V/Line announces reserved seats trial, critics say more carriages needed

Under the trial, if all seats are booked on a service, passengers can then choose to buy an unreserved ticket, which alerts them that they may have to stand for some or all of their journey.

Benambra MP Bill Tilley said the trial will demonstrate the problems Border travellers face every time they alight a train service to or from Melbourne.

Border Rail Action Group's John Dunstan said problems won't be solved "until the Victorian government buys more carriages".

"The patronage is good at the moment, this will demonstrate to the Victorian government that they need to possibly put on one more services or make sure that each and every service is a six-carriage set rather than a three-carriage set," Mr Tilley said.

"The trial will give V/Line an indication that if the patronage is through the roof on what it is, well, maybe they need to pre-plan and say, alright, unfortunately, this service is booked out and your service will be a bus where you'll have a seat to Melbourne, if that's the time you want to go.

"But this shouldn't be just a trial it should be permanent, and it should be extended to every service and not just weekends.

"What's been lost in some of this is that the staff have been copping the flak for a lack of planning - cheaper fares were always going to see a spike in demand."

Mr Dunstan said the problem of people sitting on the floor often for the whole trip between Albury and Melbourne would continue with the limited number of carriages able to traverse the North East line.

"There's only 18 carriages that can use the gauge on the North East line, so the only way to fix this is to build more carriages," Mr Dunstan said.

"They don't want to spend money on the North East line, it's as simple as that, we're the orphan line, we don't vote the right way, so they always do the absolute minimum.

"And in this case the absolute minimum has turned out to be not enough as as they were told at the time, the 18 carriages they ordered is not enough, it's only three train sets, that's it."

Public Transport Minister Ben Carroll, who announced the trial on Tuesday, August 22, said a recent survey of weekend passengers by V/Line found more than 70 per cent supported a move to reservation-only seating on these Albury line trains.

The trial is due to start from September 2 and run until late November.

About 150,000 passengers had used the Albury line since the regional fare cap was introduced on March 31.

Extra weekend train services were launched in July because of the increased demand.

However concerns had been raised about the lack of available seating, with reports of older passengers being forced to sit on the train carriage floor.

A Victorian government spokesperson said the Department of Transport and Planning and V/Line are "constantly monitoring fleet movements" across the network.

"The regional fare cap has proved extremely popular with Albury Line passengers and we've added additional weekend services to meet demand - and we're pleased to announce we will extend these services during spring," the spokesperson said.

"The most popular Albury line services run as six-carriage trains and we are trialling reservation-only trains on weekends to give people more certainty about getting a seat.

"In July last year, VLocity trains commenced running on all six daily Albury line services and the most popular Albury line services are scheduled to run as six-carriage trains. We have also been supporting busy services with standby coaches since the introduction of the fare cap."

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