Originally Posted by
BeantownFlyer
There is one crew member who sets up a fake cup of coffee, newspaper, and bottled water at the two top as the train pulls into NYP. She insists someone is sitting there (even though there is no ticket stub). Last trip when she told me the seat was occupied, I told her I enjoy meeting people on the train and looked forward to meeting someone new when the passenger returned.
That's pretty funny, I haven't seen that one. But the ticket stub is the perfect foil. No stub, no one sitting there.
Originally Posted by
BeantownFlyer
It is kind of tough to make a scene when you are on the train every week, and see the same crews. I just dont understand why Amtrak cant manage to go back to the assigned seating in F (tried it originally) or tell the crew to keep their stuff off the seats - except for 2 seats in the last row.
Don't make a scene, take names and report them to customer service. If you see no change after several reports and a few months, send those names to Mr. Boardman, along with your comments and dates of contact with Customer Service.
As for the last two seats, technically they aren't even allowed those two. If Amtrak sells out FC, those seats belong to passengers. And I did see one crew member that didn't want to give up those two seats, even though it was quite clear that all other seats were occupied. Wisely the other attendant removed the belongings before the situation escalated.
Regarding assigned seats, Amtrak could easily bring that back, the system can still handle it. The problem is that the Metroliner customers who were used to free seating policies on the Metroliners revolted when they found themselves assigned to a seat facing backwards, or to a table seat when they wanted a tray seat or vice versa.
Many didn't realize that they either could pick a seat when booking, or just figured that it wouldn't matter. Guess who had to enforce that seating? The very crew who wanted tips from the passengers. Guess what they didn't want to do? Anger those passengers, such that they got no tip. I'm sure you can guess what happened.
So with the major reason for assigned seats eliminated, that being electronic ticket collection (it wasn't a true e-ticket), Amtrak quietly eliminated assigned seats.
I suspect however that if Amtrak ever gets it's e-ticketing program off the ground, they're having lots of problems I hear and falling way behind schedule, that we may eventually see a return to assigned seating. It would be better for Amtrak from a revenue point of view, as it allows Amtrak to resell the seats of no shows further up the line.