The MTA's familiar bucket seats aren't wide enough for most New Yorkers. (Photo by flickr user bitchcakesny)
The 2 and 3 trains out of Brooklyn represent a chunk of my daily ride to work, and when my office moves to the West Side, I’ll be riding those trains for longer. In the morning and in the evening, I always root for the 2 train to arrive. It’s not the overall experience of the new rolling stock per se, but rather it is the seats. The bucket seats on the 3 train — as well as various other cars across the system — just do not work.
New Yorkers, you see, just don’t fit into the bucket seats. It’s not that New Yorkers are getting wider. Some are; some aren’t. But rather, the seats themselves aren’t wide enough for a normal sized adult who rides the subway, often with coats and layers. While the bench seating feels more natural, even in tight squeezes, the bucket seats are inefficient, impractical and uncomfortable. People try to squeeze into their perfectly defined spaces only to find the lip of the seat digging into certain areas where things should not dig.
As transit agencies are planning for next-generation rolling stock, the subways at least have done away with the buckets. All new cars have the bench seats. Yet, commuter rail cars still have something approximating bucket seats, and as car configurations are redesigned to conform with wider bottoms, seating may be a victim. Christine Haughney of The Times explored this conundrum yesterday. She wrote:
Each time an agency decides to purchase new trains or buses, it must consider whether to make its seats wider, knowing that a decision to do so could come at the expense of passenger capacity. New Jersey Transit has a five-year plan to add 100 double-decker train cars that have seats 2.2 inches wider than the 17.55-inch seats found in its single-deck trains; the seating configuration has been changed to two seats on either side of the aisle, rather than three on one side and two on the other. Amtrak intends to introduce “designs that will be able to accommodate the larger-sized passengers” on 25 new dining cars starting next year, said a spokesman, Cliff Cole.
But while transit agencies consider the needs of heavier passengers, they do not always yield to them. Over the past half-century, the width of New York City subway seats has not changed much, said Marcia Ely, assistant director of the New York Transit Museum. If anything, the seats have occasionally gotten smaller — and immediately encountered resistance.
Joseph Smith, who retired in 2010 as a New York City Transit senior vice president who also oversaw bus operations in the city and on Long Island, said that the agency once had to abandon plans to introduce Mercedes-Benz Citaro buses, which are popular in Europe, after riders complained about too-narrow seats.
Haughney’s article focuses on how transit agencies and the federal government are changing their requirements for weight distribution as well. Metro-North’s M9 cars will require double seats that can handle loads of up to 400 pounds while new federal crash-test standards for buses require 175 pounds and 1.75 square feet per person, up 25 pounds and 0.25 square feet over previous standards. “It’s clear that the US population is getting heavier,” Martin Schroeder, an engineer with the American Public Transport Association, said to The Times. “We are trying to get our hands on that and figure out what is the best average weight to use.”
This is are just a polite way of dealing with the reality of expanding waist lines, but that’s a genuine concern on public transportation (or anywhere, really). We’ve all been squeezed in the middle of people who are wider than the bucket seats or find ourselves underneath someone trying to sashay his or her way into a space that just isn’t big enough. It’s a hazard of the job, so to speak.
On the other hand, though, the increasing weights of passengers will require different federal standards which will require heavier and more plodding vehicles. We’ll lose seats on trains as New Jersey Transit, for instance, plans to cut out a third seat on some new cars, and we’ll lose speed as buses and rail cars, like their passengers, become heavier to cope with the added weight.
30 comments
It’s a good time too, to point out all those trying to push Bogota-style BRT in the USA: Colombians are smaller and the hold more people per cubic unit. Not to mention the buses are longer. Increasing load size makes American transit that much less efficient. (Hell forget Bogota, take packed Tokyo subway car and tryi to get as many Americans in that same space.)
I dunno, if BRT had the advantages the BRT thumpers imagine it does, then it shouldn’t make a huge difference whether or not the people who use it are disproportionately overweight. What the thumpers imagine is the bus fairy will appear and save the transit agency bundles of money because the buses run on rubber tires rather than socialist metal rails – or something, I really can’t tell what they’re thinking, or if they even are. Still, as is, an NYC articulated bus is only so much narrower than an IRT car. The best that could be done with the surface transit system in the near term is find a way to speed up boarding.
Dedicated ROW’s are needed. Cameras on buses are fine for enforcement purposes, but someone will ALWAYS encroach on the bus lane. On Nostrand Ave., this is going to be a problem.
Well the BRT thumpers often through out capacity numbers that we can’t match. Partly because of weight and partly because Americans will never allow themselves to be that crowded on transit.
We shouldn’t have to match them. BRT (and, generally, bus) thumpers have the same delusions about buses that the Reason Foundation has about cars. It’s not that unusual to see them demanding rails get paved over to make room for “dedicated” bus service because it supposedly saves money and other nonsense.
That said, BRT is still an improvement over conventional surface bus service, even for the obese. LRT probably makes more sense on routes like First Avenue, but oh well.
Outside New York, people think that Americans will never allow themselves to be as crowded on transit as they are every day on the 4.
And with sparse exceptions, it might well be true. I have colleagues in the DC area who almost seem gleeful about their refusal to use the DC Metro. Somehow they think it’s better to sit in an automobile for two hours and let the trains fly by, even if it means standing for maybe up to 30 minutes.
There are also some people in New York who do that. You shouldn’t diss these people; they provide livelihood to dominatrices. But normal people go with standing when the alternative is getting stuck in traffic/paying a high toll, and taking forever to find parking/paying market rate for parking.
More transit means more walking and exercise and, if anything, could be a way to fight against weight gain. Of course, the socioeconomically poor who use transit in most of the USA are also suffering from the obesity epidemic disproportionately.
gawd I’m gettin’ old. The middle seat on commuter trains was NOT welcome when it arrived. And they were vacant most of the time, just like they are vacant most of the time today.
The same problem plagues commercial airliners, too — sitting next to a grossly overweight person on a Southwest Airlines flight last year, with their standard 2×3 seating, I had to cope with fat oozing around the armrest as I battled to get the seat belt fastened. I still think the airline was wrong in the Kevin Smith kerfuffle, but I do see the point about buying two seats if you’re tipping the scales in the 350-400 pound range.
As for the MTA, if I remember right, part of the reason for the bucket seating in the first place was to try and keep people from spreading out and taking up more than one seat, and on the R-62s to keep the full-time denizens of the subway from sleeping on the bench seating. So they solved one problem and created another beginning with the R-44 cars (though after pretty much figuring out how to do hard plastic seating back in 1959 with the arrival of the R-26 cars, the TA already had started to screw things up in 1967 with the modified R-40 seats. The R-142/R-160 seats just kind of get thing back to where they were in 1966, after the R-38s showed up).
I always like it when I get one of the older 1970s Long Island Rail Road M3 cars. Not only are the seats a little wider, but there are quit a bit more of them than in the new M7s.
Of course, stay out of the rest room cars if you can …
I, a rather tall, slender guy, feel better on the bucket seats of the older cars than on the bench seats of the newer generation. Based on my experience (R160 trains), usually 6-7 people can fit comfortably per side on the bench seats between the doors.
I don’t ride the R62 trains that often, but wonder how often all eight bucket seats per side are filled.
I agree–the bench seats are too prone to sliding during starts and stops. The bucket seats are quite comfortable unless trying to straddle 2 seats between large passengers.
During rush hours, pretty often in my experience.
The R160 benches are supposed to hold 6. If they hold 7, people are squeezing even more than on an R62!
The era of bucket seats isn’t quite over. The new PATH trains (PA-5) which are modeled after the subway R-142s, have them. I’m not sure if the seats are larger than on the R62/62As, but I do find them more comfortable (maybe just because the train isn’t as crowded). The buckets do serve a purpose, which is to position people more efficiently in the seats. On the bench seats, people will often park their behinds in such a position that nobody can sit on either side, even though there would be plenty of room if they’d just move over.
Also, I think the NJ Transit discussion may be a bit inaccurate. All of the single-level NJT trains I’ve been on have bench seats (except for light-rail vehicles).
Can someone here find supermoddle Kate Moss & find out if she can fit in the bucket seats? If she cant, then we have a really BIG problem. Of cource I’m speaking in tongue & cheek here, but cheek that is. LOL
The NJ Transit bilevels have more seating than the existing Comet V cars, and have wide aisles. That allows much faster boarding and commuters hate the middle seat on the 3-2 seat arrangements. Commuters would rather stand than get the middle seat, and those in the window/aisle seats of the 3-seat configuration often do so to exploit the center seat for their belongings rather than give it up to another passenger.
The seating gets maximized in the 2×2 arrangements on the bilevel cars, but even though the single level cars (older Comet II with no center door) had more physical seats, commuters would rather stand than take the center seat. The bilevel cars eliminate that problem, and happen to give more seating room to the 2×2 arrangement.
As for the subway cars, having the bench seating makes more sense since those seating adjust accordingly to maximize space naturally, rather than trying to fit into the confines of a particular seat.
But while the Times focuses on the seat width as the prime reason that the bilevel cars were bought, the real reason was to maximize capacity through the Hudson River tunnels, and that’s why they’re buying another 100 of the bilevel cars. It proves to have a more comfortable ride, reduces dwell time in stations, and improves flow through the cars.
Bilevel cars inherently increase boarding time, independently of issues such as door placement and aisle width. Of course, boarding time is not NJT’s main problem, but still.
Another thing that bugs me about those R62/62As is the fact that the stanchions are right in front of the seats. That is quite annoying when the car is a little crowded and you have to go around the poles as well as people sitting down. Having the poles in front of the side doors is much better for passenger flow.
Benjamin, this is a little off-topic, but out of curiosity, do the (2)(3) experience delays (due to train traffic) between your home station and wherever you get off in Manhattan? How long are the delays, if there are any? How long does it normally take to get from your home station to the station at which you disembark in Manhattan in the morning? How long does the reverse trip take in the evening? I will compare the actual travel times you give me to the travel times allotted by the train schedules/google transit/MTA trip planner to see how long the delays are.
Heh, if you want cramped seats, check out British “high-density” suburban rolling stock. 3+2 seats in the much smaller UK loading guage. One of the reasons why I find Metro-North to be commuting heaven after years travelling on Southeastern.
Wah! I’m tall and I can’t fit into the subway. The MTA ought to increase the loading gauge so I can have taller subway cars.
This isn’t an obesity issue; the seats are too narrow for normal shoulders, never mind other parts. They also cut into an adult’s thighs and are arranged so as to be a nagging confinement for anyone around 6′ tall.
The real issue I see is that they’re designed to send a message: You, worthless prole, are made to suffer and we laugh. It’s the same message sent by slowing the system so that a trip from outer Brooklyn to UWS takes longer than an off peak drive from Connecticut to midtown. Train ops and other on-the-job trained staff get 100K total comp and FULL retirement after 23 years. You get child sized seats.
You are deluded if you think the MTA exists to provide transit. It exists to take your dollars with which it buys votes so that it may take more of your dollars. Walder was an exception who worked to improve the thing.. see how that turned out.
All the MTA employees I’ve known own cars; they park on MTA property.
Excellent point… the buckets may fit the butts, but the shoulders extend out a bit farther.
And a lot of guys seem to seriously overestimate how much space they need between their legs. 😐
I’m of average height and weight (5’11” and around 155 pounds) and I fit into the bucket seats quite comfortably, and I find them to be a lot more comfortable than the bench seats. Plus, bench seats encourage people to take up too much room by making it easy to sprawl out or lay down.
Also, has anybody every considered not accommodating heavier people? Make life more difficult for them and perhaps they’ll lose some weight.
Why those seats are so narrow: http://www.straphangers.org/di.....#Post42495
Most people are able to fit in the seats, some comfortably and some not. And they do encourage people not to spread their legs, so I appreciate them. The problem is that people who don’t fit take up three seats, not two, if nobody is willing to sit on the bump.
The problem with bench seats is that even people who can fit into a single seat often spread out. So an R142 bench that’s designed to hold 7 (3 on one side of the pole, 4 on the other) often only holds 5 or 6, and an R160 bench that’s designed to hold 6 (3 on each side of the pole) often only holds 4 or 5.
Is it just me, or am I seeing this leg spreading behavior a lot more lately?
I’ve been noticing it more. My assumption has been that I’ve just been growing more sensitive to it, but maybe I’m thinking too hard.
I was thinking the same thing. :-\