If you don't book a seat on the West Highland services you run the risk of not being able to board at intermediate stops. Bus pass holders need to pay £1 for this. People assuming that there will be a space are a problem at Tyndrum where this a lit of swapping between buses from Oban and Fort William.
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Scottish Citylink
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markymark2000
On Moderation
One possible issue they are wanting to resolve is everyone wanting the 'perfect' seat on the long distance routes. Almost everyone wants the front row and given there are only 4 seats there, supply and demand logic kicks in. If there is too little supply, throw up the price and that will decrease the demand and make a few quid in the meantime. Front rows shouldn't just be for people who queue up for the bus at the first stop 30 minutes before departure (yes, I have seen this happen many times before)
It's a shame that Citylink are opting for a 'full reserved' method as in my experience the Megabus and NatEx 1/2 reserved 1/2 unreserved seems to work out well for matching the needs of both those who want a specific seat or to reserve seats and sit next to eachother, and those who are happy to wing it and hope for the best.
Same thing they did with Megabus and ran it straight into the ground.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Flixbus did that. There was no room in the market for three large operators and Flix's model with small operators and so lower costs allows lower fares. NatEx have gone more upmarket to survive, with nicer coaches and fares a bit higher taking advantage of unaffordable rail fares.
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The problem with partial reserved is that it limits the seats you can reserve. Personally on coaches with emergency exit at the back I quite like the extra legroom backmost seat, for instance, and that wasn't usually offered.
I think where you have a service that can only sell the seats (as per air) and can't have standees fully reserved makes most sense. Charging for selection also makes sense as otherwise you potentially have inefficient seat allocations which reduces capacity.
markymark2000
On Moderation
Are many people actively wanting to sit somewhere near the back though? Bar Levantes (of which there aren't many on the Citylink network), are there many coaches with such a rear emergency exit? I agree though if you do partial reserved, you'd have to do 'front half only' else it'd get complicated. Partial reserved seemed to work for Megabus for a while and works for NatEx now so what would be the difference for Citylink?
Bit of both. Flix maybe hurried along the demise of Megabus, but Megabus (or rather Scottish Citylink given they made most of the decision for Megabus) really didn't help themselves a lot of the time.
scottishtrains
Member
The thing is how do Citylink know the coach that is going to run the route? There is often quite a lot of vehicle swaps so if the seating chart shows a pano there could be a chance that an elite shows up, complicating things even more. (I doubt this would happen but you get the point - keeping in mind however that parks run both so could happen)
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
It's generally an older (lower down body) coach thing to be fair. Used to be practically all of them when NatEx used a lot of B10Ms.
Worked for you perhaps, but personally I prefer fully reserved when flying and would prefer it for coaches too - if reservations are compulsory I'd far rather that included which specific seat including the option to pay for a choice (you don't want everyone to choose otherwise you end up with two non overlapping short journeys in different seats, which is sub-optimal). NatEx traditionally didn't do it in the days when coaches didn't have to be accessible so they did a lot of substitutes and extras hired in from random companies, but nowadays the service car is pretty much always going to be the one it's booked to be.
Low cost coach operations aren't to be fair Citylink's thing, Stagecoach provided that expertise. It would be interesting to see what would have happened in terms of Megabus vs Flix if Stagecoach hadn't sold - it was all about the NatEx merger which didn't happen, they didn't actually want to sell it but were forced to.
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If they want to keep it credible, they need to make sure the right coach is used if the layouts are substantially different. I suppose this is an upside of only doing the front few rows as every coach has those more or less the same.
scottishtrains
Member
Pretty sure there is only 1 operated by Parks, you used to get the ocasional one on Kings Coaches run services but they seemed to of swapped to elites for there runs
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
The front row would always be popular for the view.
Yes, but only 4 passengers can ever have that option. If you don't get one of these seats, then all the other seats should be more or less equal.
318266
Member
This change merely serves to cement my preferred use of Ember for those corridors in which your seat is otherwise cast down upon you by a psuedorandom algorithm on a small underpowered Android tablet.
I don't usually book before I travel simply because, as an enthusiast, my travel patterns are naturally spontaneous. In addition, it feels fairly antithetical to the entire concept of "concessionary travel" that I would be dumped into some random aisle seat next to a random guy eating a pungent Tesco meal deal (certainly not pleasant for a disabled autistic person) unless I paid for my journey, even if for a small fee. Whereas - if I book with Ember, there is not even a booking fee and I can sit wherever I please (which rewards people who arrive early - not a bad thing!).
I don't usually book before I travel simply because, as an enthusiast, my travel patterns are naturally spontaneous. In addition, it feels fairly antithetical to the entire concept of "concessionary travel" that I would be dumped into some random aisle seat next to a random guy eating a pungent Tesco meal deal (certainly not pleasant for a disabled autistic person) unless I paid for my journey, even if for a small fee. Whereas - if I book with Ember, there is not even a booking fee and I can sit wherever I please (which rewards people who arrive early - not a bad thing!).
Cloud Strife
Established Member
- Joined
- 25 Feb 2014
- Messages
- 2,962
It makes sense to have seat reservations for 'good' seats, because it avoids a lot of trouble with people taking up both seats on long journeys. I've seen this happen all too often on coaches, where two people will get on first and spread themselves out across four seats, not least because it's actually quite comfortable to do so on the top deck of a double decker.
Having said that, I did see an amusing row once on Flixbus where some old bloke demanded to sit on the front row seat next to someone. They quite reasonably pointed out that they'd paid for both seats, the old bloke was having none of it and a huge argument broke out. The driver eventually got involved and kicked the man off the bus, but not without a huge amount of drama and abuse.
One other useful thing with seat reservations is that if the driver has access to them, then passengers can be moved upon request too.
PG
Established Member
Not much point unless the driver has access to them, otherwise whose going to intervene if two passengers are squabbling over a certain seat?
scottishtrains
Member
Isn’t being enforced on certain routes such as them along with M8 and 902 I believe
Cloud Strife
Established Member
- Joined
- 25 Feb 2014
- Messages
- 2,962
They should, because this is a basic safety feature for passengers.
Strathtay 260
Member
Yes, LSK870, which is currently up for sale
And yet bizarrely, on the very same page, they say:
Obviously it makes sense not to offer seat reservations on these short routes, but it's odd to then imply they exist in the marketing copy!
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I noticed that too! Obviously written by different people.
scottishtrains
Member
Where is that on the bus?
AndrewTaylor95
Member
Just an absolute shambles of a System, Turn people away from them I think, Ember will gain more passengers, End up causing arguments amongst passengers etc with the seat reservation nonsense, What's the deal with People just walking up with their NEC card now then how is all that going to be enforced?, It should be that some seats can be bought and the rest a free for all, I love taking the bus but being allocated a seat next to a complete stranger is a big No No for me, Obviously if the bus is busy then that can't be helped but there should be freedom to move to a seat where you have your own space if theres others available
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scottishtrains
Member
This was on a pano towards the back from around the back stairs right to the back of the bus
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I’d imagine they’d get given a seat reservation/number when they board or placed in unreserved seating (if there is any)
I had a look at random journeys on the Citylink network and there is a mix of reservation setups.
Glasgow to Fort William:
Glasgow to Perth:
Inverness to Ullapool:
The default seems to be reservable seats are on the right hand side, four rows, but not including the up-front row. You can see this is a bit different for the double deckers, where they've got all sorts of different pricing in play.
Glasgow to Fort William:
Glasgow to Perth:
Inverness to Ullapool:
The default seems to be reservable seats are on the right hand side, four rows, but not including the up-front row. You can see this is a bit different for the double deckers, where they've got all sorts of different pricing in play.
Apologies for the rather basic question, but which routes tend to be single and which tend to be double? If the ones you've sent are representative, and the singles tend to be on the more rural services whereas doubles are on the more express routes, then that seems quite sensible - I would be concerned if the more lifeline and infrequent services were heavily reserved, but a route like Glasgow to Perth/Inverness/Aberdeen (which probably doesn't pick up too much custom outside of the main centres) is probably more suitable for a higher proportion of reservations.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I'm fairly sure that in all cases all or almost all capacity can be prebooked - this is just about allowing selection of specific seats in advance.