Trains Become No-Frills?

I write this as I travel on the National Express early morning service to Leeds. It's not very busy in my coach despite the fact that all but 8 seats have little cards indicating they are reserved for parts or all of the journey.
National Express have announced that, as from this weekend, they are going to charge a fiver return if you want to make sure you have a seat. Passenger Focus ha provided a quote saying this is not right and two union leaders have joined in the chorus of disapproval. Bob Crow from RMT calls it bleeding passenger dry and Gerry Doherty from TSSA says that the charge is mugging passengers. Norman Baker, the Liberal MP says that seat shouldn't be a luxury and the Yorkshire Post is running this story on it's front page with quotes from other M.P's.
Now we have just left Stevenage and none of the reserved empty seats were taken. And that is my point. As this train gets fuller, there may well be people standing at the end of the carriage. Why shouldn't they have a seat? Some passengers check whether anyone is using the seat on that sector of the journey and occupy it. Others look and see the reservations and move on.
National Express claims this is attempt to discourage people from reserving seats on a number of trains. Critics, as I have said, see it as a money making exercise. It won't apply to all seats. Season ticket holders and advance purchase tickets will be unaffected.
If it counts out unnecessary empty seats, well and good. If it is just a ploy to make more money, we'll soon know.

Rail Passenger Satisfaction

The results of the autumn 2008 survey by Passenger Focus are out this morning. To remind you, Passenger Focus is the body that monitors the rights of train passengers and each half year it interviews 25,000 passengers with paper based surveys at railway stations and on trains across the country.
Overall satisfaction is up across the three nations (higher in Scotland & Wales than England) but "value for money" still lags behind and this was done before the quite large hike in passenger fares in January. The survey for this half might show a further decline due to those increases and the tightening of people's purses. Or will it?
Part of the problem with customer satisfaction is understanding the survey and how to interpret it. For example anyone answering that "value for money" question in January just after the rises is more likely to be unhappy. As you move in time further away from that price rise the impact is lessened because people have got use to paying the fare. So should you look at January passengers differently from those trabvelling in June?
Secondly if your train is overcrowded and your standing you satisfaction levels will be lower. Since there are fewer rail travellers at the moment (at least on all the long distance trains I've been on since the beginning of the year) satisfaction levels will rise because there are more available seats. The more empty seats the higher the satisfaction levels.
Anyway enough carping. It's good news that we travellers seem to be more satisfied with the services we receive. So congratulations to Heathrow Express, c2c, Chiltern, Scotrail and Merseyrail who all achieved higher than 90% satisfaction.
The next target? To reach some of the figures achieved by the airlines

Rail Fares up & the Merry-go-Round goes on

For a lot of people today is the first day back at work and here in the south east, the snow may not help despite the fact that we have no more than a couple of centimetres of the stuff.
What will annoy people is the annual party every year when rail prices increase. I thought Anthony Smith of Passenger Focus made a good point when he said that supermarkets are cutting prices, airlines are cutting prices yet rail companies are raising them.
This year, lots of forecasters are saying that Britons will holiday at home. Not everyone wants to take the car and the train is the obvious alternative, even more so for days out. Even with family passes, youth passes, day returns and all the other available discount schemes, it still is expensive and out of kilter with other forms of transport. Let's say I fancied going from London to Canterbury to see the cathedral for the day. A cheap day return has gone up by 6.3%. But if I wanted to go to Bristol the day return fare hasn't gone up at all.
Soon I have to go to Glasgow. Does the train company really believe I am going to pay £271 for an open ticket or even £108.80 for a day return? Not on your life. I'll fly because it will be cheaper.
The regulator approved these prices. The government set the price rise formula for the regulator to use. Passenger Focus objects as it does every year and ATOC (Association of Train Operating Companies)justifies it as it does every year saying that the government has said that the subsidy should drop by 40% by 2014.
But this year we have a bonus. We will have an extra 265,000 trains to go on. Shame we won't be able to afford them for our holidays. Looks like the car again!