Why Do Many Customers Ask/Assume Platforms

[whhistle]

Not really quite worked this out.
Why some (many?) customers assume that platforms will always be the same. I agree, most of the time they are but there are some who ask "what platform will the train be at X location to go to X location?", when it could very easily change.

I'm just wondering what is driving this assumption that train platforms are absolute?

Some airline tickets have the gate printed, but not many that I can remember so wouldn't have thought it was this reason.

 

[Bletchleyite]

At a lot of stations they are consistent. Certainly at Euston commuters knew where to go before it was up on the board well before RTT was a thing.

 

[Goldie]

Like a lot of questions that rail travellers ask, this one probably indicates an expectation that we have which would make the railway system eaiser for us to use. Reliability and constancy are generally valued by customers, and part of that is trains turning up when - and where - you expect them to.

 

[bramling]

Not really quite worked this out.
Why some (many?) customers assume that platforms will always be the same. I agree, most of the time they are but there are some who ask "what platform will the train be at X location to go to X location?", when it could very easily change.

I'm just wondering what is driving this assumption that train platforms are absolute?

Some airline tickets have the gate printed, but not many that I can remember so wouldn't have thought it was this reason.

There are places where certain services virtually always use the same platform - Virgin at Lime Street is one which springs to mind. If this is what you’re used to then it’s not unreasonable to think same may apply more widely.

I’ve certainly taken a punt on platforms at times, and on a couple of occasions got caught out - train was reformed at KX and whilst I got on what should have been the booked incoming service, it turned into a fast Cambridge with no announcement or anything before departure. (To be fair if I’d been paying more attention I might have noticed the train was filling with stereotypical Cambridge types)

 

[yorkie]

N
I'm just wondering what is driving this assumption that train platforms are absolute?

At many places they are absolute (apart from exceptional circumstances) so perhaps they are used to it?

 

[DarloRich]

Not really quite worked this out.
Why some (many?) customers assume that platforms will always be the same. I agree, most of the time they are but there are some who ask "what platform will the train be at X location to go to X location?", when it could very easily change.

I'm just wondering what is driving this assumption that train platforms are absolute?

Some airline tickets have the gate printed, but not many that I can remember so wouldn't have thought it was this reason.

Firstly, unlike all of us here those in the real world are not experts.

People, especially regular commuters get into a zone and know where they are going. They really do not like anything that upsets that routine. I saw that during the Olympics when routes were changed around stations. They know the train goes form a certain platform so don't look.

irregular travelers want reassurance and will ask several people the same question. I guess a lot of that is to do with our ticketing rules and the fear of falling foul of them.

 

[Tomnick]

Two issues come to mind, really.

The first is where passengers are used to their train to X departing from a particular platform because it always does, and they end up missing it because something been swapped and it's gone from a different platform, or even because they're travelling at a different time of day to usual and that particular train is (always) booked to use a different platform because of a peak-time conflict with something else.

The second is where passengers have bought their tickets using an app, and that app shows them the booked platform, and they end up missing it because there's a platform alteration and their app doesn't reflect that. I've dealt with a few of those, in all cases where the platform alteration has been advised a long time in advance (favourite is a Sunday morning when 'the plan' has been altered in the very early hours of the morning as the station was set up, so the alterations would have been shown on the screens as soon as each affected train appeared two hours before).

In both cases, the immediate cause is passengers plodding along in their own little worlds and ignoring the numerous sources of information that'd put them right (one such source, of course, being the platform staff - better to ask them, less helpful to ask the crew on their previous train!). Maybe we, as an industry, could do more in the second case though, by not providing them with information that's not reliable because it's subject to change?