London Banter - View Single Post - Third seats and standing room on commuter rail carriages

[email protected] · July 6th 09, 01:21 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article
,
(Paul Oter) wrote:

On 5 July, 21:57, wrote:
In article ,

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. By
contrast the local National Express London to Shenfield service has
the old layout with one side having three seats except for
immediately adjacent to the vestibles or doors. London Overground
services have a mix with some third seats removed, and also has
some side-ways seating that creates more standing room.

A consequence on the National Express services is that the trains
get horrendously overcrowded, not least because it's hard to move
down the carriages quickly and so passengers instead crowd in the
vestible areas. Consequently these are often rampacked, with people
physically forcing their way in at Stratford, whilst not every seat
is used. This has led to more than one incident and I fear it won't
be long before someone's badly hurt or worse.

An obvious simple solution would be to remove the third seats in
the carriages, thus creating wider aisles that allow more standing
room and also make it easier to get out of the train in time. This
could reduce some of the sardine effect, and very few more
passengers would have to stand as it's rare for every seat to be
taken even when there is a scrum.

How do the other commuter carriages handle this?

The refurbishment of the class 317/2s to create class 317/6 changed
nearly all the seating from 3+2 to 2+2. I think the only exception
was around the pantograph down feeds.

That's not my experience of travelling between Cambridge and Liverpool
St in recent months. Although the 317/2s have been refurbished over the
past couple of years (new seat covers and carpet, internal painting,
garish pink colour scheme, removal of sliding doors around first class
section) they're still 3+2 in standard. Even the ones branded as
Stansted Express.

None of the units branded as Stansted Express or in the new National
Express livery is a class 317/6. They are either in "One" blue or the
strange WAGN cream and red and brown and black (or whatever) colour
scheme. The 317/2 to 317/6 refurbishment was completed in WAGN days.

--
Colin Rosenstiel