Any guesses for what chaos awaits us on this train?
Edit to add: This is not the ticket, it was printed alongside the actual ticket, after asking for seating preferences.
I'm not familiar with the ticketing system, but I think that it'd be reasonable for the ticket to simply be used to ensure that there is a seat somewhere, but not a specific seat.
If you go to a restaurant and reserve a table, the table doesn't need to be a specific one...just means that the restaurant will make sure that one is open.
This ticket is odd by UK standards, and the arrangement you describe isn't the norm. These seat reservation tickets normally specify a particular seat
Every east-midlands train I've been on has had to cancel specific seat reservations when I got on anyway. I think they just constantly overbook or something.
Great western railway operates like this, offering you a "mystery seat" regardless of whether they've sold 120% of the seats in the train.
I am very familiar with this ticketing system, and if you don't have a specific seat reserved, you'll be very lucky to find a seat unless you're getting on at the beginning of the train's journey.
It means you can sit anywhere you want and you're not stuck in an assigned seat.
You get on the train early you can have any seat you want.
This seems like the exact opposite of infuriating.
Then why do you also need this piece of paper that doesn't even seem to function as a ticket?
My money is on it being part of the ticketing computer’s programming.
Any seat you want
Provided that someone doesn't have a specific seat booked.
In my experience it should be called general seating or something along those lines if it isn't for a specific reserved seat.
It means they are essentially guaranteeing you that the seats are not oversold. There will definitely be a seat for you somewhere on the train - that’s all this is saying. It’s capacity management. Have you not used regional rail before?
No, they still sell tickets without reservations and anytime tickets without limit. Your only guarantee is a numbered seat that you can claim. This has no such thing.
Is there though? I've never been unable to buy an Any Time ticket on the day because a train is full.
I've only been unable to board a train a handful of times, and that was because people were rammed in like the Black Hole of Calcutta before the train even arrived.
Having used plenty of EMR services before I'm counting down the days until they're renationalised...
Fairly common in Germany. Trains can be so full often times that people are standing butt to belly in the aisles.
In the UK where this ticket is from, if you buy a ticket from the machine in the station it will spit it out in potentially multiple parts (because one isn't enough space for all the information)
You can see this ticket says "Valid only with Travel Ticket", which means this is the second of two parts. The "Travel Ticket" (not pictured) is the one that actually allows you to travel on the train, and the seat reservation part (pictured) is the one that gives you a seat.
Normally the machine only gives what you need, so if there is no seat reservation you'll get the travel ticket only.
So the mystery isn't that there is no reserved seat, but that because there is no seat, this ticket doesn't even need to exist. The machine could have just not printed this ticket at all.
Thanks for the clarification!
You see, you know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to hold the reservation. And that's really the most important part of the reservation: the holding.
So many people in the comments don't get that having something called a seat reservation which doesn't literally reserve a seat is mildly infuriating.
I think people answering these comments are from other countries that don't understand that on a train from Reading to London in rush hour, there might be 60 seats and 80 passengers per carriage. 20 of these pax standing despite their ticket that said "Feel free to sit on any free seat you happen to find!"
I’m reading some of these replies thinking I’m getting gaslighted by railway operator employees. Unless they actually sell “absolutely no sitting” tickets and the conductors fine abusers, this ticket makes no sense.
"Specific." It's general admission. Ideally, they would only sell as many seat reservations as there are seats available in whatever cars are in the "seat pool."
I don't see a problem here.
I suppose it's irritating that you pay (a likely large amount of money as it's probably a UK ticket) for a ticket with a seat reservation, the least they could do is actually assign you a seat.
If it's a free for all and - as you likely correctly say - they don't oversell the number of tickets against the number of seats, then the reservation card of the ticket is a little pointless really.
It's likely to differentiate between the general admission cars and the cars that do have assigned (and probably more comfortable) seats.
Same thing as general admission at a concert, but on a train.
Everyone crams to the front to get there faster?
Not really infuriating at all.
Think of it like an airline. You have a reserved seat, but it isn't actually allocated until you check in .
In the UK you can get on a train without booking a ticket for that specific train, for example an open return or just a day pass. The train company has no idea how many seats will be taken or how many people will get on the train. So say it's a 10 carriage train. Every seat is taken by someone, reserved or unreserved, and theres not a bit of standing room anywhere (this is very common). Which person sat on a reserved red light indicator seat should you kick out? And how do you know they didn't reserve that seat specifically before you do that? Or do you kick someone out of a green lit non-reserved seat, with thier proof that the seat is not reserved and they are allowed to sit there, and your proof that you dont even have that seat reserved. It will also be the old people and small children sat down, and you won't really be popular if you make them stand. Yeah you're not sitting if you have this ticket. You'll likely be stood by the entrance door for 3 hours instead. This seat reservation ticket may as well say, "sorry no seat today", and it's definitely infuriating to lean that you will be standing for your journey when you've payed full price for a seat, maybe £40 depending where.
Is that how airlines work where you are? It'd be wild for me to not pick my seat
Seems reasonable enough to me if you bought a ticket for a train which doesn't have assigned seating, which is pretty common. Just choose your seat as you board the same way you would with a bus.
Yeah but why even give you the checkbox/option for reserving a seat, only to tell you that you might actually be standing if the train is full or you don't arrive early enough?
Certain tickets in German rail have similar reservations. There are numerous seats kept free in the train for those who have a reservation - simply find one of these seats and sit down there. Always worked fine for me.
Heavenly: If there are few people then you can sit anywhere.
Hell: If there are a lot of people then you might not be able to board the train.
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