Could This Subway Car Save NYC Transit? - Cheddar Explains 

That design really looks like people sitting in the seats at either end of the car might get trapped in there if lots of people are standing in the narrow gap between the sides

MTA: Might Take Awhile

When they talked about the seating habits of riders, I've never felt more called out in my life.

New york: Our subway system is very overcrowded. Japan: *_-hold my s a k e-_*

That aircraft style one looks awful, think how hard it is to get out of a crowded train as it is, imagine sitting in the corner of one of those

Cheddar: *This is Subway* Wendover: *Nahh, that's underground planes*

I like staying in the corner by the door, you cannot take that away from me.

I don’t prefer to hold on to vertical poles, I legit can’t reach the horizontal ones above the seats!!

Airline style seating on subway and inner city trains is the worst idea ever. We have them on some trains in London and they are horrible. They aren't designed for getting on and off quickly, they are suitable for long distance travel only, not short hops. You have to squeeze past someone, because of this the window seat is often empty when it could be full. They eat up more standing space. Because there is less room to get along the isle, it only takes one person standing to stop those seats being filled and instantly lower the capacity of the train or to make someone miss their stop. It's just poorly thought out design. Airline style seating should be for situations where a train makes a stop every 10+ or 20+ minutes, not every few minutes like most inner city trains do.

that "perfect" car design is so deeply flawed it's actually funny!

When that "perfect" car design popped up I actually grimaced. That airline seating is abysmal. Bring on the gangways.

People dont sit on the ends for the sake of sitting on the edge, they do it to get away from peopel

“Comfortability” Because sometimes the word “Comfort” just doesn’t have enough syllables to make you sound authoritative enough. (From the people that gave you “Burglarize”)

5:16 the airline style seats seem like people would jam up the aisle trying to get out if they have luggage

That design is stupid. People like sitting alone - they don't "not like the middle seat". It's like urinals. You need one between each person. Having two means only one can be used comfortably. Whereas with three, two can be used comfortably, with the middle seat/urinal between them. We have that layout in Perth Australia and there'll be half the seats not used, and it is impossible to get to them because people prefer standing in the skinny aisle between seats over sitting down next to someone.

The new open-layout subways are a godsend in Toronto. Certain cars used to always be incredibly overcrowded while others could be virtually empty, due to the placement of platform entrances. Now they're much more evenly spread out! (Also it's fun looking down the train as it goes around curves or up/down hills :D)

Comfortability? What happened to Comfort?!?

Personally, I'd much prefer to sit in the middle of a row of seats where you face the open space of the carriage and its easy to get in and out, as opposed to having to jostle past somebody when you have the window seat.

For everyone wondering, "comfortabillity" *is* a word. It just doesn't look like a real word because it's too hard to pronounce. Look it up.

2020 Update: There still overcrowed!

I've lived in China for several years. That "perfect" design (the one they didn't pick) is TERRIBLE. Some of the older buses had that layout. If you were in the window seat and it was crowded, imagine trying to get out - crawling past the person in the aisle seat, squeezing into the narrow aisle and trying to get past the people standing in the aisle... And being in the back row window seat was the worst. I can't believe any professional ever thought this was the perfect design! The design they did pick is very similar to what's used on the subways where I live (a city of 12 or 13 million that's just started building a subway system the last ten years). The seats all face the center of the car with backs against the windows. You can pass easily between cars through big openings. The areas near the ends of the cars don't have any seats, leaving a big open space near the passageway to the next car. The main difference is that the seats don't flip up and aren't sectioned into individual seats - just one long bench. Of course, one could say the Chinese have no problems with personal space, but if the car's nearly empty, they sit away from each other just like Americans do. When the car is packed, however, they'll squeeze in any opening on the bench that they can fit into. I do it too. I'd rather sit next to someone than stand.

0:22 NYC Subway Rule #1: Never use your smartphone near an exit where an thief can snatch it from the outside of the subway car and run away with it.

All I want from the subway car is cleanliness and quiet. Every car I board is guaranteed to have either a panhandler, singer, preacher, or other disruptive individual. In my dream car everyone would stay in their space and keep quiet.

Ugh. As someone who uses the MTA trains and buses multiple times each day, the airline-style concept makes me roll my eyes. The MTA busses have the same rows of seats, and when there aren’t enough seats people stand in the aisles. There have been multiple times where I missed my stop because I was standing at the back of the bus and I couldn’t get out of the crowd and to the door fast enough. I can only imagine sitting in that last row of seats and having to push through that aisle crowd to get to the door. And before anyone says “just ask and people will move,” I’d love to invite you to the subway trains during rush hour, or Penn Station on a holiday weekend, or Times Square at 8 PM on a show night!

The researchers didn't do the study during rush hours? Shouldn't the trains be designed around rush hour passenger traffic?

the suggested design is not good anyway. i prefer the middle seat than sitting on a subway car like an airplane, at least i could stand up and leave.

Me: lives in a town where the nearest city is 2 hours away in another province, 2-3 days driving time to NYC driving without stopping. Me clicks video

*_The struggles of desperately trying to find a seat to do your uncompleted homework in the morning on the way to school is real man.. :/_*

Me in Toronto: I wonder what the subways of the future will look like! Video: Like the Toronto subway

Comfortbilty... I don't think that is even a thing.

I have ridden the NYC subway for 15 years and I haven't had a problem since. Maybe it was a bit more cleaner, it would be the best.

open gangway is a no brainer, it also makes public transport more attractive because you have more light, space perception and are not stuck in a single car with some scary dude. also allows for movement to less crowded areas while the train is running.

Nothing can change NYC trains. No matter how early you leave, you'll still be late for work

Cheddar: ...and not have to worry about traffic MTA: We're being held because of train traffic ahead

The perfect one looks your everyday bus.

“Comfortability” 🙃

newyork subway is overcrowded.... Mumbai local railway : child's play

Our subways in South Korea have already been only one long room (no separate cars) since some years ago. And the seats fold up to create more room especially during morning rush hours. I read Japanese subways is even more futuristic nowadays.

Actually only very few JR trains in Tokyo have doorless cart passages (mainly a few regional lines) and I think also the 2 transrapit lines. So all in all probably not even 5% of carts in Tokyo are designed like the new New York designs. That being said I can however confirm that layout is featured in a few modern trains in Paris, all new lines (since roughly 2009) in Moscow, in Munich, Shanghai and sometimes in Berlin. I'm not quite sure but I believe newer trains in Beijing also have joined waggons

The main issue with open gangway trains is that now smells and sounds can affect an entire train rather than just one car. For example, if some hobo smells really bad, previously it would only affect one car; not it can affect multiple cars.

Makes no sense...I've seen open gangway trains in every city in Europe, and some of these trains (like in Milan) look fairly old (older than the R100s). Why is this being touted as some revolutionary concept just because the MTA is slow AF?

The TRB's design has the same number of seats but far less capacity because standing room is lost- that's why all major transit systems (NYC, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc) rarely use transverse seating on their busy routes. At the end of the day, this new design won't do anything to fight overcrowding and will just make it worse.

2:33 So close 😂

Bravo! Whether or not you like one style of seating or another, I really liked this style of reporting! It was clear, concise, interesting and did not appear to biased in any way. I have experienced the rush hour on buses AND trains. Certainly the problem is growing and getting worse. I hope the R-211 works out. Keep up the great reporting!

Oooooo open layouts. But will there be granite countertops?

After using the Toronto subway, the open gangways do help a little during rush hour. I recall being in Hong Kong where the number of seats were generally reserved for elderly, children, pregnant, and others who need it. that created a lot more standing room and could fit more people. The trains were also a lot more frequent. Though, HK is a transit city where very few people drive a personal vehicle.

2-seat airline seating is terrible for short hop travel taken mostly by single people rather than groups. the situation where forward facing seats make sense is where you can replace 3 bench seats with 2 forward facing seats one behind the other, and end up with a little extra standing room. your seating capacity has effectively barely changed at off-peak hours, and you have more standing room for commute times.

everyone: I don't have to feel weird around everyone OCD people: oh is that so

I've always wondered what would happen if a London Underground train randomly pulled into a NY station as a test

luckily the first design wasnt chosen... those in the seats will have no chance of getting out during rush hours

It's now August of 2022. And I don't see these new train designs.. what happened?

Problem with the open gangway cars is that sometimes you come across a stinky car because of a homeless person who didn't bathe or someone who was drunk and had an "accident". If it's all open, now the entire train will stink.

the only thing about the open trains is that bad smells will travel throughout the trains and there's a lot of different smells in new york, especially on the trains

Nothing will solve the subway. People will just adapt to cause more problems.

This video was extremely informative!! I loved in nyc all my life and always take the train and I learned a lot of stuff I never knew before 😀

Don't wanna deal with overcrowding? Go on the subway on late night. Trust me, I went on the subway on late night before, there was no overcrowding. But if ur unlucky their might be overcrowding or crowding

Coming from a lifelong NYC railfanner, I have to say that the R62/R62A design is arguably the best one. It has eight seats per "bench" (as opposed to seven on an R142/R188), and there are four to six seats at each end of the car's interior (four if there's a full width cab, six if there's a half width cab & an accessible storm door to walk between cars; yet an R142/R188 will have anywhere between zero to six seats at each end, depending on if it's a blind car or a cab car). The R62's seats are defined & bucket-shaped (so you know exactly where to position yourself on any bench. On an R142/R188 however, it's just a smooth uniformly shaped bench (which even at it's longest length holds less than what an R62's longest length bench can seat), which means people can easily "manspread", taking up more space in the seating area than they are already supposed to. But at the very least, both the R62 & R142 (plus their respective variants) only have center facing seating, which means wider standing room, and it's easier to get in & out of a seat (the next example below will explain why). And then you have the R46/R68 design, which I feel is the opposite. For starters, roughly half of the seating is forward/backward facing (and is always adjacent to whatever center facing seating is around), which makes it more time consuming to board/alight (i.e.; you're sitting in an aisle seat, but someone wants sit down or get up from the window seat next to you, so now you either have to turn or even stand up to let them in or out of that window seat). Next, by having much of the seating being forward/backward facing 2x2 seating, you have reduced the amount of aisle/standing space (and width) in the car, which is also going to make boarding/alighting more time consuming. Then you have the homeless/odor issue...if you wanna change cars (but really cannot wait until the next station or as of very lately you'd rather risk getting in trouble for using storm doors), the storm doors on an R46/R68 are always locked (R46/R68 cars are 50% longer compared to R62/R142 cars, thus resulting in more extreme gangway shifting when the train is moving), but at least on any other make, you at least have the option of transferring to the next car (assuming you can). Finally, the door/train length ratio is the worst with R46/R68s (a 600 foot long 8-car train of 75 foot long R46/R68 cars has 32 sets of doors on each side; yet a 561 foot long 11-car train of 51 foot long R142/R188 cars has 33 sets of doors on each side). The better the door/train length ratio on a Subway train, the more doors there are for passengers to board or exit the train, which in turn decreases dwelling times at stations & saves precious seconds which add up. The most current state-of-the-art rolling stock (R143/R160/R179) is more or less in the middle here. These have a better door/train length ratio than the all the other train car variants in the NYC Subway (each car is 60 feet long & has four sets of doors on each side; a 600 foot long 10-car train of 60 foot long cars will have 40 sets of doors on each side). Similar to the R62/R142/R188, the seating arrangement is 100% center-facing...but it's the same uniformly shaped bench style seating as the R142/R188 (which brings up the manspreading issue). However, the storm doors are at least unlocked & navigable (unlike with the R46/R68). tl;dr -- there's a lot of inconsistency with the train car designs that have been used, and these variances have impacted service in many ways on whatever subway lines they are assigned to. Realizing which design is most efficient is going to mean a lot moving forward with developing newer designs in the future.

The perfect design is a monorail, perfected by Shelbyville.

I prefer to stand next to the doors just because I have to get out quick and don't wanna rush through the crowd.

"Save NYC Transit?" I didn't know it was leading an ephemeral existence.

NY subways having overcrowding issues. China 'Hold my beer. '

We've just recently switched from closed-ended cars to open gangway design for all the subways in the greater Frankfurt area. The trains just feel so much better and it's so much easier to spread out throughout the train. But these trains don't look like what you've shown here with actual gangways which remind me of what is being used in Tokyo, and where the noise coming from the open gangways is unbelievably loud.

In Singapore some of the trains are automatic aka driverless for the downtown line there is a screen which will tell you which car is the most crowded

The open car would be great for commuters that needs to have access to the most available exit. Being stuck inside a closed car forces people to bottleneck a specific exit and that exit is usually the same bottleneck for entrance. Having less seats would actually be better for most riders though. I don't remember ever to wanting to sit in a subway car because you end up with your face at eye level with a stranger's crotch or butt hunched over you. especially in a crowed subway.

Everything about the study is absolutely true! We love to sit alone or be close the door. Being in the middle induces anxiety of not being able to get out at your stop. I don't think either of those are perfect designs but I really like the open car idea, makes more room and allows people to spread out

Should hire from Tokyo Subway where they move 4B on time annually.

5:51 Ok, those "researches" said that middle seats are bad. But are they seriously worse than trying to slam through other passenger to/from the near window seat? Proposed design is inhumane and idiotic. Person who've done it acts like they've never used the subway.

I'm doing a presentation on MTA lack of punctuality so it be a blessing if you could tell me where you got your sources so I could better cover this topic

Longitude bench-style seating in the middle only. Leaving the walls empty for standing patrons

A lot of trains in Tokyo are NOT open gangways.

You don't mention standing room, which is important on a subway and why the transverse seating design wouldn't work necessarily.

I’ve slipped between the train and platform with my leg trapped because the train was crowded. I was in such shock that someone else had to yell for the conductor not to take off with my leg🥲. I was just on my way to school and ended up with an injury as my doc at the time described as a football equivalent injury. Still fucks with me to this day and that was in 2011

Yikes NY subway cars look old The new design is basically how the German subway cars where I live looked for the last 20 years minimum minus the asymmetric door part

Literally 2 days ago I was taking the 2 train and some fighting homeless people pulled the emergency break while we were in a tunnel... An hour wasted.

Other major cities around the world deserve a little more credit in this video. These revolutionary ideas didnt come from some new yorker; they came from around the world. Not a single idea listed hasn’t been tried before. Tokyo has had things pretty perfect for about 10 years now

I already love the design of the E train. The commuter rail style seating like on the LIRR wouldn't work well on the subway, and would quickly annoy everyone. I honestly think the main problem is that NYC lacks subway lines for the outer boroughs. If more trains were added that went between the outer boroughs and not just Manhattan, there would be less people riding already crowded trains like the E and the F in the first place.

Honestly, I like the sideways chairs, completely reduce travel sickness

The "perfect" layout with no middle seats looks exactly like the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) near where I live in London.

The word Comfort: Exists Cheddar: ComFoRTabiLiTY

0:40 I thought the subway car layout was called cheddar xD

That study is idiotic. Other countries already did the research and have actual usage statistics and not one picked such an unusual seating arrangement.

US Subways & Raiways are way behind Asian counterparts. The best is in Japan followed by Singapore, China, etc. Plus in Japan they are clean, never late and always on time.

JUST SUBSCRIBED LOVE THIS CHANNEL SO FAR.

I rarely comment on videos but this "ideal" layout triggers me so much that I had to. Also, these findings are pretty obvious for anyone who uses the MTA daily.

With the open gangway design they can just eliminate all seats in every other car. They should have at least gone with the offset doors though.

them Futuristic ones look like Londons New Tube Cars

You conveniently forget that wider entry/exit doors for the NYC Subway System are mandated by Federal law, the Americans With Disabilities Act. Open gangways also facilitate ADA compliance.

As a Bostonian I'd like to see a similar study here. Our Green Line is the oldest and has narrow, winding tunnels requiring articulated cars. The Red and Orange lines are newer and have larger cars.

2:50 _"not for comf'tability"_ You mean *comfort* ?

Crowding the door area is a universal human behavior believe me 😂😂😂 that will never change .

I agree with the MTA's choice and with NOJ's comments below about the problems with airline style seating. This would definitely make it difficult to leave the train quickly. We have the MTA new cars in Toronto and they are great in their design. However, I know that Bombardier is building the MTAs new cars and there have been many problems with car construction and defects in Toronto due to Bombardier's questionable workmanship. There have also been recalls of Bombardier trolley cars. Bombardier has also been slow in meeting deadlines for deliveries of new cars. This is true in Toronto and I know NYC is experiencing the same problems with slow delivery, defects, and recalls with Bombardier built transit vehicles. I love NYC so good luck with your transit updates.

Bonus: The ride on the "A" line from the Inwood station stop in the upper most part of the island of Manhattan (New York County) to the Far Rockaway station stop in the Borough of Queens (Queens County) is 31 miles or almost 50 kilometers. It mostly runs underground until it gets to the Grant Avenue station stop (which is the last stop in the Borough of Brooklyn (Brooklyn County) and takes a little over 1 hour 6 minutes to get there (and only because it is close to the end of rush hour and outbound). The "A" train then continues to Far Rockaway and rides along a track that will cross two ocean bridges and is pretty nice to look at (taped in the dead of winter by McCrillis Nsiah). This is the video --> ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3G3ZOixulbA.html The following video starts in Far Rockaway on a beautiful summer's day (taped in wonderful high definition by DJH Trains) and ends at the Inwood station stop --> ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-pphgq49lslI.html ENJOY!

The open gangway design is great. I live in Toronto (I've probably ridden on the very train showed at the 6:33 mark many a time) and it makes a big difference.

Ah yes, cut the MTA’s budget repeatedly to pay for other projects and allow the technology and infrastructure to weaken and deteriorate and then equate that with overcrowding (which is arguably as a result of the aforementioned) yeah sure good one

Montreal has the open gangway trains now too, they're awesome!

What about Tokyo Japan? They are just as crowded if not more than NYC and they almost never late and the cleanest public transit I've ever experienced.

Nice, thorough report. Thanks. Note: "Comfortability" is not a word. It's simply "comfort." E.g. "The cars' comfort is subject to seat placement." Or, "The cars were built with comfort in mind." :)

Comfterbility. I hate that "word". Comfort is enough.

Getting out of that "revolutionary" train during rush hour will be almost impossible, especially if you sit in the back.

The open-style design is brilliant! I really hope it catches on because that waste of space is ridiculous and people trying to walk between cars highly annoying if not downright dangerous.