A rainbow-colored 7 train. (Photo by flickr user bitchcakesny)
On Saturday night, I hopped on an A train at Broadway/Nassau and found myself sitting on some hard-molded blue seats that looked out of place amidst the red and orange that dominated the rest of the car. It was not the first time I had seen these seats, and yet, I still wondered why Transit was going for a rainbow look.
Today, the Post reports on the new color scheme. It is, unsurprisingly, a cost-savings measure initiated by the MTA. Soon, all of the cars will feature these dull blue seats, and the vibrant reds and oranges will be but a memory. Tom Namako reports:
MTA workers who repair broken seats were told to do away with the old color scheme in favor of the newer gray-blue on nine lines: the 1, 3, 7, B, Q, D, W and two shuttles.
The idea was to cut costs by saving on the amount of paint that has to be bought — and to save time by not having to use masking that creates the white trim on the older car seats, said NYC Transit spokeswoman Deirdre Parker.
The newer color matches the seat scheme on the latest subway cars, like those used on the N and L lines. Ideally, the entire subway fleet will eventually feature those cars or similar ones. “They’ll be repainted this color forever,” said Charles Seaton, of NYCT.
Namako did not report just how much money the MTA would be saving on these seats, but in this age of little transit investment, any money saved is good money. Meanwhile, as the new R160s and R142s no longer feature different colored subway bullets and the colored seats are going the way of the dodo, the subways are losing another part of their colorful identity. How blue that makes me.
24 comments
I like the blue seats. The red/orange/yellow scheme dates back to the R-44 cars, more than 35 years ago. It looks like a 1970s fast-food joint. The blue is cleaner and crisper.
I also spotted the blue seats on a Queens-bound G train this past weekend.
We need about $900,000,000,000,000 to keep the system in good repair & your worried about blue vs orange seats? Please, give me a break!
Aside from the blue seats, I wonder if Bombardier/the MTA went with red LEDs for visibility. Furthermore, with display technology advancing every day, what modifications will the MTA issue with these trains in the future – perhaps the return of coloured bullets in the form of a bright coloured OLED display in place of the existing red LED displays on the end caps?
Good point-next line of rolling stock should have colored LED/LCD panels…
And I HATE the blue seats…they’re so plain, boring, and uniform. The “disco-era” colors, if you will, brought some life to riding the dark subways…
There are “subliminal messages” behind carefully chosen color schemes.
All blues are cool, soothing, and visually sedative. Light blues have the added look of cleanliness. What should the MTA do with stressed-out commuters? Calm them down. (Frankly I’m surprised they don’t pipe in muzak/elevator music.)
Kid Twist hit the nail on the head when he made the connection between red/orange/yellow and fast-food. Decades ago psychologists discovered that those three colors have been known to entice or evoke hunger. That’s why McDonald’s and others use those color schemes. Methinks the MTA finally bothered to read that memo and realized that they’ve been enticing hunger in the one place where they don’t want anyone eating.
I’ve seen the blue seats on the R for a couple of months now. I LOVE THEM! So pleasing to the eye and feel better against clothing – not sticky.
The orange and yellow were so dated, I don’t mind them disappearing. I wish they would just replace everything at once. How long will it take for almsot all of seats to be replaced? The orange/yellow/blue scheme just looks like a bad accident right now.
I think they’re just repainting them if they need any work done on them.
I like the new color–agreed the old scheme is very tired and 70s.
I greatly dislike the red LED lights on the new trains, though. They’re illegible until the train is already in the station. And they look cheap. The side signs, too. Oh well… you win some, you lose some.
It would be even better if the MTA took this opportunity to replace bucket seats with bench seats on all R44 through R68 trains. Bench seats are probably less expensive to manufacture, and offer a higher capacity by allowing overweight people to take up 1.25 spaces instead of 2.
I’m torn on bench seats. On the one hand, they seem to eliminate the waste of a lot of half-seats and make it somewhat easier to actually get a seat, but… on the other hand, they are seriously uncomfortable after a half-hour or so. My favorite seating remains the “conversation-style” seating which thanks to the economy will probably never get replaced on my R.
but there’s too little knee space between the ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ in the conversation seats (good name, i’d not heard it before).
Not for me. Which explains why I always get a seat. I’m not terribly short (5’8″) and there’s plenty of room. I see people shorter than me who think they can’t fit in there, cos they’re always blocking the inside seat and throwing their legs into the aisle.
Those conversation seats reduce standing capacity on the train.
Those conversation seats also create standing patterns that do not maximize available space in the car and lead people to block the doors. I am not a fan.
And the lengthwise seating reduces sitting capacity. Unless I want to transfer twice and get to work late, the R is my only option. It’s a long, slow trip, and I want to sit.
You can probably sit either way. I’m not sure about the R, but the 6 and 1 both have available seats for most of the inbound ride, north of about 125th Street. The standees are the people taking the train over shorter distances. So unless you live on the margins between sitting territory and standing territory, you have nothing to lose from lengthwise seating. On the other hand, higher standing capacity means people have an easier time getting on the train at the stations closer to the CBD, which means shorter dwells.
Well, the cars with fewer seats have fewer seats, so I have to stand longer. And like you said, the people who sit tend to sit the whole way. Now I understand the R is a local so you would think that it’s mostly for people taking short trips, but for those of us in Bay Ridge it’s the only train and transferring is only good if you’re travelling north of Canal Street–which I am not.
There are a couple of cars I’ve seen on the 3 line that have bench seats. They are two-seat wide sets, and rather than color the seats as in the picture above (a white border around a single orange or yellow seat and seatback), the colored area is two seats wide, with a white border around the back, and a separate one around the seat. It catches you off-guard at first.
Regarding the blue seats, I don’t like them. I’ve seen them on the 1, and they look like a cheap, out-of-place repair job. With the “contoured” bucket seats, the original paint helps to quickly identify the seat without looking for texture.
Regarding an earlier comment about the red LED’s, it is very hard to distinguish an arriving M train from an N train.
Wow! I can’t believe how many people I disagree with here. I’ve never experienced, nor do I want to experience the 70’s but I LOVE the seats with COLOR!! it helps me get a better rest, and I love the buckets, so much more comfortable, muted lights, brights seats, red, orange, yellow, its all a very comfortable environment to get my nap in during my commute in the odd hours.
the blue seats, the bright lights, and the super cold air conditioning, feels like i’ve been sent to the mental institution. and yeah, you can’t read the LED light until it’s in the station
I’ve seen these on the R44s a few times. But I thought they were ‘replacement’ seats, not just painted over seats. The seats looked brand new and looked molded. Are they removing the seats from the trains, painting them, and putting them back?
I was puzzled by this too. I got on an R42 today and about half the seats were blue. The molding was different from the old seats. These were definitely new seats, not just a new paint job.
[…] know, you’re shocked, right? The MTA is cutting costs (and they damn sure need to cut costs) when they replace broken seats on the subway lines by leaving […]