PHILADELPHIA — Passengers with wide derrieres will have more room on SEPTA trains — if they are among the lucky few who board first, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
Wide bodies should steer for the midsection of the train, where seats will be up to three inches broader than the current 18-inch seats on cars carrying 60,000 riders daily in the Philadelphia region. In all, 32 of the 102 seats on new Regional Rail cars will be more comfortable, according to plans revealed yesterday.
“They have created a fat-man section,” Dorothy Tomlinson, 78, said yesterday as she licked an ice cream cone while waiting for the R2 train from Center City. “All the seats should be wider.”
Riders want more room, SEPTA officials acknowledged, but the agency can’t afford to give every bottom such a spread.
Instead, most riders will still have to contend with the narrower seats of the 1960s era or, worse, the reviled three-seat banquette.
“We are giving the customer the best possible seat we can,” Patrick Nowakowski, SEPTA assistant general manager, said during a news conference at the Market East station in Center City.
The new design offers riders who get to the seats first – those from distant stops such as Doylestown and Thornbury – room to spread out.
“People that have a long ride will get a first crack at this seat,” he added. The 104 new cars should arrive within three to four years and will cost about $300 million, Nowakowski said. Giving everyone a roomier ride – and junking the three-seat banquette – would have cost up to $25 million more.
“We are in a difficult economic period of tightening budgets,” SEPTA general manager Faye Moore said. “The future doesn’t look much better.”
In hewing to past practice, SEPTA is out of step with commuter-rail trends nationwide. From Maryland to Los Angeles, 21-inch-wide seats are standard. The three-seat banquette has been banished. To attract riders who could choose the comfort of driving instead, many transit agencies also offer coffee-cup holders and restrooms.
In contrast, riders on the new Silverliner V cars will have to juggle coffee on their laps and take pit stops somewhere else. Those amenities are most definitely “not in the specifications,” Nowakowski said.
The absence of such courtesies angers some commuters.
“SEPTA is so out of touch with passengers,” said Don Nigro, who has led protests in favor of 22-inch-wide seats as president of the Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers, SEPTA’s largest commuter group. “SEPTA is disregarding the comfort of suburban commuters, many of whom ride for up to an hour or more.”
Still, the riders keep coming.
Ridership on the 40-year-old cramped trains has risen 3 percent to 4 percent each year, resulting in standing room only during peak hours on trains such as the Trenton R7.
When asked whether signs near the more ample seats might direct riders to yield to a larger person on request, SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney declined to comment. At the very least, the new trains will give everyone a seat. The 104 cars will be a boost compared with the current 73-car fleet.
Based on this order, “we should not have people standing,” Nowakowski said.