care about the state of the trains by reducing the amount of people using them.
When the 'counted place' reservations were being introduced on short-distance TOCs like Northern and GTR, it was apparently clear that this was just to allow for advance fares. I'd regret being one of those posters who stated this!
@Paul Kelly Might be time to go all in on an ad campaign targeted at Sheffield rail users!
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fishwomp
Established Member
.. but we need to keep fares fixed so that inflation doesn't get worse. Let's sell less tickets.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
What makes you think that?
I would expect them to set it to seats plus a certain number of standees. Unless of course they set it as just seats on the basis that you'll get the standees anyway because of people purchasing open return tickets (another thing that really messes with it and almost certainly the vast majority of tickets sold by Northern).
em81
Member
Here's an idea. Use the traffic light system that's already used by other operators. If the train's likely to be standing room only it's red, if there's likely to be plenty of vacant seats it's green. Obviously if you buy your ticket further in advance the less accurate the prediction is. While if you buy for the same day it could even make an allowance for a train being cancelled at short notice.
fishwomp
Established Member
I mean, they _could_ be - but someone's already shown a journey greyed out earlier on in this thread -- which I took to mean 'full'.. and you know, it's never really 'full' before you've added the walk-ons... so they can't honestly have sold out of all the standing positions..
that might be the sensible way to implement an idiotic idea.. but it's still an idiotic idea!
Snow1964
Established Member
It's irrelevant from ticket buying part.
But if a season ticket holder sits in an allocated seat then who will enforce it (also applies to anyone with other open tickets, rovers etc too) But of course, most of Northerns fleet doesn't have reservation indicators, so will have the potential farce of having a reservation without a seat.
The local media will have a field day making Northern look stupid if reservations don't guarantee a seat, or even ability to squeeze on the train.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
They are not allocating seats. It's just counted places.
All it is is applying quotas to retailing a given train, and if that quota is exhausted it shows "sold out". Give or take the bits noted above which have been botched.
There is zero effect on season tickets, Rangers/Rovers, TfGM/Merseytravel day tickets, contactless, the return half of day/open returns (unless you want to pick a train) and any ticket sold not against an itinerary e.g. from a booking office, brfares.com or a non planner TVM. Which of course means it's utterly pointless, but clearly someone has had a hair brained idea and someone else has been stupid enough to sign it off.
redreni
Established Member
Yep.
All true, but the point is, unless they do a very good job of predicting how many passengers they'll have on each train in the following categories:
- season ticket holders;
- people who selected another train when they bought their (flexible) ticket but then decided to travel on this one, or simply missed their intended train and ended up on this one;
- people who bought a flexible ticket without an itinerary from a ticket office or TVM or BRFares;
- people using the return half of an open return that was issued without a return itinerary;
Anyway, I shall confine myself to mild disdain rather than open hostility to this measure. If DfTO top brass think too many people are mocking them and ignoring or working around these stupid fake compulsory reservation measures, then instead of admitting defeat they may push for a regime in which reservations really would be compulsory.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
That's one of the many reasons why it's a stupid idea - but is also why counted places don't get printed as reservations any more from most retailers unless the fare is an Advance or similar. They create false expectations.
It's likely things will move that way, but not by fining people for not having reservations (as e.g. the French do), more likely by just moving heavily towards Advance fares with Anytimes being too expensive for most people to justify buying them and Off Peaks etc removed as "outdated".
Farigiraf
Established Member
I suspect that it's mostly to do with the fact that the railway, and rail investment in general, is no longer in the Overton window. Mode share of rail in the UK is only about 5% for all non-local journeys, much of which is in the Southeast. Add to that HS2, DfT-union disputes and rising rail fares, and it's clear why a fares freeze is believed to be the only rail 'growth' project that wins enough support to be worth the cost.
If the average UK voter/taxpayer doesn't regularly use the train, and also bases their politics on subjects with more media time (e.g. migration, geopolitics or who promises the most 'safety' for your specific demographic), then why would any change in rail influence a voting decision, besides a vague "nationalisation = good because privatisation hasn't worked" belief? And this is meant to be the better scenario for rail, out of the 3 main political parties' strategies.
pokemonsuper9
Established Member
I don't think there's any place for that on local/commuter services, which is what these (mostly) are.
Someone travelling 1 stop from Meadowhall to Sheffield definitely shouldn't be forced into Advances (especially since that pair is Northern's most served, with 7tph, not counting the TPE) or an overpriced anytime.
Kite159
Veteran Member
Was it dreamt up by someone high up who lives in Barnsley who is unhappy about having to stand whenever they travel to Sheffield or Leeds?
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
More likely they would be using contactless. But the longer regional journeys would be more oriented to Advances.
I'm not supporting it, I'm just saying what seems to be the direction of travel based on the "trials" etc so far.
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Do these trains often leave people behind? Standing isn't a great issue on regional services and 195s are well designed for it, but leaving people behind on hourly 2 car services that can't be extended for infrastructure reasons really is an issue.
Of course BR would have put the "white R" on the problem trains, not all of them!