Seat Reservations

[PaulM]

You can already book seats on all Dublin Cork services so you don't have to stand

Are you sure? Is this new?

When I went to Cork in July, I booked online to discover I had a ticket not a seat like I had hoped. I think I got the last free seat on the train. It was actually more hassle to book online as you are given set trains with no guarenteed seat. If you can now book a seat that would be a most welcome improvement.

[Mark Gleeson]

You can book seats though it is a little hit and miss, but the system seems to allow it, we have got the reservation tags in our possession to prove it works. Not all Cork trains where bookable last year

First class is great and works exactly as you expect as you can pick the exact seat you want, it gives you a graphic of the coach you click for the seat you want, second class it offers no choice thats where things get fishy and the question of whether it works or not comes into play, its a little pricy to road test

The CDE sets have electronic reservation tags on the underside of the overhead luggage rack so you can book any seat and its all downloaded into the train, which means I can book Dublin Thurles and that seat can be rebooked from Thurles

[PaulM]

second class it offers no choice thats where things get fishy and the question of whether it works or not comes into play, its a little pricy to road test

Until I get confirmation otherwise I will assume like all IE it is halfarsed and does not work. :( Shame really.

[Mark Gleeson]

Until I get confirmation otherwise I will assume like all IE it is halfarsed and does not work. :( Shame really.
Well here is the reservation card, I've eased the name off the card

98

[Mark Gleeson]

And before anyone asks, it was a standard class seat

[PaulM]

And before anyone asks, it was a standard class seat

That is definitely relatively new. I didn't get one of them when I book "a seat". This is a welcome development. It would be great if it actually does work for all seats. :)

[Mark Gleeson]

Done some investigation and found the smoking gun

Deeply buried in the system the following message can be found
Reservable Standard Class functionality has not yet been implemented on our services

Put simply you can book a ticket, that works but there won't be a reservation card to hold your seat

[Kevin K Kelehan]

That is a crock;

Virgin have major issues with their electronic seat displays and regularly have to reserve seats manually at Euston. If Virgin can take data from a reservation system and label seats manually why can't IE?

[Mark Gleeson]

What is confusing is I have a reservation card to prove it does work, but I can produce a statement from IE to say it doesn't work

So hands up who has bought a ticket online and not got a reservation since November 2005

[TomB]

That's interesting, this was the issue that first prompted me to post on a P11 message board, back in 2004. IE had announced reservations on peak standard class services but not implemented them.

A year and a half overdue? Muppets.

Irish Rail's plan for revolutionising intercity transport seems reasonable enough if you believe the spin: (1) regular services between the state's two busiest cities, and (2) a modern ticketing system in line with other countries. Despite investment of (1) €112 million and (2) one and a half years due to the rotten state of our railways there is still no sign of progress.

Muppets muppets muppets.

[TomB]

Decided to pick up the phone...
Nice lady in the travel centre assures me that std. class seat reservations are possible for intercity services, not just at peak...

Going down to Cork this weekend, so will give it a go. Maybe it's just the website that's banjaxed

[Mark Gleeson]

Going down to Cork this weekend, so will give it a go. Maybe it's just the website that's banjaxed
Book seat see what happens, remember if you have to stand you get a refund. Book online, in standard class. Don't reveal which train you are getting

Proof is the reservation card

[al2637]

Maybe the solution is to provide enough capacity so that seat reservations aren't an issue :D

[Thomas J Stamp]

Any idea how Thomas got on with his experiment?

[PaulM]

Any idea how Thomas got on with his experiment?

No, I'm yet to work out how to time travel. :D

[Thomas J Stamp]

Ha ha, I didnt see when he posted that, assumed he did it last Friday as I havent logged in since last week!!!

As a matter of interest i have seen those tickets stuck in the little holders above seats in standard class.

[Thomas J Stamp]

NOW.... how did Thomas get on with his experiment?

[Mark Gleeson]

Hmm you still cant book standard class seats on the new train well on the 22 June you can on the 13:30 Cork Dublin for some reason
206
Yes you can pick your seat in standard class, still its not right it since the locomotive is the other end, coach A is the first on a CDE and its on the Dublin end, coach A on a MK3 is at the Cork end but they appear the same way round on the website
You can now pick seats on Mk3 services too and they are correctly laid out

[MrX]

Are they going to lable the coaches? A, B, C and so on.

[Mark Gleeson]

CDE coaches are labeled, look at the destination display outside it will read
E Cork for coach E

A is first, B is the buffet then C through H are the coaches, I have yet to see a MK3 labeled

[James Shields]

http://static.flickr.com/45/151408532_3da140ddc6.jpg

As can be seen here: G Corcaigh. Unfortunately I didn't notice until I got home, or I'd have taken one from a better angle.

[d8boy]

I had to travel from Dublin to Limerick & return last week and scheduled my day to suit the 09:00 MkIV. I booked the ticket online, was offered a seat for the Mk IV service to Limerick Jcn. but not for the 17:30 return from Limerick, which is MkIId operated. I found the coach and seat easily, thanks to the MkIV coaches' destination boards noted above. However I was bowled over to find my name on the LED panel above the seat! The problem was that the little old lady sitting in my seat seemed not to notice the reservation. Since I was taught to be nice to little old ladies, I said nothing and my carefully considered window seat facing forward became an aisle seat...

I heard similar reports from other people travelling on MkIII sets where the seat bays have a sticker warning that the seats should not be occupied without a reservation but the reserved seats themselves are not marked. Add the still widesprad attitude of the Great Irish Public that rules are for the other fella, and the on-board staff's apparent lack of interest in checking reservation details, the result is that they are occupied by whoever feels like it.

So it looks like the technology is working but the human factor lets it down.

[Mark Gleeson]

Well if you is left standing on the 9am Dublin Cork find the train manager its normally Happy (no jokes please) and let him sort it out.

Even the IT guys have a grasp of the culture problem

Seat res yesterday was manually coded (ie the train manifest was done by hand) but it worked

[Derek Wheeler]

Seat res yesterday was manually coded (ie the train manifest was done by hand) but it worked

Because it was done by hand and it was a special..

As an operating system, it will only work if train management have an interest in monitoring and actively enforcing the policy of keeping pre-booked seats free. Its a culture change from the technology, to the staff, to the customer, right down to the "little old lady" who hasn't a clue.

The Mr. Spock school of logical thinking, won't apply.

Oh and it has to actually work aswell, before we can apply reality. Even IE staff know this.

[CastaheaneyMan]

Same situation when travelled in Germany/France/Luxembourg - most of time have to point person to overhead LED that this is seat you have booked (if electronic sign available) or ticket with your seat number on it. Some older trains in Germany have simply 'reserved' on sign - no name tag. Especially this time of year when large amount of Inter railers going around people sit any where and great craic listening to irate germans trying to explain to eighteen year old in broken english get out of my bloody seat :p That said most people have no problem getting up as realise people can reserve

[Mark Gleeson]

We spoke at length to the IT guys behind it and the back end systems are in place to do a whole heap of cool stuff but the on train culture isn't leading to a easy implementation

Needless to say I will be booking online from now on and I can get a seat arriving at a decent time and not 60+ minutes ahead

[MrX]

They'd need to have a system where by the seat folds up until you insert your reserved ticked :)

:D

[Donal Quinn]

i've just booked a ticket from thurles to cork for after the hurling 1/4 finals saturday week

had to go first class as normal seats were all taken

will report back on if some langer took my seat - i have to change at mallow for cork so i assume it's a tralee train and therefore not a CDE...

[Mark Gleeson]

Nah all the seats are not taken only a small proportion of seats on normal services are bookable, best guess puts it at no more than 104 on any one train

There be a culture problem you won't see full seat booking for a while

[James Shields]

I think we need to have ticket inspectors walk through the train, and if people are sitting in reserved seats, check they are the reservation holders. If a seat is reserved later on the journey, the passenger should be informed, "you'll have to vacate these seats at Thurles". And if an elderly person has taken a reserved seat, the ticket inspector should find them an unreserved seat elsewhere, asking a more able bodied person to vacate one of the "priority seats" if necessary.

Of course, if a person can't find their reserved seats, the onus is also on them to ask a member of staff to find it.

[Mark]

My sister went to book tickets yesterday using my credit card and to her dismay it said that the credit card holder must travel. Is that common across the board regarding booking train tickets in europe?

[Mark Gleeson]

You do need the credit card to collect the tickets

[Mark]

It stated that the credit card holder must travel.

[Mark Gleeson]

Most vendors won't ship stuff unless the address is that of the credit card owner, its the same kind of thing

Strangely it doesn't seem to apply to special trains

[CastaheaneyMan]

From my experience this is true in Europe as well.

When ever booked with DE Bahn online tickets sent to address per credit card or I.D. needed to collect tickets at main station. Normal now that if address not per credit card have to fax, or e-mail with scan, I.D. card, passport I.D. page or something equivalent to prove identity to avoid fraud.

After saying all that one day bought two tickets in brussels with credit card for two people and neither ticket was for me and did work. Maybe the fact that bought ticket over counter made the difference rather than online.

[James Shields]

As long as the credit card holder is there to collect the tickets, there shouldn't be any requirement for them to travel. In practice, I suspect you would get away with booking someone's ticket and dropping them to the station to collect their tickets, then not travelling yourself. However, in practice this isn't always feasible.

You should be able to book seats in any station. For example, if I'm travelling to Cork tomorrow, I should be able to saunter into my local DART station and book seats for the InterCity leg. Providing I do it a reasonable amount of time in advance of the departure, there shouldn't be any problem. As far as I know, no such service is currently available.

[Colm Donoghue]

does it say the credit card holder has to bring their credit card on the trip??;)
and do normal passengers need to carry ID ?? ;)

[Mark]

I went to book her tickets and it stated that the credit card holder must be a member of the travelling party. I certainly wasn't willing to lend my clothes/fashion/shopping obsessed sister my credit card for the week. I just thought it was a bit stupid considering not everyone has their own credit card. Its not a requirement on the airlines.

[Mark Gleeson]

We learnt a lot about how the seat res system works last week

You can book online up to an hour before departure from start point, well reading between the lines thats not strictly true you book up until the time the train downloads its manifest which could be only 20 minutes from departure on the electronic system, won't be more than an hour, in theory you can book a seat up to 1 minute before departure but you then might have some fun on board

The ticket collection problem is causing headaches, plans are afoot to solve it. Can't see why the ticket vending machines can't be dual role, if you insert your credit card on the main screen it should switch to ticket collection mode

Dublin City Centre as a destination in coming

[James Shields]

Why is a physical ticket required at all? The airlines have done away with them years ago. It's one thing for unreserved seats, but there will be a limited number of booked seats on every train. It would be pretty easy to just give you a reservation code when you book. The ticket inspector need only be given a print list of reservations/booking codes for the ticket inspector when the PIS is being uploaded.

[Mark Gleeson]

I'm trying to drag what little info I have for the next rainy day, user printed tickets could be coming but they have there own problems, exit validation anyone ?

[Mark Gleeson]

At this time it is EXTREMELY inadvisable to book standard class seats on the following trains

11:00 Dublin Cork
15:30 Cork Dublin

These reservations will in all certainty not be honoured

Edit reservations from 24th July will be honoured

[Mark]

Reason being?

[Mark Gleeson]

It won't work

[CSL]

is the widget broke on the train ? that's the same set isn't it ?

Ahhh Wifi, someone break da widdle radio already ? Awwww

[Mark Gleeson]

The standard class seats available online don't physically exist on that train

[James Shields]

The online booking is assuming a Mk3 set, and doesn't know how to remap them to a CDE?

[Mark Gleeson]

More or less

[Mark Gleeson]

As of Monday seat booking on the 11:00 Dublin Cork and 15:30 Cork Dublin will work

As of Monday 24th July the following will be CDE/MK4

7:00, 9:00 Dublin Cork
11:30, 13:30 Cork Dublin

Electronic seat reservations should work on both, the online booking system is set correctly

[Donal Quinn]

boarded train at thurles on saturday evening after the most depressing game of hurling in my life, brightenend only by the fact that cloonan stuffed it to the rest of the county (and country) by coming on and setting up 3 goals (one disallowed) and scoring a penalty...

to cut a long story short 3 people were sitting on reserved seats (including mine) and had to move. (i didn't move them but a cork woman had no bones about that).

I'm pretty sure that there was no signs put up saying that the seats were reserved as the train was fairly empty arriving into thurles and the people in the seat then had to stand all the way to cork whereas if they had sat into the unreserved table accross the way they would have been fine.

basically when IE are lazy about putting up the seat reserved signs then somebody gets shafted, either the guy with the reserved ticket who is to timid to move someone out of the way (not easy if they're drunk scumbags, i've seen it happen) or the chump who sits in an unmarked seat and then has to vacate it and stand for an hour or two when the train fills up. ..

[Thomas J Stamp]

Live from heuson.

There are four young glam looking people wearing yellow t shirts with"
"looking for your pre-booked seat, I ll find it for you.

Nice.

[Mark Gleeson]

Well the problem is not finding your seat its finding it with someone in it or finding there is no reservation card in the seat

On train staff are no help

Was talking to a mate last night he went to Killarney recently got on no sign of his seat guard was no help he was lucky to get a seat if only to suffer from screaming baby for 3 hours 3 minutes

Thankfully there are 144 standard class seats bookable on the 7 pm to Cork tonight normally only 36 are available

Just to show that seat res is still very very bug ridden

This is me trying to book a seat on the 9pm Dublin Cork today 5-8-2006

Coach B is the buffet coach and has only 30 seats
254

So here is the 12pm Cork Dublin 6-8-2006, two coach B, again one of whom only seats 30 since its the buffet coach

Someone should be shot for this
255

[Thomas J Stamp]

From what I've been looking at in Heuston over the weekend it appears that all of the bookable standard class seats are in the "other" half of the first carraise, ie the bit that's not first class. There is a strapline on top of each window telling you that thsese are all reserved seats. Presumably that only applies if the stub is shoved into the headrest. Also, that's where the sign and the yellow (and nubile) helpers are. Dick Ferns comley maidens indeed.

[Derek Wheeler]

Ahem....the children of IE staff are running around Heuston in canary yellow gear, helping people out with seat res issues.

I heard.

[Mark Gleeson]

Keep it in the family so, old style CIE is still here

Fact remain if seat res actually worked on the ground there would be no need for this of course the existing staff sit around and fail to assist passengers like they should

[d8boy]

I had my first experience with the girls in canary yellow at Heuston on Friday on the 17:00 to Cork. They were thorough and helpful and not allowing anyone without a reservation onto the coach with the reserved seats. While there appeared to be a long manifest of reservations, by 16:58 many seats were still unoccupied and the canary girls told passengers standing in the vestibules that they could occupy the seats just before they stepped off the train. At 16:59 4 people with reservations arrived and had a stand-up row with the people occupying their seats. One of the 4 went off in search of someone in authority but the 4 interlopers were left undisturbed. I'm not sure who was correct - the online booking system asks you to collect your tickets at least 20 minutes before departure. This seems a bit excessive but it does sort of imply that if you board one of the busiest trains of the week just one minute before departure that your seat may be gone. On the other hand I seem to recall that in Germany you are not allowed occupy an unoccupied seat with a reservation until 5 minutes *after* departure, presumably to allow the real owner to find it.
It would appear that many IE staff regard to whole seat resevation malarky as none of their business, hence the need to employ additional station staff soley to deal with reservations. This was confirmed on the way back boarding the 17:30 Cork to Dublin. I asked the ticket checker where Coach A was and was told "those reservations are only for the new trains, you can sit anywhere you like". We found Coach A at the back and all the passengers with reservations dutifully seated themsleves according to their tickets, but no-one came around to check, and the reservation stickers over the seats related to a journey on Saturday morning...
It's a real pity because with air travel becoming more hassled by the month a weekend break by rail is an attractive proposition. Up to now I was often deterred by the prospect of having to queue for ages just to be sure of getting a seat on a Friday or Sunday but seat reservations remove this hassle. There is a real opportunity for IE to market itlself as the more elegant and less stressful alternative - but only if they can get this right.

[Mark Gleeson]

You are asked to take your seats 20 minutes before departure, so 2 or 3 minutes before departure its not an unreasonable to seat standing passengers though they should be told they may have to relinquish there seats

The staff dont care thats the problem

Seat reservations apply to all trains new and old, just remember coach A is at the Cork end on the old trains, and the Dublin end of the new trains

[Portarlington Mini]

I accept that there are practical difficulties, but don't forget the regular commuter in all this, who cannot reserve a seat even if they know darn well (probably better than the one-off traveller) which train they are going to catch and pay IÉ up to €3,000 a year for the privilege.

[Mark Gleeson]

We are awating the response of the people in charge of seat reservations on how they intend to handle annual ticket holders

We are aware that seat booking will not be available on pure commuter services eg Athlone/Athy/Port Loais etc

[Oisin88]

We are awating the response of the people in charge of seat reservations on how they intend to handle annual ticket holders

Excellent...they could put a permanent seat on the 07:10 Dublin-Tullamore and the 16:26 Tullamore to Dublin with a big sign saying "Oisin's seat." I could leave my own cushion there and all!

No, seriously it will be very interesting to see how this develops.

[Mark Gleeson]

To be honest I think they haven't thought of this. Normally the seat res people are very promptly back