A correspondent sent me a link to a brochure from the Montreal transit system announcing their selection of a new car design.  You can see it here.

Big surprise!  The public prefers to have transverse seats and that’s what the STM is giving them.  Apparently the so-called standards (which turn out on close inspection not to be standards at all) cited by the TTC have not affected this design despite the fact that Bombardier is building both the Toronto and Montreal cars.  Hmmm … maybe the designers don’t talk to each other.

In the photo of the planned interior, you will see that the area under the seats is boxed in, but in such a way that there is still reasonable legroom.  Because the cars are narrower in Montreal, there is only room for 1+2 seating, not 2+2 as we have here.  Note also the tripartite vertical stanchions that allow more people to hold on without playing games of whose hand overlaps whose.

More news here when we see how the Commission decides.

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The arrest of 17 alleged terrorists and recent train bombings have been godsends to TTC subway car designers.  Report 12 on the coming TTC meeting agenda argues that the option of mixed transverse and perimeter seating is simply unacceptable from a security point of view, and that indeed the TTC has a duty to install perimeter seats as a means to counter possible security threats.

I will be accused of having my head in the sand for saying this, but if someone wants to commit an act of violence on the subway, there are plenty of ways to do it regardless of how the seats are arranged.  There is a culture of fear in certain quarters that says we must assume the worst, and that any spectre that the engineers can conjure is a real and present danger.  Any opposition is trumped by the “safety” slogan whether it can be justified in some absolute terms or not.

Why have public feedback when you have already made up your mind?

Bluntly, I feel that TTC staff are going to the wall on an issue on which they have already been beaten back by the Commission and Chair Moscoe, and in doing so reveal an arrogance that has no place at the TTC (or anywhere else in our municipal bureaucracy).