Gregory's ServerYou don’t often see outward facing seats on transit vehicles, but being able to gaze out the window rather than at an ad across the aisle makes for a pretty enjoyable ride! (This is the Kuala Lumpur Monorail).
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@mikka I think it might be a layout that works best for a lower volume monorail system (which I think also have wider vehicles than on-street systems).  @mikka It being a *mono*rail, there might be balance benefits to most of the people on the train sitting relatively close to the centreline. @JasonThorne seats are often used to house wheels, allowing the carriage to be lower than with the wheels under the floor. Assuming this monorail has the wheels in the middle, this makes perfect sense.  @NiklasMM @JasonThorne I've ridden the KL monorail and you're absolutely right—it straddles the track, and the wheels are indeed housed in the seats in the middle. (To get from one side of the car to the other you have to clamber over an inconvenient tunnel.) @JasonThorne Maybe we should also ask women, PoC, Queer and other vulnerable people if they are comfortable with this layout, which allows for easy attacks from behind. @utrenkner thanks to your comment, I noticed that women are indeed sitting in the back, on inward facing seats. @JasonThorne @utrenkner @JasonThorne fair point, but you can see in the background that there are "regular" seats as well, so as a novelty for a few people per train - especially if they are sightseeing - i think they are fine i would also say this doesn't look very comfy to get past with a wheelchair or other mobility aids compared to having the seats on the side, but that may be the perspective or lens distortion of the camera @JasonThorne thanks for sharing this! I haven't been on the monorail for a while since my travels take me on the LRT or MRT. Must remember to take it some time.   @JasonThorne how do people get wheelchairs and mobility scooters through this space? What does this space mean for people who have to worry when someone is behind them? You see pleasant, I see inaccessible nightmare.   @JasonThorne That… that's an interesting health hazard, weirdly enough. A surprising number of people both in my family and that I generally know would have motion sickness induced by high-speed horizontal motion (their body) made worse by horizontal perceived motion (visual). Even when in a taxi, bus, or Uber, my head points ahead. If there's a turn, my head preemptively points to our destination direction and as the vehicle turns, my head turns to always point in the direction of travel. Or 🤢  Two aisles for the price of one! .... Seems like a design constraint of the monorail (wheels under seats) led to bifurcation of a normally monolithic (eg efficient, accessible) aisle. Is it a steel wheel or rubber tired monorail? Having seen a commercial vehicle tire fail at speed and launch pieces of rubber through the fender, I'd rather not be sitting on top of it when it goes. |
@JasonThorne Given the packed cars we have in Germany and I saw in other countries, outward facing seats mean staring at someone's crotch that, whenever the train jerks, gets precariously close to one's face.
Forward/backward facing seats were put in that way, to precisely eliminate the problem standing passengers pose to sitting ones.