News   Jun 18, 2024
News Roundup for June 18, 2024
 81     0 
News   Jun 18, 2024
Quilt of Green
 314     0 
News   Jun 17, 2024
Markland Wood Tower-in-the-Park Infill Revised Through Local Feedback
 1.1K     4 

VIA Rail

Admiral Beez said:
What savings or expenses is VIA incurring if one does or does not reserve a seat? There should be no extra charge unless VIA is incurring an extra cost.
Click to expand...
By that flawed logic, VIA would not be allowed to charge more than the marginal fuel costs of transporting the body weight of each individual passenger. Marginal costs incurred per additional passenger are mostly nonexistent in the transportation industry and thus almost irrelevant for pricing, which must generate enough revenues to not just recover variable costs, but also fixed costs.

The entire point of „price discrimination“ is to restrict certain perks to higher fare options, so that customers can decide by their own whether they are prepared to pay extra for them or not, which leads to much better outcomes for the customers than offering a single fare at a single price, as price-conscious customers end up paying lower prices wheress value-conscious customers get to enjoy the perks they desire (and value)…

And just to add another point: given that customers generally pay more the later they book, why should the customers who pay the least have the best seats (because they book and therefore can chose their seats before everyone else)?

This is the same principle as with Netflix: if you can’t stand watching ads, just don‘t buy the basic plan!
 
Last edited:
Admiral Beez said:
What savings or expenses is VIA incurring if one does or does not reserve a seat? There should be no extra charge unless VIA is incurring an extra cost.

While we're at in, if I have to self check and bag my groceries, the law should demand that I am refunded the ten minutes of minimum wage I would have been paid to do their job.
Click to expand...
The cost that VIA incurs is the opportunity cost of people not getting the best ratio of service to price, which could result in marginally lower revenue. Different seats have different value to different passengers, so efficiently allocating resources to match rider preferences will maximize the total benefit experienced by people on a given train.

Most people prefer sitting forward, but some people care more than others. Given that only half of the seats in Corridor trains face forward, it makes sense to try and match those seats with the passengers who have the strongest preference for them. People who have a strong preference for facing forward can pay for seat selection (either via a higher-end ticket type or paying the seat selection fee), while people who just want the cheapest fare can take the less high-demand seats.

From my experience with the new booking system, most of the default seat assignments I have gotten were rear-facing seats, which would support my theory of using seat selection as a method to allocate forward-facing seats. I don't have a strong preference but I do generally change them to forward-facing seats. But since I often book Escape fares and don't care that much one way or the other, once they start charging for seat selection I will just stay in the default backward-facing seat. Which is an optimal decision for passengers overall, because chances are that whoever gets that forward-facing seat cares more than I do.

A similar situation exists with window vs aisle seats. This is definitely a consideration for Via given the new policies also include a surcharge for the standalone seats in Business Class compared to the paired seats if you pay the basic Business fare.
 
Last edited:
Pics of the renovation work going on at TMC. Tough to get a good shot while on the move:

Jun 5, 2024
20240604_162827.JPG


20240604_162830.JPG
 
Did VIA have to put in an application, or are they somehow exempt due to being on rail lands or being federally owned?
 
Urban Sky said:
Not sure whether you mean Environmental Assesment Studies or just Building Permits, but VIA certainly isn’t excempt from the latter…
Click to expand...
A development app or something else where some of the drawings would be posted is what I had in mind
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top