Chiltern planning to introduce seat reservations - Survey

[Adam Williams]

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

I'm sure retailers would be happy to look at giving passengers the ability & nudging them regarding a need to cancel/rearrange reservations if that was a direction the industry wanted to go in. It has to be better than the status quo of passengers being given reservations they don't want and having no say in it.

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

Today, very little. In a future Chiltern world? The survey is strongly hinting they'll just set it up so only the Advance tariffs map to you being able to book a seat and either give flexible ticket holders either nothing or a counted place - which effectively would eliminate this problem.

As Oscar says, this leaves a bit of a bad taste. I basically never buy Advances from Chiltern and spend a few thousands on travel with them every year. I tend to board the first train I can that's at Leamington / Marylebone when I get there.

Glad I have "being confined to the unreserved section" to look forward to if they configure RARS in this way [which is a pretty naff way to treat people who are paying more money for your service]. Though of course, you can only end up stuck in the unreserved section if you're let through the gateline with your ticket, which has been far from guaranteed as of late even for customers with perfectly valid tix.

Rugby is only an 8 minute longer drive for me, so I actively choose between the Chiltern line or the WCML. Yesterday I took the WCML instead as it has a bit of a better late-evening service.

I feel like there is a better balance here that could be achieved. Retailers doing more to encourage only reserving when customers are confident about the service they'll use, the industry encouraging and rewarding passengers and retailers for cancelling unneeded reservations (currently the commercial incentives favour retailers keeping reservations they do not need, which is stupid) and making it much easier to change between services for flexible-ticket-holders.

 

[VT 390]

If Chiltern can reliably offer seat reservations on Mk5 operated services I would certainly support seat reservations being introduced on these services because for places like Dorridge, Leamington Spa and Banbury these form their main London service where journey times are over an hour so a guaranteed (as certain as it can be) seat would be a good improvement, especially as the Mk5 services are likely to become more limited stop. There would be nothing stopping them from keeping 1 or 2 carriages completely unreserved for those without reservations.

While Chiltern is more of a commuter operator I do not think it is much different to how Great Western Railway offers seat reservations on longer journeys (Oxford, Bristol... to London) but not on shorter local routes (like Didcot to London semi-fast). Leamington and Banbury have decent flows to London for which this is there only realistic option and are similar in journey time to places like Swindon, Rugby, Grantham which all have seat reservation options going to London.

I do not think it would be a good idea to introduce seat reservations on local Chiltern services operated by class 165/class 168 but as the MK5 services do form longer journeys and the reservation equipment is already fitted it would be a good improvement for stations where this is their primary London service.

 

[riceuten]

I suspect another driver to this is the absolute obsession of some tourists (not just in the UK) with having seat reservations to the point where they will take a costly InterCity train for a journey that could be done on an (unreserveable) regional or local train for a fraction of the price

 

[david1212]

As the MK5 sets have the facility plus 1st Class and some services will run with lower capacity I am not surprised by this. I wonder what will be the proportion limit of standard seats that are reservable? While now 1st is only an on-train upgrade Chiltern / DfT could change this.

I always have a flexible ticket. In the morning I have a planned train but would not want to be constrained to a fixed train advance as against say a +/-70 minute flex where I could take another train in the time window without having to go online and change the train as per LNER. I would simply be risking finding a vacant unreserved seat.
For the return I do not want to be constrained beyond the validity window e.g. weekdays super-off-peak not valid to depart Marylebone between 16:00 & 19:00. If in London all of my day is unlikely to be planned ahead plus can be caught out by a tube problem - this happened the day of the last Old Oak Common depot open day. If my end destination is outside London then there can be issues with both the 'mainline' return to London and the tube. Two years ago both on the same day - 20 minutes late into Victoria then find tube stopped. Here while if I had an itinerary a specific train advance ticket would be valid I have to commit in advance to the initial departure time.

@LittleRedTrain - Thanks for starting this thread and the link to the survey which I have completed. We will probably never know whether the responses will be considered or this is a done deal.