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| Re: pictures from the r-160 open house (177273) | |||
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Re: pictures from the r-160 open house |
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Posted by David of Broadway on Wed Nov 30 06:34:25 2005, in response to Re: pictures from the r-160 open house, posted by GP38/R42 Chris on Tue Nov 29 23:28:49 2005. The seats are identical. There's a bump. If the bump lines up with the bump in your back, fine. If it doesn't, ouch.Watch seated passengers. If they're slouching in the seat, they're probably trying to avoid the bump. If they're shifting position every few minutes, they're probably trying to find the least uncomfortable position. I usually slouch, but that makes my feet tired, since I'm putting most of my weight on them. Might as well stand. Which brings us to another problem: the HVAC system. At least on the R-142's (I don't ride the R-142A's or R-143's often), there are very strong (and loud!) fans, but the cooling power is weak. If you happen to be positioned where the air hits you, it feels cold (perhaps too cold). But if you don't, and it's a hot day, I hope you don't mind it hot and stuffy, because that's how it will feel. Seated passengers in the middle of the car get HVAC. Most standing passengers do not, nor does anybody near either end of the car. Compare that to the R-42, where you don't feel a strong gust of wind anywhere, but it's simply cool in the entire car, even at the ends. Shall I continue? How about needlessly abrupt acceleration and deceleration? How about crystal clear and ultra-loud (well, not so loud on the R-143, but very loud on the R-142) announcements about all the ordinary stuff that most passengers would rather tune out, but barely audible announcements when the C/R has to say something manually, typically about some sort of service change that the passengers might want to know about? (It seems that one of the fans points directly into the mike! Again, that might be fixed on the R-160, but it's a problem on the R-142.) How about the defective airbag suspension system (again, on the R-142; it may be fixed on the R-160) that produces a bouncier ride than on the cars that are being replaced? Yes, a lot of passengers will cheer when the cars come in, but a lot of passengers automatically prefer new over old, either because they blindly think new is always better than old or because they're happy whenever anybody pays attention to them (the Westinghouse effect). But are the new cars an actual improvement for the passengers? That's not so clear. I can tell you that, as a daily passenger, I'm quite glad that my line still runs R-62A's, which I find meets my needs as a passenger much better than the R-142's across the platform on the 2. |
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