The Perfect Train Car The U.S. Doesn’t Use

ever load into a crowded subway car only

to instantly regret it because now you

find your face buried into someone's

armpit if you have you might think to

yourself there's got to be another way

to do this and it turns out there is

there's a design that's been proven to

solve overcrowding but we kind of ignore

it

passenger trains have come a long way

they first got their start with miners

hitching rides in Coal cars on their way

to work but the first passenger rail

carriages were introduced in the early

1800s and they were very uncomfortable

impractical and sometimes even dangerous

passengers rode both inside the coach

and on benches mounted onto the top of

the coach

by 1834 mounted carriages were replaced

by rectangular rail cars they feature

simple wooden benches and had a center

aisle similar to what we have today

and for the most part train cars were

self-contained meaning that going from

car to car was hard and not permitted

look at cities like Chicago New York and

Boston and you'll find commuters

jam-packed into train cars

some Commuter or long distance rail cars

are wider and less crowded but Subways

are constricted by their tunnels and are

often narrow there are only so many

seating configurations that you can give

people there's bench seating along the

wall and then periodically two pairs of

opposing seats will stick out at a 90

degree angle but the most efficient

Arrangement and which is what they've

gone back to today uniformly is bench

seating along either wall and you had

that from the very beginning essentially

trained cars haven't changed much in

over a hundred years

even though this exists

this is an open Gateway Car

gangways are narrow walkways or

platforms that provide access between

two points in this case two train cars

have you ever seen an articulated bus

you know that black accordion section in

the middle that's what we're talking

about the enclosed space between cars

allows Riders to safely spread out

between crowded and uncrowded cars

increasing the Train's capacity without

adding any length

replacing the unused space of

traditional train cars with open gangway

cars can represent up to a 14 reduction

in crowding which is what makes open

gangways so appealing

London already operates open gangway

trains on its subsurface lines and they

found the design could increase the

capacity of its deep tube by as much as

10 percent London is also replacing its

1970s trains on the Piccadilly line with

open gangway trains which should be

completed by 2025. New York City is

adding open Gateway cars even if it's at

a snail's pace in 2018 the MTA approved

the purchase of 535 r211 train cars from

Kawasaki and including 20 trains

featuring The Open gangway design and

it's good timing New York City's Subway

ridership is increasing as we come out

of the pandemic reaching 3.7 million

trips a day up 35 from last year prior

to the pandemic ridership was hovering

around 5.5 million trips per day so

we'll need all the space we can get

so why don't we see more open gangway

trains in the U.S it's estimated that at

least three quarters of Metro systems

outside of the U.S use at least some

form of open gangway train cars these

trains can be taken for a spin in older

systems in Paris and London as well as

through newer networks in China Algeria

and Egypt

they're clearly the train car of the

future that's at least what the world is

suggesting by their implementation but I

guess America didn't get the message

while we don't have a fleet of open

gangway train cars in the US yet they

may be right around the corner cities

like New York and San Francisco are

currently testing these train cars out

so while we don't have them yet we may

see these trains popping up sooner than we thought!