Woo-hoo! *pffpppeet*[1]
The wonderful train company responsible for getting me into London in the mornings has just announced plans to remove some seats from its “overcrowded” trains, in order to cram more of us in like cattle reduce overcrowding. Instead there will be “perch seats”, and rails to hang onto.
Just great. Perfect. The ticket price is worth every penny.
[1] the sound of one of those curly paper tube blowly things that make a noise when you blow them and uncurl as they fill with air. You know. You get them in Christmas crackers or parties with the silly hats and party poppers.
So glad I am not commuting anymore and cycling to work instead!
I have *some* sympathy with SWT.
There is surely a maximum to the number of trains you can physically process through Waterloo at peak times (signalling, platform contention, line congestion, etc, etc) and there is a maximum to the length of each train (unless you want to ban passengers from getting out of certain carriages at certain platforms).
So, assuming they really are constrained by those two things (not a given, I accept), there are two options: get more people onto each train or discourage more people from travelling.
Ripping seats out is presumably preferable to using the more traditional approach to rationing scarce resources: price.
Unfortunately, it’s probably safe to assume that there is pent-up demand for rail services into Waterloo at peak times. Therefore, adding capacity will only have a short-term effect: as the amount of personal space increases, more people will travel and we’ll be back to where we started.
Ultimately, in the absence of major capacity increases, the price system is probably our best hope…. but it’s politically unpalatable.
i forgot to invite you to the early screening of Hallam Foe tonight. a blogger event where we get to see an early cut of a new movie that isnt out yet.
ping me if you wanna
Bah – been out seeing my nieces all day and only just saw this – too late š
Thanks for the offer though, will take you up on similar events in the future!