The seating arrangement of subways in many major cities of the world, including Istanbul, is almost the same. Either all the seats are arranged in a straight row adjacent to the edge, or if you remember from the old subways of the European Side, they are arranged side by side and vertically, leaving a large space in the middle.
So why isn’t this seating arrangement such that it can seat a maximum of people like in buses? “Why isn’t it like metrobuses?” We would say, but the seats are neither as small as the metro nor as much space as the bus. With this feature and especially the interesting “oriental corner” model at the back, it is a means of transportation that lives up to its name. Then let’s say it’s like in buses or trains.
Wouldn’t it be much more useful if there were two rows of two seats? It would definitely not happen, in fact there would be great chaos.
Because metros are means of transportation where there are a lot of hop-on and hop-off trips and short-term use is common. If we look at another example, since minibuses and metrobuses also operate in a slightly faster hop-on-hop-off mode, they also have standing space almost equal to the seat.
Can you imagine the people constantly getting up and the constant pushing and shoving in the small remaining standing area if they were lined up with a bus or train system?
Subways are actually designed based on research on passenger behavior. The data is interesting.
In these studies, passenger behavior is observed, especially during the hours when the subway is not heavily used, so that passengers have two options, sitting or not sitting, and which one they choose can be determined. Observing a fish-filled subway during rush hour probably won’t provide much useful data.
Passenger behaviors that emerged as a result of the research are generally as follows:
As you can imagine, passengers do not like to stand close to each other.
But you probably won’t be able to guess how much they didn’t like it. Even in a subway that is generally considered half full and has many empty seats, people mostly prefer to stand up rather than sit between two people.
More interestingly, in order for 90% of the seats to be filled, the metro must reach 120% occupancy capacity, which we call the fish stack. So, contrary to popular belief, sitting is not that preferable.
They prefer to hold on to the vertical bars near the door rather than holding on to the poles close to the seats.
Again, the behavior of staying away as much as possible is effective here too. Rather than standing near or in front of people sitting, they prefer to hold on to poles that are closer to the door and have more space.
Of course, one of the reasons for this is that the exit is easy. For this reason, you can generally see more accumulation in front of doors. For this reason, researchers recommend that there be a large and direct area in front of the door so that the maximum number of passengers boarding for a short stop can stand and do not get in between the remaining passengers and create a constant scuffle.
Isn’t this design useless for those traveling between long stops in the subway?
For those making long journeys, it is recommended that seats be placed transversely, that is, like in buses, especially in the front and rear parts of the wagons, but that all the remaining middle parts be in the longitudinal arrangement we just mentioned.
But some cruel subway designers do not want these back seats, which would be preferred by those making long journeys. You ask why?
Because we have another very important problem regarding metro use. Think about it, many factors such as the time spent on the stairs going down to the subway, waiting time, transfers between subways, and how long the subways wait at each stop extend your journey time.
The metro needs to be as fast a means of transportation as possible so that it can be a fast alternative to other means of transportation such as buses.
The more seats there are in the subway, the longer the time people spend in the middle area to get into the seats and therefore the time required for other passengers to get in.
Some designers come up with draconian solutions to this, such as reducing seats as much as possible and creating even more standing space. The first sacrifice here is the transverse rear seats.
Was he really cruel? There are many people who would give up a little comfort to go a little faster.
In big cities, sometimes minutes or even seconds matter. Are you one of those who can give up sitting to save time? Or are you one of those who want it to be slower, but let’s take it easy?
The genius(!) solution that comes to everyone’s mind: Why aren’t the subways longer?
Let’s not go into long engineering details here, but making subways longer is often not technically possible. For this reason, in order to make the interior of existing trains as efficient as possible, such arrangements, which may seem absurd to us, can optimize the efficiency we get from the journey.
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