More complaints in the little paper today about the state of Melbourne rail travel, demand to exceed capacity and so forth. Nice sense of passenger entitlement in the accompanying voxpop, that quotes one traveller as saying: If I’m paying for a seat, I expect to at least get on the train”
I’d say getting on the train should be about the start and end of it. I’ve always thought that the problem with Melbourne trains (yes, you can probably tune out now) is that they focus too much on sitting people down and have precious little standing room, most of it clustered boneheadedly round the doors.
Commuter trains shold be a strap hanging tube all but unfettered by seating I reckon.
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There was a tram specie/s which had an excellent idea. They had a sort of padded area where strap-hangers could rest their bums against. It worked very well. Whereas the current ones have piddling little seats and the strap hangers aren’t catered for at all. Unless you can call being packed in like sardines so that if person ‘A’ has to sneeze everyone else is obliged to sneeze. And when the tram is almost empty you can see elderly people haul themselves to a standing position before attempting to hurl themselves against the nearest pole. If they miss the pole they are in danger of falling into the door well.