Seating Protocol

[jiml]

I left out Montreal to NYP on the Adirondack. Get to Quebec City on the Caribbean Princess.

Interesting indeed! Thanks!

I'd bet there aren't a lot of people changing trains in Brockville to go from Ottawa to Montreal, unless staying over in Brockville. You must be a railfan! The trip from Ottawa to Brockville is quite scenic, but depending on the time of day you may not get to experience the best parts of VIA's Business service. For example, a morning departure from Ottawa may get you breakfast in time, but no bar service before Brockville. Later in the day you might get a drink, but the meal is unlikely to be served until after Brockville on that route.

 

[railbuck]

Years ago, I rode coach on the Capitol Ltd. to Chicago. When we boarded in Washington, the directed those of us going to Chicago in one car and those going to places like Pittsburgh, Canton, Lima, etc. to another car. This was explained to us to allow those of us traveling through not to be disturbed by people boarding/getting off at the stops during the middle of the night.

That must have been a really long time ago; I think the CL only served Lima during the time it was a section of the Broadway. But it does bring up an interesting point, because they do a similar thing currently when boarding in Chicago (and probably also in WAS, though I haven't ridden that direction recently, and probably also for many trains at the originating station).

Let's say for the sake of example that when boarding in CHI they typically put destinations west of CLE in coach 1, and CLE through PGH passengers in coach 2. Let's say the system knows this, and when I book a trip CHI-SKY 6 months out, it lets me select any seat in coach 1. But then a month before departure, a large group buys tickets to TOL, and also on that date the sales to CLE are about half of normal. Now they are going to want the SKY and ELY passengers in coach 2. Someone has already reserved the corresponding seat in coach 2, so they can't just tell me "same seat, different car." Do they put the group in vacant seats around me, so I feel like an intruder in their party (and they do want to party; I just want to sleep)? Does the system bump me to a random seat in coach 2 (and if so, what's the point of preselecting)? Do they put some TOL passengers in coach 2, disturbing the CLE passengers during that station stop?

One way of handling this would be to only allow seat selection during a relatively short period before departure, maybe (to copy the airlines) at booking for Select Executive, 7 days out for Select+, 5 days for Select, 3 days for AGR members, 24 hours for everyone else. At least by then the mix of through passengers and intermediate city pairs should be somewhat known for that run, with an allowance for last minute bookings, and the seats available to a specific passenger can reflect this.

 

[wwchi]

One way of handling this would be to only allow seat selection during a relatively short period before departure, maybe (to copy the airlines) at booking for Select Executive, 7 days out for Select+, 5 days for Select, 3 days for AGR members, 24 hours for everyone else.

YES - this is what I was kind of talking about above for Business Class seat selection...a scenario like this would work well. On airline apps/sites you can also CHANGE your seat, which is something they could also offer if people wanted to take a look before they leave to see if a more preferred seat opened up. It's really not that hard. Your ticket can show your seat assignment just like the airlines' boarding passes - whether on your phone or printed out.

 

[Qapla]

Then again, they could just leave it the way it is since, for most passengers, it seems to work just fine.

 

[JRR]

I'd bet there aren't a lot of people changing trains in Brockville to go from Ottawa to Montreal, unless staying over in Brockville. You must be a railfan! The trip from Ottawa to Brockville is quite scenic, but depending on the time of day you may not get to experience the best parts of VIA's Business service. For example, a morning departure from Ottawa may get you breakfast in time, but no bar service before Brockville. Later in the day you might get a drink, but the meal is unlikely to be served until after Brockville on that route.

Your guess is correct. We are staying in Brockville to visit my sister.

Looking forward to the trains. Yes, our afternoon train won’t get us the meal but we will relax with the drink.

 

[Tirnipgreen]

Let's see if I understand this situation ... assuming reserved seats would "solve the problem" that the current seating scheme does not answer ...

Person A buys a train ticket from the "boarding station into the city [that] is the last stop [before the end for that train]" and should be able to reserve their desired seat. Everyone else that buys a ticket after that time would not be able to reserve that seat because it is already reserved ... thus leaving that seat empty from the trains originating station until the next-to-the-last-stop for that train.

I can see how that is an improvement

Are you telling me that a group of IT geeks can't come up with a program that takes that situation into consideration and make it work...? Computers are a wonderful thing, power hungry personnel are not. When a seat is open, it's free for anyone to sit in. How difficult is that...?

 

[Tirnipgreen]

Then again, they could just leave it the way it is since, for most passengers, it seems to work just fine.

Qapla...Are you an Amtrak employee...? If so, leave me alone when I choose where I would like to sit. When you come around to check my ticket, mark my seat with your little strip of paper. If I find it necessary to move, I will let you know. If couple gets on and needs my seat, I will move. BTW...large groups (which I have yet to really encounter in 30 years of riding Amtrak) don't have to sit together. In some cases, they may not want to be bunched up as they will be spending enough time together when they get to their destination. The employees of Amtrak seem to forget who is paying for the seats they control...

 

[Anderson]

While many of these arguments are valid - if I am purchasing my seat 2 months in advance Amtrak has my money already and I have paid for that seat. It's the benefit of having more to choose from if you book early. Same with a plane. While I realize a plane only goes from point A to point B, it is similar in that you have greater availability early. I would fully expect that if I wanted to CHANGE my train to an earlier or later one I would have to take whatever is available. I am a regular rider and have been for 15 years - wouldn't it be nice to get some benefit to pick a seat? Maybe that's how they do it - make that an extra perk for Select/Select Plus riders...again, like airlines do for their "frequent flyers". All of which is doable on Airline apps and could be on the Amtrak app if they figured it out.

There are several issues:
(1) VIA is a bit closer to the airlines insofar as you don't get a huge amount of turnover en route on a number of trains. My experience is quite Business Class-centric, but the turnover between Montreal and Quebec City and Montreal and Ottawa is close to zero. It skews a little higher between Montreal/Ottawa and Toronto, but not a lot. On Amtrak (particularly on the VA-Boston Regionals), a seat can easily turn over 3-5 times, so misaligned seat assignments run the risk of turning over a non-trivial number of through passengers. I would rather not see Amtrak lose perhaps 5% of through capacity because of seating preference misalignments. Please note that this is a known issue on the LD trains...more than one AU member has had to switch roomettes partway along a trip (the Builder is one of the more frequent offenders IIRC) because of misaligned room availability. Now, I know that's a case of 20-40 roomettes versus a few hundred seats, but I think the point is still the same. The chance of this sort of mess is increased if a train ends up adding or cutting cars for a given run.
(2) There's also the fact that a VA-originating train takes about 6-8 hours to get to New York. You'd need to either (a) require seat selection to be locked in prior to departure from origin or (b) require everyone to have a seat assignment or you're going to run into a situation where somebody wants to move to an empty seat and someone down-line reserves it and you have problems unless the conductor mucks about with it on his app.
(2a) If you go to universal seat assignments you also run into losing the ability to marginally overbook. Given that Amtrak can accommodate a hatful of excess pax in the cafe (in particular) on most trains, I think this is another loss to seriously weigh.
(3) And then there's the fact that boarding is functionally restricted to 2-3 doors on a train at low-level stations for high-level trains (e.g. Regionals in Virginia). This is a problem because if you have an ADA passenger boarding and the "wrong" door is opened (or in some cases, you can't platform the right cars without an extra spot) then you're either going to have to switch doors, re-spot, or force the passenger to pass through potentially several cars.
(4) Speaking to my experience last week, trying to move seats around if you've got a party split over two (or more) reservation numbers is a real pain, and if you go to an "automated" assignment system this can get you into a spot if you're trying to pick seats for a group. Again, to date in the US the only trains that do this are the Acela (in First) and Brightline (with three stations and four cars per train).
(5) Finally (in this litany, at least), trains do run with variable consists. Telling two dozen passengers in Coach 6 that, well, today we're running with five coaches (as a seven-car train) and you've got to re-pick your assignment? Not a great situation, and this can happen a lot more than equipment swaps tend to happen.

Honestly, even as somebody who has occasionally had to fish for a seat (and has wound up parked in the cafe once or twice), I think this would be a craptacular "improvement". I'd also note that, like airlines, I have little doubt that somebody at Amtrak will try to find a way to monetize this...and I don't like that prospect, either.

So, with all due respect, if you're S+ or SE (and I've been SE for years), I think you've got a number of solid benefits and perks such as being able to reliably pull an upgrade on many trains if you've got the upgrade card to offer (as opposed to hoping for a pleasant surprise at the gate) and lounge access both with Amtrak and United. I don't think that piling a "seat assignment" benefit into the mix under most circumstances is a net add for anyone.

 

[railiner]

One other consideration about 'enforcing' assigned seating between an airliner and a train...there is a flight attendant for every 50 passengers (by law for safety) on an airliner...how many train crew on an 800 passenger regional train?

 

[jis]

Almost nothing can be enforced unless the collective chooses to obey the rules. Things work in other places simply because people have bought into whatever the "tradition" is over the years. Changing such takes a lot of effort.

The situation is further complicated in the US because train service generally is pretty sparse even on the busiest routes/corridors when compared to corridors of similar length and population density elsewhere. It is much easier to provided multiple choices of levels of service including assigned seating or being able to self select assignments, since there is a large inventory from which a reasonable sized portion can be hived out for such enhanced service. In the US we can barely hive out Business Class and Quiet Car on a few of our busiest corridors without adversely affecting overall capacity.

Given this situation we have to be somewhat circumspect about what other "good to have features" can be implemented without causing undue disruption to the relatively meager capacity that we have. It gets much much worse in our LD network, which barely exists and hangs on for dear life with one or less train per day on most routes. Until rail passenger service becomes really a more serious part of our transportation mix with an order of magnitude larger system it is possible that niceties like assigned seating, or true 'Express" as in "does not stop en route too much", may be best foregone. Already "milk runs" on most of the national network is unheard of, since you can;t do that and also run a reasonably faast service, when all you have is one train per day.

 

[jiml]

Even the efficient Germans haven't got this down perfectly. Despite preassigning seats on every train we rode during our last visit, it was sometimes necessary for staff to evict others - especially "self-upgraders" from reserved seats. Boarding at FRA airport - one stop into the train's journey to AMS, we found our FC compartment completely full. A couple of people left when asked; others needed some encouragement. When the ticket checks were complete only one other passenger and us remained for the rest of the journey.

 

[Qapla]

No, I am not an Amtrak employee - and never have been ... it is just that I have not experienced any hardship with the current arrangement for seating.

I do not need a "specific" seat when I sit in coach - so, I have never asked for a "specific" seat. I have asked to sit "together" when there were two of us and was accommodated. My brother asked to change side of the car to see the other side on a return trip and was accommodated. I have asked to sit near the center of the car and have been accommodated.

I have NOT insisted on a particular seat or felt "picked on" when the coach car was crowded and my request could not be accommodated. I found that, if I just sat where asked, shortly a more desirable seat opened up and the attendant let me move.

That is why I said that, since the system seems to work, for the most part, I see no need to change it.

 

[Anderson]

Just a thought, in response to the version @railbuck suggested: Amtrak may have a good handle on the ridership mix for the LD trains at that point. Corridor trains (which generally at least have additional frequencies) fill up rather closer to departure. I know it isn't Amtrak and I know the service frequencies are higher, but my experience monitoring Brightline at this time last year was fascinating...you had something like 50% day-of-travel ticket purchases. The issue at that stage is that you're either jamming a seat assignment into somebody's hands to optimize loads or you're looking at a messy filling process that doesn't usually afflict the airlines.

This would also go better if Amtrak had predictable practices for platforming a given coach at a given station. The signs saying "Sleeper" or "Business Class" are much closer to vague suggestions than actual indications.

Also, I think the potential inability to accommodate groups due to seat selection scattering is a negative (and indeed, it is a known issue on airlines, especially where families with kids get into the mix). Now, mind you that once led to me having a fascinating two-hour chat with the Guatemalan justice minister (he was up for the chat, and I was sixteen so the ability to talk serious politics with somebody from a foreign country was quite cool) instead of just chatting with my aunt and uncle...but I readily accept that as being an outlier.

 

[Qapla]

When it comes to seating on the train - it can't really be compared to seating on an airplane.

A longest passenger plane is about 250' and is generally loaded from a walkway that extends to the loading door or a set of steps rolled up to that door. This gives the passengers one door on or off.

A train has a door on every car. Each of those doors can be (and sometimes are) used for boarding. Many of Amtrak's trains are 900'+ with a boarding door about every 85'. The problem comes in that, not all train depots have loading platforms that are as long as the train. For that reason, sometimes people board directly into the car they are going to ride/sit in and sometimes they have to load in a car that is several cars away from their seats.

Often, the door(s) used are dictated by the placement of the boarding platform in conjunction with grade crossings. People do not load in the middle of a road just because the train is stopped across that road.

Planes often completely load and unload at a given stop - often trains only partially load at a terminus and then load and unload with passengers leaving and coming from and through cars where people are already sitting, eating, sleeping and/or talking. A train disturbs more people on a regular basis than most planes due while enroute.

Allowing people to preselect seats could possibly add to the amount of traffic in all coach cars when it is not really needed or desired by those already seated.

The long and short of it ... there is no simple one-size-fits-all solution that would work for all people on all trains.