Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:
One of the things I've noticed when travelling on Southern or South
West Trains in the commuter belt is that their carriages generally
don't have any sets of three seats on one side of the aisle.

An obvious simple solution would be to remove the third seats in the
carriages...

....and it led to a right old bashing by the media when SWT took the seats
out didn't it. The 455s and the high capacity 450s all started out with 2+3
seating throughout, and the reduction in seated capacity is fairly recent in
the overall scheme of things, ie within the last few years.

Then because the standing capacity as a percentage of seated capacity is
much increased they get grief for that as well whenever there is another
'seats for all' campaign in the Standard...

Merseyrail are the only regional TOC to have done anything similar, but I'm
not sure you are right about Southern, I think all their inner suburban 455s
are all still 2+3. The London Overground 313s have had a number of 3rd seats
removed, but of course that is nothing compared to their new 378s which have
only longitudinal seats throughout.

Paul S