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

[email protected] · July 7th 09, 04:55 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article
,
(Paul Oter) wrote:

On 6 July, 14:21, wrote:
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.

Agreed. I misunderstood the point you were making.

My point is that when the remaining 317/2s were refurbished to 317/5
by National Express two or three years ago, they chose to keep the
existing 2+3 layout rather than repeat WAGN's decision several years
earlier to convert them to 2+2 317/6's. So, as on the OP's Shenfield
line, NXEA clearly prefer 2+3 seating over 2+2 - even on these outer
suburban units which regularly go to King's Lynn..

There were no remaining 317/2s. WAGN refurbished them all. 317/5s were
previously 317/1s. The refurbishment works were very limited.

--
Colin Rosenstiel