Reserved seats grouped together

[Rover E]

Why are advance purchase ticket seats always grouped together in a crowded carriage? I travelled from Glasgow to Bolton on a very crowded TPE service last week using my AP ticket. The carriage was uncomfortably busy and many passengers had multiple bags(airport service) which caused a few frank exchanges between harassed passengers.
Are ticket agents/agencies not permitted to spread the seats around? The rest of the service was fairly quiet but AP ticket holders aren’t allowed to use unreserved seats I believe?
Any info gratefully received.

 

[D1537]

Why are advance purchase ticket seats always grouped together in a crowded carriage? I travelled from Glasgow to Bolton on a very crowded TPE service last week using my AP ticket. The carriage was uncomfortably busy and many passengers had multiple bags(airport service) which caused a few frank exchanges between harassed passengers.
Are ticket agents/agencies not permitted to spread the seats around? The rest of the service was fairly quiet but AP ticket holders aren’t allowed to use unreserved seats I believe?
Any info gratefully received.

You can sit in any unreserved seat with a valid ticket.

The majority of my travel is with LNER, and on 9-cars I tend to switch my seat reservation into Coach G as it always seems to be the last one to be filled.

 

[Bletchleyite]

You can sit in any unreserved seat with a valid ticket.

This isn't technically true per the Advance T&Cs, however it is not enforced, I think it was only GNER who ever did, though I have heard a few reports of Lumo doing so.

 

[Gaelan]

You can sit in any unreserved seat with a valid ticket.

This is, strictly, not true. The Advance Ticket T&Cs say:

4.2 Where applicable, you must travel in the Class and reserved seat(s) shown on the ticket(s).

That being said, I've never seen this enforced.

 

[yorkie]

Why are advance purchase ticket seats always grouped together in a crowded carriage? I travelled from Glasgow to Bolton on a very crowded TPE service last week using my AP ticket. The carriage was uncomfortably busy and many passengers had multiple bags(airport service) which caused a few frank exchanges between harassed passengers.
Are ticket agents/agencies not permitted to spread the seats around? The rest of the service was fairly quiet but AP ticket holders aren’t allowed to use unreserved seats I believe?
Any info gratefully received.

Our ticketing website ( https://tickets.railforums.co.uk/ ) has a seat selector; you can choose the seat you want!

You may also want to refer to more detailed info at https://www.tpexpress.co.uk/travelling-with-us/onboard-facilities/seating-plan when selecting your seat.

 

[D1537]

This isn't technically true per the Advance T&Cs, however it is not enforced, I think it was only GNER who ever did, though I have heard a few reports of Lumo doing so.

Yes, I probably should have said "in reality, you will have no problems sitting in any unreserved seat". The closest I've seen to enforcement of this is announcements on very crowded trains asking people to sit in their reserved seats, though admittedly I am not a heavy user of Lumo. I suspect that most people actually do this anyway.

 

[Daniel_P]

Our ticketing website ( https://tickets.railforums.co.uk/ ) has a seat selector; you can choose the seat you want!

You may also want to refer to more detailed info at https://www.tpexpress.co.uk/travelling-with-us/onboard-facilities/seating-plan when selecting your seat.

So does Trainsplit (which powers your forum ticketing site...) and Realtime Tickets, among others.

 

[yorkie]

So does Trainsplit (which powers your forum ticketing site...) and Realtime Tickets, among others.

Yes they are all powered by the same system (Raileasy)

For completeness, some operators allow seat selection but only for their own services; as far as I'm aware only Raileasy powered websites would allow seat selection on any applicable operator.

I recall TPE briefly had a seat selector on their own website but it only lasted a few months for some reason. I think they changed supplier shortly after it was implemented, but I can't remember the details now, not that it matters.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Yes, I probably should have said "in reality, you will have no problems sitting in any unreserved seat". The closest I've seen to enforcement of this is announcements on very crowded trains asking people to sit in their reserved seats, though admittedly I am not a heavy user of Lumo. I suspect that most people actually do this anyway.

Yeah, most people aren't too bothered about what their seat looks like, it's mainly enthusiasts who are bothered (me included). And on TOCs with seat selection on their main site (i.e. LNER/Avanti) people who care can pick accordingly so even more likely to.

It's not a great problem. More of a problem is people sitting in reserved seats without any reservation and refusing to move.

 

[158801]

It's been many years but....the reservation system used by BR in the 1990's would be programmed to reserve coaches in a certain order ( B, E, A, C then D) for example.
The first person would get seat B01, the second would get B02, the third B03

The only way this would vary would be if a window seat was requested (for example) or the reservation was for a group of 4 - then the next table seats would be allocated.

On a quiet train you could have a scenario with only two seats reserved B01 and B02 - both for travellers who are not travelling together

 

[Cell2025]

I can't remember where I booked the ticket through, but when I booked two seats together on a XC service Leeds to Birmingham and return the numbers on the tickets were adjacent but I was on one side of the train next to a window and she was on the other side equally next to the window. We booked a long time in advance and the numbers were consecutive, so I presume that the seat planner simply couldn't correlate the actual layout with the request for two seats together in thee same transaction.

As ever the train was short formed, or just designed that way, and chaotic. She was probably happy not to have to sit next to me!

Still a bit odd.

 

[Taunton]

It's been many years but....the reservation system used by BR in the 1990's would be programmed to reserve coaches in a certain order ( B, E, A, C then D) for example.
The first person would get seat B01, the second would get B02, the third B03

On a quiet train you could have a scenario with only two seats reserved B01 and B02 - both for travellers who are not travelling together

SNCF used to do this, just allocate seats numerically in the order the reservations came in, which could lead to half the coaches being full and the others empty. It went back for them to days of individual carriages being marshalled in the formation, and on the day they would just put on as many as reserved - and in fairness, if a large demand, would just shunt up extra vehicles, with an additional proportion calculation for unreserved passengers.

 

[mmh]

The elephant in the room: this is actually a pretty complicated mathematical problem (and an interesting one too, if you're a bit of a nerd for this kind of thing like I am.) People far more able than me try to work out how to do this. Then it's made nigh on impossible by... seat selectors.

 

[Deerfold]

SNCF used to do this, just allocate seats numerically in the order the reservations came in, which could lead to half the coaches being full and the others empty. It went back for them to days of individual carriages being marshalled in the formation, and on the day they would just put on as many as reserved - and in fairness, if a large demand, would just shunt up extra vehicles, with an additional proportion calculation for unreserved passengers.

We had an Advance booking on Thalys before its merger with Eurostar for Amsterdam to Brussels. They booked from one end, then the other end on the next service. This meant that (as occurred with us) if a service was cancelled, you still used the same seat on the next train.

 

[Hadders]

We had an Advance booking on Thalys before its merger with Eurostar for Amsterdam to Brussels. They booked from one end, then the other end on the next service. This meant that (as occurred with us) if a service was cancelled, you still used the same seat on the next train.

That won't work if more than half of the train is reserved.

 

[styles]

Our ticketing website ( https://tickets.railforums.co.uk/ ) has a seat selector; you can choose the seat you want!

You may also want to refer to more detailed info at https://www.tpexpress.co.uk/travelling-with-us/onboard-facilities/seating-plan when selecting your seat.

This is actually one of the reasons I use for the forum site for booking - a universal seat selector for multi-leg journeys involving multiple operators. I do find some of the diagrams a bit unclear as they don't really picture where tables are (though you can make some assumptions), and I've had a couple of instances where it's not let me reserve a particular seat, probably because it's not actually reservable, but it generally works really well.

I am forever wanting a quieter carriage (as in, less occupied), and it's annoying how often automatic seat selectors default to sort of filling up a carriage.

 

[Furrball]

Slightly different scenario but equally frustrating was booking with Lumo and it would insist on reserving no view or restricted view seats despite being able to see from this site booking engine that there were many other seats available

(Could not actually book via the RailEasy platform as it does not show lumo + connections fares correct e.g Newcastle to Glasgow with a change at Edinburgh)

In the end reserved about 60 seats via other methods to force something actually decent to appear

 

[zero]

The elephant in the room: this is actually a pretty complicated mathematical problem (and an interesting one too, if you're a bit of a nerd for this kind of thing like I am.) People far more able than me try to work out how to do this. Then it's made nigh on impossible by... seat selectors.

Yes but in practice the optimal solution isn't required. Something like dividing each reserveable carriage into 3 sub-areas, and putting new reservations in the area with the fewest currently reserved seats should be good enough to space out passengers.

It is weird how people who very likely didn't select their particular seats, and get bunched together, often still insist on sitting there even when the carriage is largely empty.

I once sat on the opposite table to a couple who had been allocated the backwards facing seats and once they had sat down they began whining about how unlucky they were - even though the forward seats at the same table weren't reserved at all. After 15 minutes of this whining I told them they could just move, but they declined to move though at least they stopped talking about it.

In the end reserved about 60 seats via other methods to force something actually decent to appear

I wonder if this is why sometimes almost a whole carriage shows as reserved but only 10-20% of the seats are occupied by the time the doors close.

 

[styles]

The elephant in the room: this is actually a pretty complicated mathematical problem (and an interesting one too, if you're a bit of a nerd for this kind of thing like I am.) People far more able than me try to work out how to do this. Then it's made nigh on impossible by... seat selectors.

I'd actually suggest it's needn't be - instead of having an algorithm which tries to work out the best place to seat somebody, just select a random seat.

Trying to fill up a particular carriage at a time isn't necessary.

The only thing I can think of would be that it may be desirable to, like cinema/theatre bookings, avoid multi-passenger bookings leaving single seats free, but given the seats on our trains are (with a few exceptions like single perpendicular seats) in groups of two not around a table or four around a table, it wouldn't be complicated to factor that in when somebody is making a solo reservation.

 

[yorkie]

Slightly different scenario but equally frustrating was booking with Lumo and it would insist on reserving no view or restricted view seats despite being able to see from this site booking engine that there were many other seats available

(Could not actually book via the RailEasy platform as it does not show lumo + connections fares correct e.g Newcastle to Glasgow with a change at Edinburgh)

Can you provide the details including the full itinerary please?

In the end reserved about 60 seats via other methods to force something actually decent to appear

I wonder if this is why sometimes almost a whole carriage shows as reserved but only 10-20% of the seats are occupied by the time the doors close.

No; they surely meant they put tickets in their basket.

 

[Furrball]

Sample from just now