Virgin: Don’t let passengers on train without booking a seat
PASSENGERS without a reserved seat should not be allowed on long-distance trains, according to the Virgin Group.
The firm said inter-city services should follow the Eurostar model of requiring customers to book a ticket and a seat to avoid overcrowding.
Operators are often obliged to accept walk-up fares, giving them no control over the numbers boarding a train unless there is a safety risk.
They are also obliged to stick to rigid timetables that result in them running services even when demand is low.
In its submission to a governmentcommissioned rail review, Virgin Group said some trains were so packed that passengers were forced to stand for hours, while other services were mostly empty. It called for ticketing to be simplified with dynamic pricing, which would lead to higher prices for busy trains and lower prices for unpopular trains.
The firm, which jointly operates trains on the West Coast Main Line under the Virgin Trains brand, also wants the franchising system for long-distance routes to be replaced with an auction for train slots.
This would mimic how airlines secure the right to operate flights from airports. It gave the example of London to New York flights being offered by numerous airlines and said multiple rail firms could operate major routes such as London Euston to Manchester.
Competition between operators would prevent passengers being squeezed in a drive for profit as they would have the option to switch to a rival company if standards dropped, Virgin Group’s submission stated.
It claimed that selling the slots without an expiry date would give firms more scope to respond to economic turbulence, whereas the franchise model meant there were only a few years to recoup any losses.
Patrick McCall, a senior partner at Virgin Group, said: ‘Franchising cannot continue as it is.’
‘Forced to stand for hours’