Posted Feb 13, 2016, 3:49 PM
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Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Toronto
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Subway Cars Should Be Like Centipedes
Read More: http://www.slate.com/articles/busine...it.single.html
Quote:
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American transportation authority leaders are reluctant to embrace the concept reflects a couple of facts about how they do business. First, they clearly don’t spend enough time using the systems they run. Second (and relatedly), they are conservative about change. They are willing to let culture, or their perceptions of it, dictate design—rather than the other way around.
- The most convincing explanation for the absence of open gangways in the United States is that planners feel “amenity-conscious” (or “choice”) riders would find them unpleasant. The enhanced mobility open gangways grant to beggars, merchants, and buskers has been cited as a potential problem with the model. That shouldn’t be sufficient reason to keep riders stuffed in like sardines. New Yorkers don’t take the subway because it’s pleasant, but because it gets them to work on time.
- When Melbourne tried four new train car models with less seating, the city found that the more seats were removed, the faster the cars entered and left the stations. That improvement, in what transit planners call “dwell times,” is the most significant variable in a train’s journey—and has a cascading effect in a busy and necessarily efficient system like the New York subway, Washington’s Metro, or San Francisco’s BART. In Stockholm, which moved from a 48-seat car to an experimental 26-seat car in 2008, 3 in 4 commuters would rather arrive on time than have a seat.
- The more seats you scrap, however, the greater the burden you place on the elderly, the disabled, and long-distance commuters. In Paris, according to a 2007 paper by the then–director of transport for RAND Europe, not having a seat on suburban train journeys produced an effect on commuters equivalent to 27 additional minutes of travel time. That awareness is informing an ongoing worldwide shift from transverse seating (like an airplane) toward latitudinal seating (like a limousine). The latter cars fit more people because they allow for more standers but still preserve plenty of accessible seats.
- When Chicago tried that shift on its “5000” series, introduced in 2011, riders revolted against “New York-style” seating. The new cars did not increase capacity, in part because riders extended their legs into potential standing room. So the CTA will make a partial return to airplane-style seating with its “7000” series in 2019. The research on Melbourne’s system affirms the intuitive idea that rush-hour passengers prefer trains with more standing room and fewer seats. This is why Paris has snap-back seats; each car can lose 24 seats at peak times to make room for more passengers.
- Boston took a more radical approach. In 2008, the MBTA rolled out two “Big Red” cars at the center of some rush-hour trains that more closely resembled boxcars than Pullman cars—they had only a couple of seats available. Eight years later, administrators haven’t expanded the trial. A similar planned experiment in New York, which would have increased capacity by 18 percent, does not seem to have left the station. So you can see why transit designers are perennially fiddling with layouts: There is no such thing as the right train car. But if there were one, it would have open gangways.
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