South West Trains remove seats to ease overcrowding
South West Trains are planning to strip seats out of trains to reduce overcrowding, the company announced this week. SWT said it will remove seats from some of its most overcrowded routes and replace them with extra handrails and so-called 'perch seats' allowing more people to stand.
Almost 500 carriages, including some only two years old, will lose more than one fifth of their seats. Passenger watchdogs have described the move as a cheap fix and said people were being asked to pay more for a worse service.
The news comes as South West Trains is revealed as one of the most overcrowded routes in Britain. The franchise is already breaching government limits for overcrowding, carrying 160 million passengers a year on its routes, according to reports.
Figures obtained under the freedom of information act and published in one of the capital's free sheets stated that the 8.04 from Isleworth to Waterloo has 792 seats but carries an average of 1,138 passengers equating to 44 commuters standing for every 100 seats. The Department of Transport considers "overcrowding" to be 35 people standing for every 100 seats.
Last week that it was announced that Stagecoach had retained the SWT franchise. At the time they pledged an extra £40 million to improve rolling stock and stations and that it would increase peak seating by 20%.
An spokesperson for SWT later stated that this was an error and "that the figure referred to extra capacity in general, rather than seats."
October 3, 2006