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Back in early December, Metro began testing a trio of new railcar designs that offered different seating and handlebar configurations. Some of Metro's newer car designs, especially the ones that removed vertical bars to create more passenger standing room, have proved very popular with riders. At least one change, however, has already been dumped by Metro: bench seating, as seen in the photo at right, will not be incorporated into future rail cars, WTOP reports.
Metro General Manager John Catoe explained there were a number of factors that led to the decision to ditch the New York City-style bench seating, including that the change didn't actually create any more space for passengers. But most importantly, Catoe said that customer feedback showed that Washingtonians don't like being seated in such a way that forces us to look at one another. Could it be that we're actually less friendly than New Yorkers? Or that the stereotypes about us being brutally unattractive are actually true? Say it ain't so.
Other new railcar design innovations, including the addition of extra handgrips and standing stations with padded back cushions, are still on the table.
Photo courtesy WMATA
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This is a ridiculous decision and why, although it takes me longer sometimes, I will continue to ride the bus...
METRO probably just doesn't want people to sleep across four seats at a time.
As long as there is more standing room, I can take or leave the bench seating. From the photo above, I can see his point that they don't really save any room. I like the configuration of the new train cars that are more open and have large areas near the doors where you can stand, although they could use more handles for shorter passengers.
Eh, bench seating means sitting sideways, which means slamming into your neighbor when the train lurches fore and aft, and that is the suck.
rez - Beat me to it. You just know some lazy, self-centered bastards are going to sprawl out for a nap and take up all 4 seats, leaving the oldsters and 11-months-pregnant women standing around huffing.
Why do they insist on continuing to use those horrible 70's style orange and red color schemes?
maybe we're not exactly "brutally unattractive" but vomit-enducing hideousness regularly presents itself, doesn't it?
oh our sad, sad ugly city. who knew it would come to this?
maybe we should start a new campaign to promote dc tourism. "need an ego-boost? come check out the freaks and geeks of dc! we can't even look at each other on public transportation without getting queasy"
WMATA spent millions on color research in the 1960s before settling on the orange-and-red color scheme. Years of painstaking lab trials revealed that, even in low-light conditions and when alcohol impaired, this particular combination helps the rider's eye to distinguish between wayward rats and fresh vomit.
i met the first (and i fear the only) friendly retail people in DC yesterday at the columbia heights giant.
so yeah, i think looking at each other is a problem. that's why we need bench seating, to promote friendliness.
I agree with DCfist, I really don't like riding sideways. It's particularly bad on buses (and even worse on the short, tall buses, which list like a weeble-wobble).
What a blow to the Fenty Administration: that bench seating was part of the Affordable Housing initiative.
Local resistance to bench seating indicates that, astoundingly, Washingtonians are now more paranoid than New Yorkers.
Sitting across from the fat guy spread eagled across two seats. Do not want.
The issue isn't more room for passengers, it's reducing the amount of time and effort it takes for people to get on and off the train. Has Catoe ever been on a packed rush hour train sitting in a window seat far from the door? Metrorail loses loads of time on loading and unloading, and reducing the time needed for that should be the priority of car configurations. Give me bench seating and four-door cars or give me death!
Yeah, bench seating sucks. You know people would sit in every other seat then no one would fill the middle.
I really really hope the current cars stick around for a while b/c they give ample opportunity for sweaty narst pit riders to hold on to something without lifting their arms.
Are you people blind? Did someone seriously say they looked at the picture and found that there isn't extra room from bench seating? Do you need a ruler? There is at least DOUBLE the amount of room between the bench seating as there is between the loveseat seating.
As fartynonsense wrote, being in the window seat on a crowded train means it will take you 40 seconds to get off the train. Catoe has clearly never been on a Metro train.
Additionally, there is no legroom with the loveseat configuration for anyone taller than 5-foot-8. Bench seating offers full legroom. That's why I only ever sit on the couple benchseats that are currently offered, in the extremely rare case they are available. More reasons to not ride Metro, ugh.
You can pack a hell of a lot more people into a car with bench seating at rush hour than you can into the current cars. And, as noted, people can get on and off a lot faster, reducing delays at each stop during rush hour.
It's bad enough that, by placing baggage or their excessive carriage on the second seat, some Metro riders manage to occupy two seats on their own. Notwithstanding their potential for being slept upon like so many park benches, bench seats on Metro cars represented a far worse possibility: accommodating the top ranks of our increasingly girthsome population who currently have trouble squeezing their oversized badonkadonks into the double-wide seats Metro currently offers.
I say, good riddance.
How about they just get rid of the seats altogether?
The bench seats don't take up more room but as soon as somebody is sitting in them, enjoying the extra leg room, they would take up as much space as the "loveseat" style does.
If benches are so goddamned wonderful, why not take out all the seats and just leave a row of benches down the middle of the car? You could probably double the per-car volume of passengers, nobody has to sit next to the window, and eveyone's just a few steps from the door for when they really have to take a leak after drinking 7 blood marys at Madhatter.
Bench seating makes sense. Have you tried to get in or out of a metrorail car during rush hour? Everyone packs in by the doors and no one goes into the center of the train, for fear of not being able to get out in a few stops.
I think getting people in and out of the cars is much more important than whether you might have to look at other riders.
Just lower the handrails to a height that doesn't require one to be 6' 6" to hold them comfortably when the train is a rolling sardine can.
fluxgirl- i agree. i'm assuming you are also a short female as well. :)
bench seating would be great, because i cannot reach those bars or handles up at the top without standing on my tippy toes and/or ripping my arm out of its socket.
I like bench seats b/c, as others have pointed out, entry and exit would be much easier. I am all for easy access, on Metro and in life.
The metal handles are too low--I'm over 6 feet tall (though am not freakishly tall) and I hit my head on those a lot--they are hard to avoid when the train is jerking around a lot. They also hurt like hell. Do you short people really want some big tall dude with a handle shaped gash in his forehead bleeding on you? The Paris metro has these fold down seats that can be deployed from the wall as needed, otherwise freeing up a lot of space when not in use.
i don't know about you, but i HATE those new cars with the wide open spaces at the doors. there's never anywhere to hold on! the only handrails are right against the wall and the door, and there's always already ten people trying to hold on for dear life. i dread the day i get stuck standing in the middle of that spot without anything to hold onto except the sweaty, smelly 6'7" guy in a suit on a 90 degree day.
when i lived in NYC and rode the subway, i was always able to just stand in the middle of the car and not hold onto anything without getting thrown to the other end. is there something different about the DC metro tracks and cars that make them jerk around like a 16 year old learning to drive on a stick shift?
is there something different about the DC metro tracks and cars that make them jerk around like a 16 year old learning to drive on a stick shift?
When the computer is controlling/braking the car, the ride is pretty smooth. It's only when the conductor is manually braking/accelerating the car does it get jerky. I remember when Metro was having problems with their computers, they went to manual braking. Did they ever go back to computer control?
hold on there folks, we're not supposed to openly admit that there might be something about nyc that is superior to our beloved dc
Some of Metro's newer car designs, especially the ones that removed vertical bars to create more passenger standing room, have proved very popular with riders.
As a woman of average height, I don't want to stand where there is no vertical pole to hold onto. The overhead bars are out of reach, and probably create more shoulder-wrenching moments during jerky rides, anyway.
Removing vertical poles might create more space for standing, but that doesn't mean people will want to stand there. We'll keep congregating where the vertical poles are -- which in the photos above appears to be the ever-crowded door area.
"Did someone seriously say they looked at the picture and found that there isn't extra room from bench seating? Do you need a ruler? There is at least DOUBLE the amount of room between the bench seating as there is between the loveseat seating."
The picture is an empty car. Maybe if everyone was legless the bench seating would free up some room, but I'm thinking that the space taken up by legs will leave an aisle not that different in size from the current one. You might get a few more inches.. is that worth the money to modify the cars? I think not.
The NYC subway is generally slower than DC.
I don't know who these people are that like the removal of the vertical bars, but that's just crazy talk. I agree with erincarly, those cars don't encourage you to move away from the doors. It encourages you to BLOCK the doors because that's the only place there's an overhead bar to hang onto. And I hate HATE those swinging overhead handles.. they are the most uncomfortable thing to hang onto, and doesn't give you much leverage at all to compensate the jerky starting and stopping of the trains.
watchmen, even with the fear of being thrown across the car and rendered unconsious (which describes my ride this morning perfectly), i'd rather ride metro over the subway any day.
The fatal flaw of the configuration as shown is that the overhead rail runs down the center of the car. There should be two of them running down either side of the car, with vertical poles running down to the seats every third seat or so. This really shouldn't be so hard.
fartynonsense: I thought Metro was suggesting the two rails on either side originally and that made sense to me. I was also hoping that the handles would be useful to anyone not six feet tall. Kind of like the tokyo subways (where most folks are under six feet tall..).
http://www.joystiq.com/media/2006/09/tokyo_subway_adverts_all_over.jpg
I think the real solution to maximizing space on the Metro cars is to employ guys with cattle prods like in Tokyo (espec for the Red Line). Not only would I support that solution, I'd apply for that sweet ass job.
"Metro Opens Doors Then Forces You Through Them Like a Cow at a Processing Plant" (sorry PETA/vegetarians/vegans)
Somehow this works in NYC where people are thinner? Or just used to sitting next to each other. Time to diet DC!
I would suggest combining the Tokyo handles tvc linked to with the Paris flip-downs for empty-metro moments that pants mentioned, and the current DC seat configurations. I don't see a big space advantage for bench seating and they remove the option for polls, which is what people of varying heights will need to hang onto in more-crowded trains anyway.
oh erincarly, way to take a stand!, even if it can't last very long because you happen to be on the metro and have landed in someone else's lap as the train lurches and stumbles along. i only wish for you that it is an attractive lap and nothing that will give you nightmares for years to come.
dc loves you
They need to get rid of the ass panels -- that is, those plexiglass panels next to the doors where lazy slobs rest their larden posteriors, thereby reducing the space through which passengers can enter and exit by up to 1/4.
alexalexalex
I always get so worried when I sit in the seat behind one of those ass panels and then some fatass leans against it and the damn lucite panel sags towards me...