To ask why people sit in reserved seats?

I have epilepsy & once had a seizure on a high speed train (whilst standing ) which resulted in a head injury & Injury to another person. The whole train was stationary & line completely blocked for several hours & delays for the next 24hrs.

I now can't travel on high speed trains without a seat. I book a priority seat (on the train company advice). Every time there is someone in the seat with headphones on & engrossed in their phone or with their eyes closed. I've had people be extremely rude & refuse to move.

I now speak to station staff before the train arrives & ask them to find my seat seat. They can then speak to the guard & hold the train if needed. Once BTP had to get on to persuade someone to move & a couple of times been given a seat on first class because people won't move.

I can understand people can't always book in advance & want flexibility & also trains are overcrowded but people can also be really nasty. A polite 'i think you have the wrong seat' really doesn't work.

Oh don’t start being all sensible 😂

We sat in reserved seat when travelling from Devon to Kent, it was a hellosh journey. My husband had to move when the woman whos seat he was sat in got on the train, as he should have

When you book a train online you are forced to choose a train for your outward and inward journey even if you book a flexible ticket (because you aren’t quite sure which train you will get), then it reserves you a seat on your selected trains. This is what is behind the many empty reserved seats imho.

For this reason it is fine to sit in a seat marked reserved, also obviously fine to ask someone to move if they are in your seat.

But are they? Or are they regularly commutors who pay maybe £10k a year to not have a reserved seat as you don’t get one with a season pass ….but you do with an advanced single at a MINOR % of the season ticket price??? make it make sense.
If be doing away with reserve seating altogether and it it would all be first come first served (and revert to common decency on that elderly/pregnant women would be offered seats).
Reserved seating it a crap system and causes way to much aggro.

I always book a seat if possible and I used to feel annoy me to invariably find someone sitting in it. I don't like confrontation either.

However, I recently went on a train in Germany. There was a woman sitting next to me. Just before departure a man told her that she was sitting in his seat. She very calmly asked if she could see his ticket. He showed her the ticket. She said "Yes, this is your seat" and she just packed up and left. Somehow I totally loved this exchange. No one was huffy or annoyed ir embarrassed. It was all very friendly and matter of fact. I thought the guy might get annoyed at being asked to show his ticket when it obviously wasn't her seat but he didn't seem to mind. He just did it. It was just super civil and drama free.

So, now, I just do the same. I tell the person thst it's my seat but I don't blame them or silently stew about them having the audacity to have taken my seat. Most people do move without a fuss. It actually makes sense when so many reserved seats go empty. It would be a waste of a good seat if no one sat in it.

So anyway. Just ask her. If she gets huffy it's not your problem and not your fault.

Agree ditto ‘quiet’ carriages.

Reserved seats should be abolished they cause more hassle than they are worth! If you book with a freind you cant always get a seat together or someones in your seat!

I travel quite often for work, usually for meetings obtaining with an uncertain end time. I always book an open return but the work booking system will not allow booking without choosing a seat reservation for some reason. So I make my best guess of train time but often end up on another. This is a national company so multiply the number of employees by the number of companies and that is a lot of missed reservations.

I occasionally sit in a reserved seat but get up happily if the seatholder arrives, even if I then have to stand.

Back when I was a student, I was going from Crewe to London, and had reserved a seat (one on a table of four). When I got on the train, there were three people sitting at that table, including one in my reserved seat, but there was a free (aisle) seat, so I decided just to sit there, and not stand on my rights.

When I sat down, one of the three business types occupying the other seats told me snootily that the seat I was sitting down in had been reserved by them - so I pointed out to him that he was sitting in my reserved (window) seat, and I would like to sit in it please! He meekly got up, moved all his stuff, and let me sit down.

The best bit? During the journey, I overheard their conversation and learned that they had been on a training course - an assertiveness course. I did wonder if I should suggest he asked for his money back - having been out-asserted by a student.

Looking back, I think they were hoping that I would go away so their group didn’t have to share - but it was a busy train, and I was not going to fight my way through it looking for a free, unreserved seat.

@fridasrage ask them for their Disabled People’s Protection Policy (DPPP), that doesn't sound right.

You should have said “This is my seat” please move. It doesn’t need to be a major international incident

^^exactly this.

first reply on the thread nails it, IMO. it's really ok to 'squat' in someone's seat [since you get so many no-shows] but if you do so it's very much incumbent on you to leap up the minute a ticketholder presents her- or himself.

Well apart from the dramatic leaping and incumbency stuff. When the reserver arrives you move quietly and without fuss I reckon. I know it's a figure of speech but it's unnecessary.

The things is though Brie, I’ve been on trains where the lobbies are dangerously crowded and people can’t get on because everyone is leaving the reserved seats alone. As about half of them are never taken, it’s much more sensible to sit there until the ticket holder arrives.

@MyKingdomForBrie

I actually called CrossCountry a couple of hours ago to suggest what i do in this situation. The woman's response was that it's a difficult, they can't really do anything in this situation, so the best bet is to sit in an unoccupied reserve seat or stand until someone notices and offers you their seat out of kindness.

Considering the fact that lots of reserved seats aren't used, it's a small number of occasions and I only use my crutches when I literally can't stand unaided, I feel absolutely no guilt about doing this.

@rattusrattus20 as the thread shows though that's not always the way it goes, some people won't feel able to 'present themselves' - a reserved seat means it's not available and shouldn't be taken until after the station has passed that it is reserved from.

@Fridasrage point is what if there is a person in a similar situation to you who isn't able to ask, especially given your crutches.

Onus is on you to find a way round this situation by talking to the conductor or the train company - your current approach basically says 'screw anyone who is too nice to ask me to move, I'm ok'

first reply on the thread nails it, IMO. it's really ok to 'squat' in someone's seat [since you get so many no-shows] but if you do so it's very much incumbent on you to leap up the minute a ticketholder presents her- or himself.

You should have said “This is my seat” please move. It doesn’t need to be a major international incident

I have social anxiety, I can't handle confrontation. But every train journey I've been on I've heard people saying 'excuse me, this is my seat' and people replying 'oh, sorry' and moving. So the day I got on a train and found someone in my seat I took a deep breath and said 'excuse me, this is my seat' and I got back 'are you fucking joking?! You're pathetic. I'm not moving! Sit over there!' he pointed at another reserved seat. I was completely floored, everyone was looking at me, I said 'what if the person who's reserved that seat comes on?' got no response and the train was moving off so I just perched on the other seat and probably looked uncomfortable.
Next station people getting on doing the 'my seat, oh sorry' dance around us. He starts looking at his ticket, then just gets up and moves. He must have had his own reserved seat. Twat.

However, on the other side of the coin I always get a open return ticket, and have a couple of times gone through rural stations with no ticket barrier or checks at start and end of journey - so I can only assume that 'my' seat was reserved for the whole month even though I'd already used it?!

In summary, some people are twats, some of those twats use trains.

@MyKingdomForBrie
@kennehora

I’d always take the disability seats if they were free, but they’re usually not.

I had no idea you could sit in first? Is this a thing? I’ll definitely be asking in future if that is the case.

Up to this point my thinking has been... I guess i know that people won’t really challenge me if I have the crutches, but if there’s an empty seat and I’m not well enough to walk unaided, I’m not just going to stand up in case someone wants the seat. I might as well get off the train and go home bc I’d be useless by the time I got to work

I commute daily long distance. Paying thousands of £££ for the privilege.

I would only ever sit in a reserved seat if the train had already passed through the station the seat was reserved from.

I do try and reserve the same seat each morning and have no problem asking someone to move if they are sat in my seat.

However, a lot of time people reserve seats and do not turn up. Then people sit in them. I think that is fine, providing the person without a reservation is prepared to move if a fellow passenger with a reservation turns up. Not everyone is prepared to move.

What I hate as a regular commuter is when you cannot reserve seats on the train during the evening peak, as not all trains are resevable and I have to stand or sit on the floor.

@Fridasrage you should be able to use disability priority seating or sit in first - you need to talk to the conductor rather than just take someone else's seat. Someone with a hidden disability might be standing on their journey instead of you if they are like OP.