Transcription
Every time I travel to Manchester, I buy an advanced ticket, 'cause otherwise it costs a million pound. So I book a ticket on a specific train and I pay for it. And because I'm terrified of missing that train, because all your money gets pissed up the wall if you miss the train, I turn up about 45 minutes early, leaving an insanely large margin of error to get to the station.
In that 45 minutes, two earlier trains leave for Manchester. One 5 minutes after I've arrived, one 25 minutes after I've arrived. I'm not allowed to get on those. I have to get on the one 45 minutes after I've arrived.
I said, "All you need is an app that just says, 'I'm here now at the station.'" Virgin Trains, who operate the trains, to manages to say, "Pay 5 quid and you can actually have seat 30 and Coach G, which is empty, and you can leave in 5 minutes rather than 45." You now reduced my journey time by 40 minutes. You've also increased the capacity of the network. Because if you're an airline or a train, you should always allow people who turn up early to travel in the earlier seats because it gives you a second chance to sell the seat that they've vacated to someone who arrives later. So by moving people onto available earlier capacity on earlier trains, you basically create more capacity.