Train grumble

[wildeabandon]

So far I have caught four trains since lockdown restrictions began to ease, and on three of them someone was sitting next to or opposite my reserved seat. The first couple of times I shrugged and found another seat, feeling a bit guilty as I did so that I might be putting someone else in the same awkward position of having to decide whether to make a fuss or not.

This morning I decided to be brave and ask the person if they were sure they were in the right seat, and they were - LNER had put two seperate households on opposite sides of the same table. I'm now sitting at the table across the aisle, and hoping that it isn't assigned to someone who's going to get on at the next stop. The train is pretty empty, so it doesn't look as though they've sold too many tickets*, just that the reservation system is either poorly specced or borked, but it is a bit annoying. I think I might actually email LNER about it.

*although whether that's because they have got that restriction properly coded, or it's just a function of demand is obviously impossible to know.

Comments

[sfred]

D had that experience on LNER at the weekend - it does seem odd.

[andrewducker]

That's really rubbish.

And the opposite of LoganAir, who only opened up one seat on each row - leaving Jane, myself, and *Sophia* sitting in different rows. A phone call to their support line had them reassure me that they wouldn't actually split up a 2-year-old from both their parents, but it was a pretty strange/worrying situation!

[wildeabandon]

Ooh, yeah, that doesn't seem very well thought out.

I'm sure it's tricky trying to rewrite algorithms on relatively short notice, but it isn't terribly confidence inspiring.

[atreic]

You're right, that's rubbish. I think it really is worth emailing them (or tweeting at them, Matthew sometimes gets a better response from that) - it could just be that they haven't thought about it.

[wildeabandon]

It's not that they haven't thought about it - they have announcements saying "Make sure that you sit in your reserved seats, because they've been assigned to ensure everyone is socially distanced."

I don't have a twitter account any more, but have added emailing them to tomorrow's to-do list.

[juliet]

Huh, that does seem unwise or badly managed or some such.

GWR's approach, as an alternative solution, appears to be (I haven't travelled yet but we have tickets booked for Sept) not to do seat reservations at all. AFAICT the instructions are to get on the train & sit down in the first suitable seat. I assume to avoid people wandering up and down the aisle looking for their seats, but I am not wholly looking forward to the experience. They have however restricted seats to a smaller number than "actual physical seats available", and given that I had trouble booking for a train 2 months in advance, that smaller number must I think be quite small; and there's no walk-on fares at all.

[hairyears]

Let us know how you get on: pre-COVID, I travelled to the West Country quite a bit, and first-hand observations of the GWR service would be a useful thing to have, before I venture back.

[juliet]

Despite my slight concerns, it actually worked fine -- there was plenty of space, and it was easy to find a suitable seat. There just weren't all that many people on the train, certainly not compared to the similar journey last year which was pretty much full.

Having said that, I am not convinced that everyone was a full 2m away from everyone else (there was certainly one point during the return journey that not everyone had a full empty row between them and the nearest person, but then we attached to another train at Plymouth and it eased out again) but mask-wearing was nearly 100% so I felt it was pretty safe.

[hairyears]

Thanks - looks like all the courses and gradings are cancelled this year, so I won't be travelling to Somerset until the New Year.

Nevertheless, it's good to know that it's as safe as they can reasonably make it.

[the_elyan]

On one of my trains yesterday they announced that they’d overbooked one of the carriages and most of the rest of the train was empty, so people were invited to spread out. I assume they tried to retrofit the existing booking system, which tended to concentrate people, rather than building a different one, and it hasn’t worked properly.