Article: DR. GRIDLOCK Mingling intimately or standing on subway like cattle?

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DR. GRIDLOCK
Mingling intimately or standing on subway like cattle?

DR. GRIDLOCK
Mingling intimately or standing on subway like cattle?

JEFF GRAY

September 1, 2008

Transit overlords in New York - revealing the universal and sometimes endearing transit-engineer impulse to treat people like freight - are preparing to test a low-tech way to jam more passengers onto packed rush-hour subway trains: Lose the seats.

According to local media reports, New York plans to test a subway train with flip-up seats in four of its 10 cars. The seats would be locked upright in rush hour, allowing 18 per cent more passengers to fit inside, mingling rather intimately.

With ridership rising, the move is meant to allow a boost to the system's capacity that could only otherwise be achieved by the installation of new multimillion-dollar signalling systems - the kind earmarked for Toronto's packed Yonge subway line in coming years - which allow for computer-controlled trains to be run more closely together than now possible.

Imagine, in the meantime, the boost to the efficiency of the increasingly crowded TTC subway if just a couple of cars on each six-car train had seats that disappeared in rush hour, creating a standing-room-only ride for some, but leaving the rest of the train for those who really need to sit down. If you are going to be standing anyway, it might be more tolerable without all of those seats, and the lucky people sitting in them, just getting in your way.


The Toronto Transit Commission has proven surprisingly resistant to suggestions it should stopping coddling passengers who insist on sitting down. In 2006, its commissioners overrode pleas from the agency's engineers to install "perimeter seating" in the next generation of subway cars. This is a layout common in Europe and Asia that would allow for more stand-up types and easier movement with seats set along each wall, instead of the TTC's current, obstructive "conversation nook" arrangement.

Then-TTC-chair Howard Moscoe derided the idea, saying it would turn the city's subway trains into "cattle cars."

It seems obvious that public transit, in a growing city that is supposed to be getting much denser and less car-dependent in the coming years, is simply going to get more and more crowded. We are going to have to get over some of our hang-ups about personal space, as have subway riders in other major cities. Think of it as a tax break: The more people you cram into an existing subway, the less governments have to spend on new public transit.

While he wouldn't endorse New York's seat-lockup idea, Adam Giambrone, the city councillor who chairs the TTC, did point out that when the new subway cars - called Toronto Rockets - start arriving at the end of next year, they will be equipped with seats that fold up when they are not being used. (The new subway cars will also allow passenger to walk from car to car while the train is moving, which the TTC says will ease crowding.)

It is hard to imagine the TTC ever having the gall to bolt the seats up in rush hour as New York is proposing. Instead, Toronto's approach, Mr. Giambrone said, will preserve an element of customer choice, allowing the pressure of group behaviour to govern who sits and who stands.

Mr. Giambrone said that passengers on other systems with similar flip-up seats that he has ridden, such as in Paris, intuitively understand that when the subway car is really crowded, it is time to stand. Unless, of course, you are in one of those categories of passengers that really needs a seat.

"People are really good about it," Mr. Giambrone said. "People get it."

Dr. Gridlock appears Mondays.