On Sat, 18 Dec 2004, Charles Ellson wrote:
In article
"Tom Anderson" writes:
On 16 Dec 2004, James wrote:
Yes, Southern has started refurbing the 455s. I was on one the other day
from Mitcham Jct to Ewell E. Very nice job. High-backed seats, but sadly
still 3+2.
Are new trains 2+2, then? Surely 3+2 is the best arrangement for trains on
inner suburban services; they seat 25% more people than 2+2s. AIUI, in
2+2, the width gained from liquidating the fifth seat goes into making the
four survivors wider, not providing more room the aisle, so it's not as if
you get more standing passengers in return.
You'll have to excuse my ignorance - i live in tubeland, and before that,
Hackney, manor of the 315.
Unless the 315 has a different seating layout from a 313 you should have
noticed what is wrong with 3+2 seating on inner-suburban services when
more than a few people are standing.
Not really - AFAICR, people sat on all the seats. Perhaps Hackneyites and
Waltham Foresters aren't as precious about their personal space as
SWTLanders
. Or perhaps it's just that the trains were so crowded, there
wasn't any more room to stand in, so people sat down!
I take the point, though - in this case, going from 2+3 to 2+2 means
getting a wider + (if you see what i mean!), so although you've got 20%
less seating (nominally - the loss in real terms is smaller if the
utilisation of the third seats is low), you get more standing space to
make up for it. Seems eminently sensible. The longitudinally-seated
vestibules are a good idea, too.
tom
--
3.141592666666 and then it's just all sixes for the other 298 digits. Then
after that there's just hieroglyphs of scary eyes.