craigybagel
Established Member
- Joined
- 25 Oct 2012
- Messages
- 5,082
That may be so, but that is a side effect of the large doors and means that space isn't available for legroom and toilets, both things that TfW have told me they intend to reduce (at least compared to 175s) along with bays of 4 around tables.
Indeed, the extra capacity will hopefully avoid the need for passengers to stand. You are also correct to say that the suburban door layout reduces the dwell time; if you replaced the class 175s tommorow with Turbostars on a vehicle-for-vehicle basis (ie. no capacity increase) you would indeed reduce the dwell times. However, if you could magic up an extra 62 class 175 intermediate vehicles to lengthen the fleet (providing a similar capacity boost to the Civity fleet) and this eliminated the crowding so everyone gets a seat that would also reduce dwell times. If you then replaced that expanded 175 fleet with equally long Turbostars I'm the dwell time saving wouldn't be nearly as big as moving from overcrowded 175s to overcrowded Turbostars.
Put another way, if the doorways aren't congested by overcrowding I doubt the door layout makes much difference to dwell times. Sure, it'll save a few seconds but unless the train is stopping at busy stations every 5 minutes its not worth the significant reduction in quality.
It's not just me, in the franchise annoucement TfW themselves refered to the Civity fleet as "Long distance and rural DMU" and they are listed with the mark 3s, mark 4s and 175s on the "Long Distance Express" table in the franchise documents.
You'd think the TOCs would ensure the tanks get emptied, yet there have been several reports on the forums of toilets being locked out of use due to full tanks.
I'm not just talking about overcrowded services (which incidentally are a lot more few and far between then people make it here, but that's a whole other rant). Normal everyday services with normal everyday loadings, are sped up by having the doors at ⅓ ⅔. Again, I'm speaking from experience, experience that the folks who've ordered these trains have also got. They know what they're doing.
And again, it's not a "significant reduction in quality", not by any means except your own. But I feel I'm really banging my head against a brick wall here and to be fair you're probably feeling the same about me!