Compulsory seat reservations on Czech trains
The answer to chronic overcrowding?
It's a Thursday in the middle of June 2023. It's steaming hot. Jakub, a successful young marketer, has a problem. He's just been called by the Berlin start-up with whom he has had three interviews on Teams . Can he come for a final face-to-face meeting tomorrow? Of course, he replied. He really wants the job. But he's discovered that no airline flies between Prague and Berlin anymore, and he doesn't own a car. He uses Anytime car-sharing when he needs to, but that doesn't seem like a good way to get to Berlin for an interview, especially on a Friday when the forecast is for 33C.
Jakub doesn't use the train that much, but he knows there are regular express trains to Berlin. He goes online and is happy to find out that České dráhy runs the trains on this route. He's heard stories from friends who expected to travel with Regiojet on a Friday only to find that all the seats on the train had been sold, but unlike Regiojet, ČD doesn't have a compulsory reservation system and he can buy his seat easily enough. It seems a bit expensive, but he understands that this is because he is booking at the last minute. It's dynamic pricing, he guesses, like Ryanair. He's OK with 2nd class, and anyway, he notices that there's a restaurant car, and he's heard that the restaurant cars of Czech Railways are very good. He decides to have breakfast there.
On Friday, Jakub arrives at Prague's main station and is grateful that Czech Railways still operates an unlimited ticket system. After a few minutes he hears the announcement that the EC176 is ready for departure. He notices that almost everyone else around him has also started to move. When he gets to the platform, the train hasn't arrived yet and he doesn't really know where to stand, so he chooses what seems to be the middle point. There's a lot of activity on the platform.
The EC176 arrives. Jakub is pleased to see that it is completely empty (it departs from Prague Main Station, so it has come from the depot), so he assumes that he should be able to get a nice seat, even though he is not alone on the platform. He's young and agile, and doesn't have a big suitcase, so he's able to get onto the nearest carriage quite quickly. Once inside, however, he notices that quite a few seats are reserved. Some of them are marked "Express Reservation". He does not know what that means, but he assumes that they are free, because if they were actually reserved, they would show the traveller's destination. He takes a window seat and watches as the carriage fills up. The train is about to leave. A couple arrive and, after looking at the reservation sign, announce that they have reserved his seat and the one opposite. Jakub stands up and looks around, it seems that every seat in this carriage is taken. He struggles past people still trying to stow their suitcases and on to the next carriage, which is compartmentalised. Eventually he finds a seat in a compartment with an English-speaking family with three children.
The train heads north up the Vltava valley. Jakub tries to study the notes he made for the interview. The children around him are a bit noisy, so he remembers that he wanted to visit the restaurant car and have breakfast, and now seems like a good time. But where is it? He turns left and makes his way down the corridor. Some people are standing because there are no seats. He soon realises that this carriage is the last one on the train. The restaurant car is in the other direction. Each carriage seems more crowded than the last, people sitting in the corridors as best they can. Finally, he reaches the restaurant car. It is full too. Of course it is, but hardly anyone is eating. All Jakub can see on the tables are coffee cups and a few glasses of beer. There is one waiter who looks very harassed. Jakub does not bother to ask him anything, because the answer is obvious. He sees that he can order something at the bar, but of course there is a queue. He finally manages to get a coffee and a tortilla wrap. It's not the full English breakfast he'd been looking forward to, but by now he's grateful for anything.
He eats his tortilla standing up near the bar and then goes back to his seat. But when he gets to the compartment, he finds a large and rather scruffy guy sitting there. Jakub realises that since he hadn't reserved the seat, the guy had the right to take it. Wearily, he considers his next move and decides that it should be to the toilet. When he gets to the nearest one, he finds it occupied. So he waits. A minute passes, two, three, five. The loudspeaker announces the arrival in Usti. At that moment the door bursts open and a grumpy teenager jumps out.
Coming out of the toilet, Jakub notices that a few seats seem to have become available with the arrival in Usti. He finds one without a reservation sign and breathes a sigh of relief. The train rolls on, across the German border and into Dresden. Jakub notices that the platform is full of passengers. He knows what's coming. ...
It comes in the form of a very stern looking woman speaking German and waving a paper reservation. He gets up, finds a metre of space in the corridor and resigns himself to standing all the way to Berlin....
Jakub is, of course, a fictional character, although I am thinking of young Czechs I have met in my years as a headhunter. "Knowing" Jakub as I do, I know that he won the interview despite the terrible journey and accepted the job offer they made him on the spot. After hearing about his terrible journey, they offered to put him up in a nice hotel for the night and pay for his first class ticket back the next morning. They also invited him to dinner that night, where they regaled him with stories of how Deutsche Bahn is falling apart. Everything that happened to Jakub is based on scenes I've witnessed on journeys from Prague, especially on the Berlin route, which was the subject of much critical debate last year. A sub-topic emerged from that debate - should Czech Railways introduce compulsory seat reservations? It became a very hot topic!
Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with compulsory reservations (on long-distance trains), as I've learned that it's worth paying a little extra to avoid the little hell of a journey like Jakub's. But people have come up with some pretty compelling counter-arguments. The ability to turn up at the last minute and make a long-distance journey is what we call in business a "competitive advantage" for the railway, because neither the airline nor the bus company can offer it. In the case of ČD, it also faces competition from two private rail operators, both of which use the compulsory reservation/limited capacity model. Then there is the price factor. Reservations have a fixed price, while ticket prices are variable. If you are a family of four and have nice cheap tickets to Olomouc, the cost of four reservations will make the tickets look a lot less cheap - so maybe you will go by car after all. Reading these arguments reminded me that many of the same arguments were used to keep British Rail as a "public service operator" in the early 90s. But times have changed...haven't they?
With the help of seat61.com I looked at the situation across Europe and, as is so often the case, found a huge and complex variation between countries...
What are our Western (and Southern) neighbours doing?
In Germany, Deutsche Bahn has a monopoly on long-distance express services and reservations are optional. I wouldn't dream of buying an ICE ticket without a reservation, though, and don't forget that Germany is hosting Euro 2024 this summer!
In Austria, ÖBB has the same policy as Deutsche Bahn. But it has a competitor on the main corridor - Westbahn. It has a semi-automatic reservation system, and you get a free reservation if you book up to 3 hours before departure.
Italy. Trenitalia's high-speed and InterCity trains, and the private operator Italo, have an automatic reservation system. In principle, a train could sell out, but according to seat61.com, this rarely happens.
Switzerland is the big exception in Europe, where seat reservations are not only optional, but considered almost unnecessary because InterCity trains are so frequent.
In France, on the other hand, all TGV and most InterCity tickets come with automatic seat reservation, although some InterCity trains are not on this system and you can sit where you like once you are on board. seat61.com lists the main routes where this is possible. Eurostar trains to England use the same system as the TGV, dynamic pricing, automatic seat reservation, limited capacity.
In Spain, all long-distance trains have mandatory seat reservations.
So it's complicated and far from a European Union of railways! In general, in countries where there is a high-speed network, reservations are compulsory. But Germany is a very big exception to this rule - at least for now. The issue of compulsory reservations is one of many hot topics among Germans debating what exactly has gone wrong with their once famously efficient railway.
Could České dráhy even introduce a compulsory reservation system?
I suspect it cannot at the moment. I have seen too many cases where the electronic signs indicating a reserved seat do not work. This seems to be the case with older coaches. And at the moment many of these older carriages are still being used on EuroCity and InterCity services. On my recent return journey from Linz, my reserved seat was only shown as an "express reservation", even though I had booked it over four weeks earlier. České dráhy is now introducing new Interjet and Comfortjet carriages that don't have these problems (nor do the Pendolinos or Railjets), but it will be a few years before all long-distance trains have the most modern carriages. What's more, on the international corridors, they cooperate with the national operators of five other countries (Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, as well as Germany and Austria), and I don't think you can introduce compulsory reservations on international trains if the other operators don't use such a system
In the meantime, it was clear that something had to be done, especially on the main corridor where, in the summer, huge numbers of tourists put extra pressure on the trains running from Berlin via Prague and Brno to Vienna. I saw tourists with first class tickets having to stand in second class carriages because they had not reserved their seats. One of the culprits in this totally unacceptable situation was Eurail. Many tourists from America and Asia book their European trips through Eurail. Some told me that they did not book because Eurail says it is "not necessary".Eurail means that the situation in Czech Republic is not like in France or Italy, where reservations are compulsory. However, many customers took this to mean that everything was more relaxed and there would be plenty of space for them, so they concluded that it wasn't worth making a reservation, not least because they would have to pay extra for it.
So České dráhy made a smart decision...
At the beginning of this year, ČD announced that seat reservations on all long-distance trains would be free of charge .....
This seems to me to be a pragmatic, elegant and well-considered move to try to alleviate some of the worst problems we saw last summer without stirring up hostility from some regular passengers. Czech Railways noticed how heated the debate was between those for and against compulsory reservations; it knew that it would be asking for trouble if it introduced a compulsory system when the logistics and information system on the trains could not necessarily cope. It also realised that if the reservation fee is fixed, it can be quite a high percentage of the total cost of the ticket, because so many Czechs (including me!) are able to get tickets at very reasonable prices - students, senior citizens and anyone with an InKarta50 discount card. By removing the fee, ČD removes the mental barrier in the minds of many travellers to take the extra step of reserving a seat in advance. ČD probably hopes that all its trains will be ready for mandatory reservations by 2026, so it has given itself 2-3 years to gently persuade its customers to get into the habit.
Will it work? Well, I suppose we will find out within a few months, on the crowded international trains. But I expect that it will have at least some positive effect; apart from reducing the chaos on the trains, ČD will get better quality data, which will give advance warning of extreme pressure on train capacity, and will have more chance to react.
What does Jakub think of this move by ČD?
He has some "reservations" about the idea. Unlike me, Jakub has not often travelled by train and was not familiar with the problems and hacks that regular travellers learn. And he doesn't see why it should be necessary to learn; it's just one of four modes of long-distance travel he may need to use, not a hobby. He had booked his trip to Berlin on his laptop, but after the shock of the trip he downloaded the Muj vlak app and was pleased to find it had a very good UX. So for Jakub, a mandatory reservation would not be a problem; in fact, now that he knows more about it, he would like to book his exact seat, on the right-hand side, as the train to Berlin heads north 😉 Part of him acknowledges that his parents, who still struggle with apps and doing everything on the phone, would not be so confident, and he agrees that the railway should be for them as well as young people like him. But then he points out one important thing. The new Czech Railways initiative will not eliminate overcrowding on this corridor, it may just reduce it and allow Czech Railways to add a little more capacity on some trains. But he fears that many tourists and some local passengers will still not have reservations. On an overcrowded train, he may not be able to reach the restaurant car easily, let alone find a seat, or even use the toilet without a long wait. He feels that this is quite unfair to all those passengers like him who will have made a reservation. His return journey on Saturday morning, with a reserved seat in a quiet first-class carriage, enjoying a late breakfast and the Elbe scenery, may have converted him to rail travel - as long as it was like his Saturday experience, rather than his Friday experience.
That's an important point, I think. But I also think that Czech Railways is right to try to gently nudge its customers into the habit of reserving their seats before changing to something with the word "compulsory" in the description. As I've noticed over the years, Czechs don't like "compulsory".